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 THE NEW HARMONY 
 MOVEMENT 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE B. LOCKWOOD 
 
 With the Collaboration of Charles A. Prosser 
 in the preparation of the Educational Chapters 
 
 NEW YORK 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
 
 1905
 
 Copyright, 1905, by 
 D. APPLETON AND COJttPANY 
 
 Published May, 1905 
 
 THE NEW HARMONY COMMUNITIES 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1902, BY GEORGE B. LOCKWOOD
 
 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 What is called in this book the " New Harmony Move- 
 ment " forms a noteworthy practical lesson in sociology — 
 in that part of sociology which treats of the isms of that 
 important science. 
 
 In the institutions of civilization we count four car- 
 dinal types — the family, civil society with its division of 
 labor, the state, the church. The two extremes — the fam- 
 ily and the church — ^give us, on the one hand, the first de- 
 parture from the individual with his narrow experience, 
 and on the other the arrival at the highest reenforcement 
 by the race or the social whole. The family, although 
 nearest to the unassisted individual, does not for that very 
 reason permit much development of individuality. Its 
 principle is obedience to elders, and especially to parents 
 and naturally constituted guides. A high degree of self- 
 activity and independence is not found possible in this 
 institution, because blind obedience is irrational. 
 
 As compared with the family, civil society with its 
 division of labor gives greater opportunity for the devel- 
 opment of individuality. The individual through his vo- 
 cation contributes something to supply the wants of his 
 community. He makes some article or performs some 
 function that is useful to the social whole, and thereby 
 lays his community under obligation to him and gets rec- 
 ognition for his service. He has proved himself essential 
 to the society in which he lives, and society hastens to set 
 before him, for the supply of his own particular needs, 
 the aggregate production of all the units of society. It 
 
 (jir)i)2i
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 does this through and by means of the market wherein 
 his own product is measured with the products of others, 
 and he gets a quid pro quo. 
 
 In civil society, therefore, the individual manifests 
 his differences and idiosyncrasies, and gets them recog- 
 nized and approved by the whole community. And, on 
 the other hand, he gets his needs and wants, his defects 
 and peculiarities, supplemented and provided for by his 
 fellow men. Their capacities and idiosyncrasies make up 
 for his deficiencies, just as he makes up for their deficien- 
 cies to the extent of his own real power. Hence society 
 seems to be, in one respect, a larger individual, an insti- 
 tutional person; more perfect than the particular indi- 
 vidual because it contains all the strengths united into 
 one great social strength, the defects and weaknesses elimi- 
 nated by mutual compensation. 
 
 The state is the individuality of this greater human 
 self which comes to exist through the division of labor 
 and the process of compensation. It subordinates the in- 
 dividual to the social will. And it does this not only in 
 respect to the property and belongings of the individual, 
 but in reference to his liberty and his very life itself. It 
 uses the individual and his property to protect the life and 
 property of the whole, but by this negative process it 
 secures the positive result of the protection of life and 
 liberty to all its citizens. The individual is reenforced 
 by the strength of his whole nation, and thus achieves an 
 individuality altogether transcendent as compared to that 
 which he realized in the family, or even in his industrial 
 vocation. We are ascending a ladder toward emancipa- 
 tion from natural limits, and toward achievement of a 
 colossal individuality — family, industrial vocation, citizen- 
 ship in a nation. 
 
 There is one step of higher emancipation. The three 
 institutions just considered are worldly. The church is 
 the other-worldly institution which has for its object 
 
 vi
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 emancipation from the thraldom of space and time by 
 revealing to man his origin and his final purpose in the 
 divine order of the universe. Man as a moral being be- 
 longs to an other-worldly realm. In the church he cele- 
 brates his discoveries of the divine order, and founds upon 
 them a higher emancipation from the shortcomings and 
 imperfections, the restraints and limitations, of mere 
 nature. 
 
 These are the four rounds in the ladder of civilization. 
 The mere individual outside of these four institutions of 
 civilization exists in a state of rudimental freedom. A 
 state of Eobinson Crusoe isolation is the lowest order of 
 rational life. Crusoe finds himself dependent on the prod- 
 ucts of nature for his food, clothing, and shelter, but is 
 without organized means for the subjugation of nature. 
 Hence he lives from hand to mouth and subject to all 
 the vicissitudes that visit his habitat in and out of season. 
 He exists also in a state of war, not only against natural 
 forces but of one savage man against other savage men. 
 Progress out of these evil conditions will demand social 
 organization through the four institutions which we have 
 been considering. These will emancipate his individual- 
 ity and bring him beyond the stage of animal likes and 
 dislikes to the stage in which is revealed to him deeper 
 and deepest ideas of reason and higher and highest attain- 
 ments of freedom and achievement. 
 
 By these institutions he will get command not only of 
 bread for his body, but of high positions of influence and 
 power among his fellow men; above this, he will attain 
 insights into the science of nature and into the structure 
 of the moral order of society; the gradual unfoldment of 
 human nature in the history of civilizations ; insights into 
 the art and literature of the most gifted peoples. Heading 
 all things in the light of the highest principle, he will 
 receive what is better than bread, or than dominion over 
 nature and man, or than insights into special realms of 
 
 vii
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 truth. Emerson, in his poem The Days, celebrates the 
 gifts which the days bring to man: 
 
 " To each they offer gifts after his will, 
 Bread, kingdoms, stars, and sky that holds them all." 
 
 Emerson has indicated in his poem progressive steps 
 of emancipation of individuality. Bread gives freedom 
 from the wants of the body; kingdoms the sway over our 
 environment of nature and human society — wealth and 
 high station; stars the several insights and skills which 
 give us a deeper self-knowledge and the artistic power 
 needed for the poet and the sage ; and " the sky that holds 
 them all " is the religious view or philosophic view of the 
 divine which is presupposed by all these gifts. 
 
 It happens that partial insights into the good and the 
 evil of institutions create sects of reformers who seek to 
 eradicate one institution by another. They would substi- 
 tute civil society for the family and for the state. Com- 
 munism or socialism undertakes to do this, and the fail- 
 ure of this view of the world is illustrated in a great 
 variety of phases in the history of New Harmony, both 
 in the experiment of the Eappites and in the longer and 
 fuller experiment of Eobert Owen and his successors. 
 
 The Eappites, as pointed out by the author of this 
 history, were religious comniunists. Eapp himself was 
 prophet, priest, and king. As is usual in this kind of 
 communism, one prophet excludes all other prophets. He 
 prevents his disciples from growing into prophets, or, in- 
 deed, from undertaking any original thinking or planning. 
 Originality, if encouraged, would soon destroy the com- 
 munity. Morris Birkbeck is quoted as saying : " Strangers 
 visit their establishment and retire from it full of ad- 
 miration; but a slavish acquiescence, under a disgusting 
 superstition, is so remarkable an ingredient in their char- 
 acter that it checks all desire of imitation." 
 
 With Eapp's community, the ideal disciple was an 
 
 viii
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 obedient slave. Governed by a man who understood busi- 
 ness, like Frederick Eapp, labor could be well organized 
 and the earnings could be accumulated in the strong chest 
 of the prophet and king. But in this case, the institution 
 which we have called civil society does not get established 
 in such a way as to develop individual freedom. The 
 Roman idea of property emancipates the individual from 
 the patriarchal ties of the family and develops individual 
 initiative, but New Harmony suppressed the individual 
 initiative and secured obedience to the priest and king. 
 
 Thus the church admitted civil society only in its 
 serfdom, and not in its freedom. But the church, in this 
 experiment, abolishes not only civil society in its aspect of 
 individual initiative, substituting the family principle of 
 patriarchal rule, but in turn it abolishes the family out- 
 right by introducing the principle of celibacy. And by 
 this it saws off the limb on which the whole community 
 depends. Moreover, such a community is incompatible 
 with the state except in its most rudimentary form of 
 the tribe. No neighboring town or coimty could trust 
 the New Harmony citizens in a political election because 
 they were puppets moved by a king inspired by other- 
 worldly interests and firmly keeping aloof from the in- 
 terests of the county and the State of Indiana and the 
 nation. There was in store for this community, when 
 the Indiana Territory should become populous, an exter- 
 minating persecution at the hands of a mob like that 
 which drove Mormonism out of Xauvoo in later years. 
 Its return to Pennsylvania anticipated the catastrophe. 
 Religious communism attacks family, civil society, and 
 state in the developed form which these institutions take 
 on in modern civilization. 
 
 The second form of community, that of Mr. Owen, 
 which came to be established at New Harmony, was in 
 some respects the opposite of the religious community that 
 had preceded it. It established itself in the name of a 
 
 ix
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 civil society more or less opposed to the famil}^, more or 
 less opposed to the state, and, above all, opposed to the 
 church. The strict regulations penetrating to the private 
 life of the Owenite communist remind us of the Rappite 
 community of the prophet and priest, and so also does 
 the control of labor by a one-man power and the cover- 
 ing of all production into the common storehouses, and 
 in this it contradicted the ideal of the civil communitj^ 
 smothered individual initiative and arrested the train- 
 ing of the population into civil freedom. Owen might 
 desire to have original initiative develop in the individuals 
 of his community. And his establishment of common- 
 school education shows that he was almost entirely un- 
 conscious of the meaning of the division of labor as a 
 function of the institution of civil society. He seemed 
 to think that not only could the laborer forswear self- 
 activity in planning as well as executing, but even could 
 be aroused by school education without the danger of feel- 
 ing the absolute need for the exercise of original initiative 
 in his trade and vocation. 
 
 Involved in this contradiction, his communistic experi- 
 ment could not flourish, and did not flourish. The relig- 
 ious community, after the death of its prophet, gradually 
 changed into a civil community. 
 
 The lesson forced on us by these two experiments is 
 the necessitv for each of the four institutions, and the 
 limitation of each through the other. If, in the name 
 of one of these institutions, an attempt is made to suppress 
 another institution, the attempt destroys the whole ex- 
 periment. For each institution, in order to be complete, 
 demands the creation of the other institutions in their 
 full development. If the dominant institution endeavors 
 to create for itself the other institutions, it dwarfs them 
 or mutilates them. 
 
 The lack of a religious faith in the Owen experiment 
 made impossible on the part of the other citizens of Indi-
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 ana the cooperation necessary for an influential citizen- 
 ship in the State. The outside citizens could never fore- 
 cast what practical cooperation in their policy might be 
 secured from the Owen community. Hence they sus- 
 pected even the best measures proposed by Robert Dale 
 Owen in the constitutional convention and in the legis- 
 lature. They were afraid that his well-known opinions 
 regarding the church concealed some latent mischief which 
 would come out as an injury to the commonwealth sooner 
 or later if adopted, and hence arose some of the opposi- 
 tion against the legislation which he proposed in behalf 
 of so good a cause as that of public free schools. 
 
 Public free schools have a tendency to develop the 
 power of the boys and girls in the line of original initia- 
 tive. The school enables them to see not only things as 
 they are, but to compare them with the scientific and his- 
 torical ideals of what they ought to be. They can see 
 possibilities of the manufacture of useful machinery in 
 l3eds of ore and forests of timber; they can see the possi- 
 bility of mills for textile manufacture or for manufactures 
 of hardware in the waterfalls of their rivers. Armed with 
 science, the mind is able to make mechanic inventions. 
 All classes of citizens gain in directive power by means 
 of the studies of the school. But the citizens of Indiana 
 looked upon the experiment of communism at New Har- 
 mony as in the direction of suppressing individual initia- 
 tive and the substitution of a one-man power for inde- 
 pendent ownership of real estate and personal property, 
 and for independent freedom of choice. 
 
 If Robert Dale Owen had described the true effects 
 of school education in the line of freedom of property 
 and independent initiative, he would have recommended 
 his scheme for free public schools more effectively than 
 he was able to do as the representative of a communistic 
 experiment, for his communism preached a silent lesson 
 in contradiction to his plea for free schools. And his 
 
 xi
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 opposition to the churches established in the several towns 
 and villages of Indiana aroused that deepest and most 
 bitter of all opposition, the opposition founded on diver- 
 gence of theological views, divergence as to the funda- 
 mental view which one takes of the meaning of the world 
 of nature and of human destiny. This hostility of the 
 people of Indiana to measures which were really greatly 
 for the benefit of the whole State is a very interesting 
 feature in this history, and it is very clearly pointed out 
 by the author in this book. 
 
 The work of Maclure in the school at New Harmony, 
 and afterward as publicist, deserves study on its own ac- 
 count. He brought industrial instruction into his school, 
 and laid so much stress on the mechanical features of edu- 
 cation that he in a great measure neutralized the effect of 
 the school on the characters of his pupils, for he more or 
 less turned off the minds of his pupils from those studies 
 which give original initiative, and turned them in the di- 
 rection of ma^tters of skill and routine practise. In these 
 days of attempts in the direction of manual training and 
 other industrial education, the experiment of Maclure and 
 its results on the people of New Harmony deserve the 
 most careful consideration. How much directive power 
 came from his instruction in the way of industrial prepa- 
 ration ? How much directive power in the way of enabling 
 his pupils to understand and cooperate with their fellow 
 men in other parts of Indiana and the United States in 
 later life? 
 
 I am greatly impressed with the value of this work 
 as a study for teachers ever5r«^here, and would commend 
 its careful study especially to the great storm-centers of 
 social agitation, such as the cities of Chicago, Boston, and 
 San Francisco, for example. 
 
 W. T. Harris. 
 Washington, D. C, April 20, 1905. 
 
 Xll
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 INTRODUCTION V 
 
 By Hon. W, T. Harris, United States Commissioner 
 of Education. 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 I. — New Harmony's Place in History .... 1 
 
 II. — The Rise of the Rappites 7 
 
 III. — The Rappites in Indiana 15 
 
 IV. — The Rappite Hegira 30 
 
 V. — Robert Owen and the Industrial Revolution . 43 
 
 VI. — Agitation in England 53 
 
 VII. — The New Moral World 59 
 
 VIII. — The Founding of New Harmony .... 69 
 
 IX. — The Preliminary Society 82 
 
 X.— "The Half-way House" 92 
 
 XI. — The " Permanent Community " 103 
 
 XII. — The Social System on Trial 112 
 
 XIII. — ^The Duke of Saxe- Weimar at New Harmony. . 123 
 
 XIV. — Two Views of New Harmony 134 
 
 XV. — Community Progress 141 
 
 XVI. — Community Disintegration 156 
 
 XVII. — Robert Owen's Farewell Addresses. . . . 166 
 X^''III. — The Ten Lost Tribes of Communism . . .174 
 
 xiii
 
 / 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 XIX. — Woman at New Harmony 186 
 
 XX. — The Educational Experiment ..... 209 
 
 XXI. — JosiAH Warren 294 
 
 XXII. — Eobert Owen's Later Life 307 
 
 XXIII. — New Harmony's Later History 314 
 
 XXIV. — The Maclure Library Movement .... 332 
 
 XXV.— Robert Dale Owen 336 
 
 APPENDIX: SOURCES 379 
 
 INDEX 387 
 
 XIV
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 FACING 
 PAGE 
 
 Community House No. 2 Frontispiece. 
 
 Scene of the first successful American experiment in Pestalozzian 
 education. 
 
 George Rapp's Residence and Granary, or Fort .... 16 
 The house was later occupied by the Owens. 
 
 The Old Fort as Built 36 
 
 From a drawing by J. L. Parke. 
 
 Robert Owen 60 
 
 Owen's Proposed Village 70 
 
 From an old print. 
 
 Charles Alexandre Lesueur 83 
 
 The Rappite Church and Hall of Harmony 104 
 
 A Typical Rappite House 148 
 
 Residence of Thomas Say, "The Father of American Zoology." 
 
 Frances Wright 188 
 
 New Harmony during the Owen Occupation .... 210| 
 From an old print. 
 
 Robert Dale Owen 224 
 
 Thomas Say o . . . 236 
 
 Richard Owen 266 
 
 XV
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 FACING 
 PAGE 
 
 Thomas Say's Tomb at New Harmony 286 
 
 Josiah Warren 294 
 
 Labor Notes Issued by Josiah Warren .... 296, 300, 304 
 New Harmony as it now appears from Indian Mound . . . 320 
 
 William Maclure . 322 
 
 Robert Dale Owen, September, 1875 . . . . . .336 
 
 The Old Fort— Present Condition 360 
 
 Headquarters United States Geological Survey under David Dale 
 Owen. , 
 
 D. D. Owen 372 
 
 XVI
 
 THE NEW HAEMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 NEW harmony's place in history 
 
 On the Indiana side of the Wabash River, fifty-one 
 miles above its mouth, the village of New Harmony lies 
 within the shelter of a long range of encircling hills. In 
 summer New Harmony's dooryards are shaded by a veri- 
 table forest of maple and gate trees, above which, here and 
 there, rise the gables and dormer-windowed roofs of quaint 
 buildings suggestive of another country and another cen- 
 tury. The vandal hand of business enterprise has not been 
 heavily laid upon this place, and thus it happens that the 
 New Harmony of to-day bears everywhere the impress of its 
 earlier and greater years. Houses reared by German com- 
 munists in the second decade of the century, and in the 
 twenties occupied by members of the Owenite communi- 
 ties, still stand in New Harmony's quiet streets. A large 
 and handsomely housed public library, rich in the heritage 
 of collections of books brought to the place by the scholars 
 and savants of community days — more than this, the char- 
 acter of the present population, which includes a large 
 number of the descendants of the Owenite communists — 
 suggests a time when New Harmony was the promised 
 land of Owenism — a social experiment-station toward 
 which the eyes of the whole world were turned, and not in 
 vain, if we take into account the several great movements 
 2 1
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 which in later years have made the IN'ew Harmony failure 
 appear a wonderful success. 
 
 Parke Godwin, in his Popular View of Fourierism, 
 divides social reformers into three classes of " architects 
 of society," as he calls them : first, the pure theorists, who 
 have contented themselves with picturing an ideal state 
 of society, without suggesting a practical effort at its 
 attainment, as Plato in the Eepublic, More in Utopia, 
 Harrington in Oceana, and Campanella in City of the 
 Sun; second, the practical architects, as the Eappites, Mo- 
 ravians, and Shakers, who, on religious rather than on 
 economic grounds, have established societies in imitation 
 of the supposed communism of the early Christians; third, 
 the theoretico-practical architects, who have combined the 
 enunciation of social theories with actual experiments, as 
 Owen, Cabet, Fourier, and St. Simon. 
 
 By strange coincidence. New Harmony became the scene 
 of the most notable experiments yet attempted by the 
 " social architects " of two of these three classes. Among 
 religious communists, the Eappites, founders of Harmony, 
 have been most successful, and their residence in Indiana 
 marked the high tide of their growth in wealth and num- 
 bers. There has not been another trial of philosophical 
 communistic association so auspiciously undertaken, or so 
 thoroughly carried to a conclusion, as that which Eobert 
 Owen inaugurated at New Harmony more than three- 
 quarters of a century ago. Brook Farm has occupied a 
 larger place in literature, but as a serious effort at solving 
 the social problems of its time, it did not approach New 
 Harmony in importance. To New Harmony, Brook Farm 
 was as a playground to a workshop. Brook Farm afforded 
 temporary amusement to a congenial coterie of literary 
 celebrities who cherished romantic ideals in common, but 
 it bequeathed little to the world except their individual 
 contributions to the literature of that period. The New 
 Harmoify experiment was conducted in a less romantic 
 
 2
 
 NEW HARMONY'S PLACE IN HISTORY 
 
 atmosphere, but it was more earnest, thorough, and satis- 
 fying, and to the modern student of sociology it is more 
 significant as a social venture. As Owenism was the fore- 
 runner of Fourierism, so New Harmony was the forerunner 
 of Brook Farm. As Brook Farm was the center of a 
 group of Fourieristic phalansteres, or colonies, so New 
 Harmony was the inspiration of a large number of Owenite 
 experiments, scattered over so wide a range of territory 
 that they assumed the proportions of a national move- 
 ment. Kobert Owen declared, Emerson says — and Owen 
 is not the only witness to the fairness of his contention — 
 that Fourier learned all he knew of communism from a 
 study of Owenism. If this be true, Brook Farm was only 
 a far-off reflection of the great experiment at New Har- 
 mony. 
 
 Notable as New Harmony was in its own time as the 
 scene of an ambitious effort at social regeneration, the 
 perspective of years is necessary to an adequate portrayal 
 of its importance in American history. The death-bed of 
 Eobert Owen's "social system" became the birthplace 
 of several distinct movements which have assumed great 
 proportions since the story of the New Harmony com- 
 munisms became a half -forgotten chapter in the history of 
 social experiments. There the doctrine of universal ele- 
 mentary education at public expense, without regard to 
 sex or sect, as a duty of the State, was first proclaimed 
 in the Middle West, and through the labors of Eob- 
 ert Dale Owen, more than any other one man, this 
 conception of the State's duty has found expression 
 in a common-school system that is the glory of the 
 Eepublic. Through William Maclure, Eobert Owen, and 
 Joseph Neef, Pestalozzi's pupil and the author of the 
 first American works on the science of teaching, the 
 Pestalozzian system of education, now everywhere pre- 
 dominant, was first successfully transplanted to this 
 country. William Maclure's manual-training school at 
 
 3
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 New Harmony was the first of its kind in the United 
 States, and through that institution and its popular pub- 
 lications, the idea of technical training was first widely 
 disseminated in this country. The infant schools estab- 
 lished at New Harmony by Eobert Owen, "the father of 
 infant education," and conducted throughout the lifetime 
 of the communistic experiments, were the first of their kind 
 in America. It was in the schools at New Harmony that 
 the theory of equal educational privileges for the sexes was 
 first put into practise, and through Eobert Dale Owen, as 
 author, agitator, and legislator, the New Harmony idea of 
 " free, equal, and universal schools " exerted a determina- 
 tive influence upon American institutional development. 
 Through William Maclure, " the father of American geol- 
 ogy," Thomas Say, " the father of American zoology," 
 Constantine Eafinesque, the pioneer ichthyologist of the 
 West, Charles Albert Lesueur, the first classifier of the 
 fishes of the Great Lakes, Gerard Troost, one of the earliest 
 American mineralogists, and the younger Owens, New Har- 
 mony became the greatest scientific center in America, and 
 the first important scientific outpost in the West; there 
 came such distinguished students as Sir Charles Lyell, 
 Leo Lesquereux, Audubon, Prince Alexander Philip Maxi- 
 milian and his company of scientists, P. B. Meek, and Dr. 
 Elderhorst. New Harmony became the headquarters of 
 the United States Geological Survey, with one of its own 
 students, David Dale Owen, in charge; it was the site of a 
 museum containing the remarkable collections of Say and 
 Maclure, and of a scientific library unexcelled on the con- 
 tinent. One member of the New Harmony coterie of 
 savants, William Maclure, was one of the founders of the 
 Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences, another, Eob- 
 ert Dale Owen, became the legislative father of the Smith- 
 sonian Institution. It was in certain of the New Harmony 
 communities that women were first given a voice and vote 
 in local legislative assemblages, and there the doctrine of 
 
 4
 
 NEW HARMONY'S PLACE IN HISTORY 
 
 equal political rights for all, without regard to sex or color, 
 was first proclaimed by Frances Wright. Through this 
 brilliant woman, too, New Harmony became one of the 
 earliest centers of the aboUtion movement, and spoke for- 
 cibly through Eobert Dale Owen to President Lincoln when 
 emancipation hung in the balance. Through Robert Dale 
 Owen, New Harmony impressed upon American law the 
 modern conception of the legal rights of women, and in 
 New Harmony was founded, by Frances Wright, what is 
 known as the first woman's literary club in the United 
 States. The New Harmony Thespian Society (1828-'75) 
 was one of the earliest among American dramatic clubs. 
 New Harmony in 1826 afforded the first known American 
 example of prohibition of the liquor traffic by administra- 
 tive edict. Through William Maclure New Harmony gave 
 to the West a system of mechanics' libraries from which 
 dates the beginning of general culture in more than a 
 hundred and fifty western communities. Through Josiah 
 Warren New Harmony originated a philosophy of individ- 
 ualism, a rebound from communism, which has had suffi- 
 cient vitality to survive its author for nearly a half century 
 and to impress itself indelibly upon modern economic 
 thought; beyond this, it is claimed by credible authorities 
 that from Josiah Warren, who founded the New Harmony 
 " Time store," and originated a system of " labor notes," 
 Robert Owen derived the central idea of the great labor 
 cooperative societies of Great Britain, which constitute 
 the most successful labor movement of the last century. 
 Even the religious latitudinarianism of the New Harmony 
 communists, so bitterly denounced in its own day, has 
 served as a leaven of liberality in religious thought itself, 
 until the narrow type of religion which the Owenites so 
 steadfastly opposed has in large measure disappeared. 
 
 So it is that the little torch of learning long ago kindled 
 in the wilderness, made New Harmony a center of light 
 and leading while it was yet surrounded by " the trackless
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 wild." But New Harmony's place in history has never 
 been adequately appreciated^ and it is worth while, in study- 
 ing the Owenite communities, to trace to their source some 
 of the movements which rose from the ruins of the " social 
 system." 
 
 It seems proper to preface a history of the Owenite com- 
 munities with a brief account of the German communistic 
 colony which paved the way for Robert Owen's experiment 
 at New Harmony, if it did not indirectly suggest it. While 
 the Rappite regime is less interesting, and vastly less im- 
 portant, than the Owenite period, it affords a strong back- 
 ground for the later experiments, the failure of George 
 Eapp's success standing out in vivid contrast to the suc- 
 cess of Robert Owen's failure.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE EISE OF THE RAPPITES 
 
 In slow succession there passed through the beautiful 
 valley of the Wabash — described by Col. George Croghan 
 as early as 1765, as " one of the finest countries in the 
 world " — the roving Indian, the Jesuit missionary, the 
 French trader, the British redcoat, the colonial soldier, and 
 the American pioneer. But, strangest feature in all this 
 strange procession of invaders, there entered the Wabash 
 River one spring day in 1815, several boat-loads of Wurt- 
 temberg peasants. Eight hundred strong, clad in the garb 
 of the Fatherland, this quaint company went ashore at 
 a point near the site of the present village of New Har- 
 mony. They knelt on the bank about a patriarchal leader, 
 and with song and prayer dedicated " Harmonic " to the 
 uses of a Christian brotherhood. These were the Rappites 
 — German peasants, primitive Christians, practical com- 
 munists, and disciples of George Rapp. As an organized 
 protest against the existing state of religion in Germany, 
 they had left the shores of their Fatherland behind them 
 ten years before. 
 
 During the seventeenth century the German prototype 
 of Puritanism, called Pietism, had caused the flame of faith 
 to burn brighter in the churches, through the ministra- 
 tions of Spener, Gerhardt, Franke, Arndt, and other Wes- 
 leys and Whitfields of that revival movement. But in the 
 eighteenth century, official religion again degenerated into 
 " a multiplicity of meaningless ceremonies." The univer- 
 sities of Germany " became hotbeds of vice and infidelity." 
 On the one hand there were in the ministry those who 
 
 7
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 guarded against their unbelief by the assumption of zeal- 
 ous bigotry and narrow biblical construction — on the other 
 hand there were skeptics and rationalists filling pulpits and 
 receiving the support of the church. 
 
 " The church now," says Hurst, ^^ presented a most de- 
 plorable aspect. Philosophy had come, with its high- 
 sounding terminology, and invaded the hallowed precincts 
 of scriptural truth. Literature, with its captivating notes, 
 had well-nigh destroyed what was left of the old Pietistic 
 fervor. The songs of the church were no longer images 
 of beauty, but ghastly, repulsive skeletons. The professor's 
 chair was but little better than a heathen tripod. The 
 pulpit became a rostrum, where the shepherdless masses 
 were entertained with essays on such general terms as 
 'Human Dignity,' *^ Truth,' and 'Light.' The peasantry 
 received frequent and labored instruction on the raising of 
 bees, cattle, and fruit. The poets of the day were publicly 
 recited in the temples where the reformers had preached." 
 X But in certain portions of Germany the people retained 
 their former simplicity, and stoutly resisted the encroach- 
 ments of what they considered wicked innovations. Espe- 
 cially was this true of southern Wiirttemberg, where so- 
 cieties like the early Methodist organizations were formed 
 for the conserving of piety, and a spirit of fanaticism was 
 rampant which contrasted strangely with the rationalism 
 prevalent elsewhere. There were frequent prophecies of 
 the end of the world as a punishment for the sins of the 
 people. One party of schismatics, called Separatists, dis- 
 gusted with the new order of things, set out to found an 
 asylum in Eussian Tartary, near the Caspian Sea. Joseph 
 Bimeler, at the head of a considerable following, denounced 
 the state as " that great Babylon," and, with his associates, 
 refused to pay taxes. Persecuted and frequently impris- 
 oned, Bimeler finally led a colony out of Germany, and on 
 five thousand acres of land in Tuscarawas County, Ohio, 
 founded " Zoar." Here this communistic society so pros- 
 
 8
 
 THE RISE OF THE BAPPITE8 
 
 pered that in less than fifty years its property was valued 
 at a million dollars. 
 
 Preceding and instigating this emigration, however, was 
 that of George Eapp and his followers, who sought the 
 religious freedom offered in the United States as early as- 
 1803. George Eapp and Michael Hahn were zealous lay- 
 workers and leaders of Pietism in Wiirttemberg at the end 
 of the eighteenth century. Eapp was a vine-dresser and 
 farmer of plebeian descent, and a man of unusual strength. 
 of character. Born in 1757, he began to speak in his own 
 house when about thirty years of age, giving to his congre- 
 gation, which gathered from miles around, the results of 
 years of reading and careful Bible study. Hahn was a 
 man of literary talent as well as an orator of great power. 
 He did not separate from the established church, but sought 
 to reform it from within. Eapp refused to cooperate with 
 what he considered a corrupt ecclesiastical institution, and 
 though he counseled strict obedience to the laws, which in- 
 cluded payment of tithes to the church, neither he nor 
 his followers attended regular services. Hahn and Eapp,. 
 therefore, no longer worked together, and Eapp, with the 
 following of three hundred families which his preaching 
 had attracted, was compelled to endure religious persecu- 
 tion of no gentle type. 
 
 At this time, as well as in later years, George Eapp 
 taught certain doctrines which were peculiarly his own. 
 Since the Eappites acknowledged no written creed, we must 
 accept his views as theirs. Eapp evolved a curious doctrine 
 concerning what he called "the dual nature of Adam.^'" 
 He taught that Adam contained within his own person both 
 the sexual elements, reading literally, in confirmation of 
 this. Genesis i: 26-27: " And God said, let us make man in 
 our own image, after our own likeness, and let them have 
 dominion. So God created man in his own image, in the 
 image of God created he him: male and female created he 
 them." This Eapp held to mean that both the creator and 
 
 9
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 the created had this dual nature, and had Adam been 
 allowed to remain in his original state, he would have 
 begotten offspring without the aid of a female. But Adam 
 became discontented, and God separated from his body the 
 female part. This is the Eappite interpretation of the fall 
 of man. From this Eapp concluded that the celibate state 
 is more pleasing to God, and that in the " renewed " world 
 man would be restored to the Adamic condition. After a 
 period of religious excitement subsequent to the removal 
 of the Eappites to America, marriage was renounced, and 
 celibacy became a rule of community life. There is evi- 
 dence that prior to this time Eapp had himself performed 
 marriage ceremonies. Passages of Scripture quoted in sup- 
 port of celibacy were Matthew xxii : 30 : " For in the res- 
 urrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, 
 ,but are as the Angels of God in heaven." Matthew xix: 
 i 10-12, 22-30; I Corinthians vii: 7-8, 25-27 and 29; I Thes- 
 ^salonians iv: 3-5; Eevelation xiv: 4. Eapp taught that the 
 coming of Christ and the " renovation " of the world were 
 near at hand. Father Eapp and many of his followers 
 firmly believed that he would live to see the reappearance of 
 Christ in the heavens, and that he would be permitted to 
 present his followers to the Saviour. It is related that when 
 Father Eapp was upon his death-bed, at the age of ninety 
 years, his last words were: "If I did not know that the 
 dear Lord meant that I should present you all to him, I 
 should think my last moments come." 
 
 Of Jesus, Eapp taught that he was, like Adam, a dual 
 being, and that he enjoined upon his followers a commu- 
 nity of goods. In support of this position Eapp referred to 
 \Acts iv: 32, in which it is said of the early Christians: 
 ^'And the multitude of them that believed were of one 
 heart and of one soul: neither said any of them that aught 
 of the things which he possessed was his own; but they 
 had all things common." Total regeneration Eapp de- 
 clared necessary to salvation. The sum and substance of 
 
 10
 
 THE RISE OF THE RAPPITES 
 
 his creed of conduct was: Love to God above all, and to 
 thy neighbor as thyself, without laying much stress on 
 form, letter, or ceremony. Though Eapp believed in the 
 doctrine of future rewards and punishments, he did not 
 believe that this punishment would be eternal. " In some 
 far distant geological cycle the universe of matter, which, 
 like the universe of spirit, has been distorted and diseased 
 through the fall, will be restored to its former beauty and 
 happiness, and sin and suffering will finally be banished." 
 
 Before leaving Germany Eapp and a number of his fol- 
 lowers had been brought before the king for the teaching 
 of heretical doctrines and refusal to attend the services 
 of the established church. The ruler, who happened to be 
 a liberal man, inquired if Eapp and his associates were 
 accustomed to obey the laws of the state. The accusers 
 reluctantly admitted that they were. " Then let them 
 believe as they please," said the king, and dismissed the 
 prisoners. Petty persecution, however, did not cease with 
 this display of royal clemency. " If we could only find a 
 land where religious toleration is enjoyed," declared the 
 Eappites, ^^we would wish to be there even if we might 
 for a while have to live upon roots." 
 
 Thus, in 1803 George Eapp and several associates, in- 
 cluding his adopted son, Frederick Eapp, had set out for 
 the United States, for the purpose of locating a colony in 
 the New World. They selected and bought a large tract of 
 land near Zelienople, Pennsylvania, and in the following 
 autumn, three ships, carrying one hundred and twenty-five 
 families of the adherents of Eapp, had followed him to the 
 land of religious liberty. About one-third of these joined 
 one Haller in founding a settlement in Lycoming County, 
 but six hundred members remained with Eapp and settled 
 upon an estate of five thousand acres of unimproved land. 
 They set to work, under the direction of Eapp, with such 
 zeal that they soon made comfortable homes for the entire 
 population. 
 
 11 
 
 /
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 In 1805 the " community of equality '^ was established. 
 The agreement to which the members bound themselves 
 specified: 
 
 1. All cash, land, and chattels of every member to be 
 a free gift for the use and benefit of the community, and 
 to be at the disposal of the superintendents as if the mem- 
 bers had never possessed them; members pledge themselves 
 to submit to the laws of the community, to show a ready 
 obedience to the superintendents, to give the labor of their 
 hands for the good of the community, and to hold their 
 children to do the same. 
 
 2. George Eapp and his associates to give to each mem- 
 ber such secular and religious education as would tend to 
 his temporal welfare and eternal felicity, to supply to mem- 
 bers all the necessaries of life, to support them and their 
 widows and children alike in sickness, health, and old age. 
 
 3. In case of withdrawal, a member's money to be re- 
 funded to him without interest; if he had come in with- 
 out capital such a sum to be awarded to him as his conduct 
 as a member would justify. (This section was abrogated 
 in 1808.) 
 
 One hundred and fifty acres of land were cleared the 
 first year, and forty to fifty log houses erected, besides a 
 large church, mills, and shops. The next year four hun- 
 dred acres were cleared, a sawmill, tannery, storehouse and 
 distillery erected, and a vineyard of several acres planted. 
 The Eappites had six hundred bushels of surplus grain, 
 and three thousand gallons of whisky, none of which they 
 drank themselves, for it is a peculiar fact that while the 
 Harmonists were long famous for the excellence of their 
 distillery output, strict temperance was always a rule of 
 their organization. Even the use of tobacco was forbidden. 
 
 The renunciation of the married state by the Eappites 
 dates from 1807. Persons formerly married, of whom 
 there was a large number in the community, were separated 
 and placed in different establishments. Ko instance is re- 
 
 12
 
 THE RISE OF TEE BAPPITES 
 
 corded of marriage among the original Harmonists, except- 
 ing in a few cases where young people eloped and deserted 
 the community. The acquiescence of the society in this 
 rule reveals the supreme authority of George Kapp, who 
 was revered as a prophet and a saint. 
 
 The remarkable prosperity of the^ community may be 
 judged from a report of the products in 1809, four years 
 after the removal to America. In that year they raised 
 eix thousand bushels of Indian corn, four thousand bushels 
 of wheat, the same of rye, five thousand bushels of oats, 
 ten thousand bushels of potatoes, and four thousand 
 pounds of flax and hemp, besides other less important 
 products. During this year they made their first woolen 
 cloth spun by hand from yam. In the following year the 
 woolen factory was erected. The community now included 
 about one hundred and forty families comprising seven or 
 eight hundred persons. Two thousand acres of land were 
 under cultivation, and there was a large surplus for sale. A 
 visitor to the settlement at this time said: " We are struck 
 with surprise and admiration at the astonishing progress 
 in improvements and the establishment of manufactories 
 which this little republic has made in five years. They 
 have done more substantial good in the short period of five 
 years than the same number of families, scattered about the 
 country, have done in fifty. This arises from their unity 
 and fraternal love, added to their uniform and persever- 
 ing industry. They know no self-interest except that ' 
 which adds to the interest and happiness of the whole 
 community.^' 
 
 The Rappites soon realized the disadvantages of a situ- 
 ation twelve miles distant from navigation, and discovered 
 the inadaptability of their land to fruit cultivation, in 
 which they desired to engage extensively. It is also said 
 that they desired a warmer climate. In 1813 Frederick 
 Eapp was delegated to go farther West in search of a new 
 home. Eapp traveled all over the territory bordering on 
 
 13
 
 THE NEW HARMONY^ MOVEMENT 
 
 the Ohio, and finally chose a beautiful tract of land on the 
 Wabash River, a few miles above its mouth. In addition 
 to twenty thousand acres of government land, he purchased 
 several adjacent improved farms, a total of nearly thirty 
 thousand acres. 
 
 The Harmonists sold their property in Pennsylvania, 
 with all improvements, at a great sacrifice, for one hundred 
 thousand dollars, and early in 1815 went down in boats 
 and founded the village of " Harmonic," where a large 
 advance party had begun the requisite clearing in the pre- 
 ceding June. 
 
 I 
 
 U
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE KAPPITES IN" INDIAN'A 
 
 " When Rapp the Harmonist embargoed marriage 
 In his harmonious settlement which flourishes 
 
 ? 
 
 * * 
 
 Strangely enough as yet without miscarriage 
 Why call'd he ' Harmony ' a state sans wedlock ? 
 Now here I've got the preacher at a dead lock. 
 
 "Because he either meant to sneer at harmony 
 Or marriage, by divorcing them thus oddly ; 
 But whether reverend Rapp learn'd this in Germany 
 
 Or not, 'tis said his sect is rich and godly, 
 Pious and pure, beyond what I can term any 
 Of ours. * * *» 
 
 — Btron, Don Juan, Canto xv. 
 
 All that we know of the history of the Rappite com- 
 munity on the "Wabash is gleaned from the accounts of 
 travelers who visited the settlement, which immediately 
 attracted wide attention in the West, and became the larg- 
 est town in the territory of Indiana. The last of the thou- 
 sand persons who were members of the original community 
 died some years ago, and the Harmonists kept no record of 
 their proceedings. 
 
 The Eappites found themselves pleasantly situated on 
 the Wabash. The broad river which flowed before the- 
 town furnished power for a large grist-mill which they 
 erected some miles below. Almost opposite the settlement 
 lay an island of three thousand acres, affording excellent 
 pasturage for their flocks. The great estate which they 
 were to till was more fertile than the farms they had de- 
 serted, and the undulating hills which enclosed the river- 
 bottom furnished ample territory for vineyards. Favor- 
 
 15
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 ably to Eapp's ideas, they were farther removed from ener- 
 Tating contact with the outside world, and the simple peas- 
 ants were here less liable to become dissatisfied with their 
 mode of life by the contemplation of that of others. There 
 was little in the hard lot of the pioneers who inhabited the 
 surrounding country to tempt the Eappites from their com- 
 fortable homes, and though the squatters regarded with 
 contempt the servile allegiance of the Harmonists to 
 Father Rapp, they must have envied them the oasis which 
 -they soon created in the wilds of Indiana at a time when 
 the total population of the State was but a few thousand, 
 and the life of its settlers was one of constant hardship 
 and danger. 
 
 The Eappites soon discovered, however, that their new 
 home was not a serpentless Eden. The first breaking up 
 of the bottom ground released the germs of malaria, and 
 the death-rate was enormous during the first five years of 
 the settlement. While the ratio decreased in later years, 
 it is claimed by some authorities that the Eappites held to 
 a resolution made during the first year of their residence 
 in Indiana to remain only long enough to improve the land 
 sufficiently to make it salable. In the last year of their 
 residence on the Wabash, it was officially stated that but 
 two members of the community died — a surprisingly low 
 death-rate, showing the establishment of healthful con- 
 ditions. 
 
 It was not long until Harmonie began to show evidences 
 of German thrift. Numerous log, frame, and brick build- 
 ings were erected, orchards and vineyards were planted. 
 Among the first buildings constructed was a large frame 
 church, having a belfry with a clock striking the hours 
 and quarters. This was replaced as a place of worship 
 in 1822 by a huge brick structure. One entire block was 
 given to manufacturing purposes, and among the buildings 
 were a cocoonery and silk-factory, a sawmill, brick-yard, 
 brewery, distillery, woolen mill, and an oil-miU. The power 
 
 16
 
 Of m 

 
 THE RAPPITES IN INDIANA 
 
 in several of the smaller manufacturing establishments was 
 derived from a treadmill propelled by dogs. The brick 
 dwelling-houses erected by the Eappites still stand as monu- 
 ments to the faithful work of their sturdy builders. The 
 frames were made of very heavy timbers, and the spaces 
 between the weather-boarding and the plastering were 
 filled with cement and brick. Four large buildings were 
 erected to serve as community houses. What was known 
 as " Number 1 " has been torn down; " Number 2 " is now 
 a general store; on its south wall is an old-fashioned sun- 
 dial which has been faithfully telling the time since com- 
 munity days. " Number 3/' partially rebuilt, is used as a 
 hotel, " The Tavern." " Number 4 " has been converted 
 into an opera-house. A large brick house was built as a 
 residence for Father Eapp. Near it was a brick and stone 
 structure used as a granary, and intended also for a fort 
 or refuge for the population in case of invasion by the 
 squatters, of whom the Eappites stood in much dread. 
 This structure was provided with loopholes, and was so 
 substantially built that its defense would have been easy. 
 It was never used for other than peaceful purposes, it 
 became in later years a museum and a woolen mill; now 
 rapidly falling into decay, it is one of the picturesque fea- 
 tures of New Harmony. 
 
 George Flower, one of the founders of an English set- 
 tlement in Edwards County, Illinois, describes the village 
 as he saw it in 1819. A large portion of the land included 
 in the estate, he says, was of the best quality, between 
 two and three thousand acres being under cultivation and 
 fenced. The town consisted of several brick and frame 
 two-story houses for the use of small families, all built 
 after one model, with ample gardens, well fenced and 
 neatly cultivated, and a vast number of log cabins, neatly 
 kept. There were also five or six very large buildings, 
 three stories high, which contained the community fam- 
 ilies, of sixty to eighty individuals each. Eapp had a brick 
 
 3 17
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 mansion, a large building, with a granary of the most solid 
 masonry, and a large brick church, itself a curiosity, the 
 plan, it is said, having been given to Mr. Eapp in a dream. 
 There were four entrances to the church, closed by folding 
 doors; the doors were about one hundred and twenty feet 
 from each other. The upper story was supported by 
 twenty-eight pillars of walnut, cherry, and sassafras, the 
 walnut pillars being six feet in circumference, and twenty- 
 five feet high; the others were twenty-one feet high and of 
 proportionate circumference; a surprisingly large building, 
 Mr. Flower declared, for this country. William Herbert, 
 a London traveler, writes of this church: " I can scarcely 
 imagine myself to be in the wilds of Indiana, on the bor- 
 ders of the Wabash, while passing through the long and 
 resounding aisles and surveying the stately colonnades of 
 this church.^' ;There were shops for every occupation, Mr. 
 Flower tells us, represented in the community, magnificent 
 orchards of grafted fruit in full bearing, and extensive 
 vineyards. 
 
 " This singular community of Germans," Mr. Flower 
 writes, " had little or no communication with the outside 
 world, except through the miller, the storekeeper, the 
 tavern-keeper, and Mr. Eapp. All who went to Harmony, 
 with surprise observed with what facility the necessaries of 
 life were acquired and enjoyed by every member of Eapp's 
 community. When compared with the privations and dis- 
 comforts to which individual settlers were exposed in their 
 backwoods experience, the contrast is very striking. The 
 poor hunter that brought a bushel of corn to be ground, 
 perhaps from a distance of ten miles, saw with wonder peo- 
 ple as poor as himself inhabiting good houses, surrounded 
 by pleasant gardens, completely clothed with garments of 
 the best quality, supplied regularly with meal, meat, and 
 fuel, without any apparent individual exertion, and he 
 could not fail to contrast the comforts and conveniences 
 surrounding the dwellings of the Harmonists with the dirt 
 
 18
 
 THE RAPPITES IN INDIANA 
 
 and discomfort of his own log hnt, and it opened to Ms 
 mind a new train of thought. One of them said to me in 
 his own simple language: 'I studies and I studies it/ an 
 expression that depicts the feeling of every person that 
 obtained a sight of Eapp's colony at Harmony." 
 
 At the time of the founding of the community in Penn- 
 sylvania, a record was made of the amount of property 
 contributed by each member, and it was agreed that at 
 the withdrawal of any member, this amount, or its equiv- 
 alent, should be returned to him. In 1808, as before 
 stated, this agreement was abrogated, and in 1818, after 
 the removal of the Harmonists to Indiana, the record was 
 destroyed, on motion of George Eapp, unanimously adopted 
 by the society. With its consignment to the flames, the 
 last tie which bound the Eappites to the system of individ- 
 ual property was dissolved. 
 
 We are not at a loss to explain the wonderful authority 
 acquired by George Eapp as leader of the Harmonists. 
 Nearly six feet in height, with patriarchal beard and stately 
 walk, he commanded the reverence of the members of his 
 sect as a prophet among them, while his cheerful and kindly 
 manner, his sympathetic and plain-spoken way of talking 
 over with the Harmonists their smallest trials, made him 
 beloved as well. Father Eapp shrewdly maintained a nom- 
 inal cabinet, or board of advisers, chosen from among the 
 more intelligent members of the community, such as might 
 be able to set up a rival leadership. He gained great pres- 
 tige by playing on the superstitions of the peasantry. He 
 professed to be guided on many occasions by communica- 
 tions received in visions, as noted by Flower, for instance, 
 in building a great structure in the form of a Greek cross 
 on plans supposed to have been handed down from heaven. 
 Among other traditions of Eappite days still lingering in 
 New Harmony is one concerning the existence of an under- 
 ground passage connecting Father Eapp's cellar and the 
 granary or fort. Through this passage, the story goes, 
 
 19
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 Father Eapp was accustomed to appear as from the ground, 
 mystifying the simple workmen, and perhaps leading them 
 to believe that their labors were constantly within the range 
 of his observation. It is also said that Father Eapp en- 
 tered his pulpit through a tunnel leading to the church 
 porch from his house just across the road. 
 
 There still remains in New Harmony what is known 
 as '^ Gabriel's Eock " — two limestone slabs, originally one 
 stone, ten feet by five, and five inches thick. Upon one 
 a square figure is traced, occupying the center, and upon 
 the other appears, seemingly, the imprint of two feet — the 
 print of the right foot being perfect, while the forepart of 
 the left foot has disappeared. The tradition is that Father 
 Eapp informed his followers that these were imprints of 
 the feet of the Angel Gabriel, who had alighted upon earth 
 to convey to the society a message from heaven. David 
 Dale Owen concluded that the figures were chipped in the 
 stone by Indians. Another theory is that the slab was 
 hewn from the pictured rocks along the Mississippi, which 
 was traversed by the Harmonist flatboats in the extension 
 of their trade. H. E. Schoolcraft, the famous traveler and 
 ethnologist, who visited Harmony in 1821, gives a labored 
 description of the rock. "The impressions," he writes, 
 " are to all appearances those of a man standing upright, 
 the left foot a little forward, the heels turned inward. 
 The distance between the heels by an exact measurement 
 was six and a quarter inches; three and a half inches 
 between the extremities of the great toes. By an accurate 
 examination it will, however, be ascertained that they are 
 not the impressions of feet accustomed to the use of Euro- 
 pean shoes, for the toes are pressed out and the foot is 
 flat, as is observed in persons who walk barefoot. . . . 
 The probability is that they were caused by the impression 
 of an individual belonging to a race of men ignorant of the 
 art of tanning hides, and that this took place in a much 
 earlier age than the traditions of the present Indians. 
 
 20
 
 THE RAPPITES IN INDIANA 
 
 This supposition is strengthened by the extraordinary size 
 of the feet. In another sense the imprints are strikingly 
 natural, since the muscles are represented with the mi- 
 nutest exactness and truth. This weakens the hypothesis 
 that they are examples of the sculpture of men living in 
 the remotest ages of this continent. Neither history nor 
 tradition gives us the slightest information of such a peo- 
 ple, for it must be kept in mind that we have no proof that 
 the people who erected our remarkable western tumuli ever 
 had a knowledge even of masonry, much less sculpture, or 
 that they had invented the chisel, the knife, or the ax, other 
 than those made from porphyry, hornstone, or obsidian. 
 The medium length of the human male foot may be ac- 
 cepted as ten inches. The length of the footprint described 
 amounts to ten and a fourth inches, the breadth measured 
 over the toes in a right angle with the first line is four 
 inches, but the greatest spread of the base is four and a 
 half inches, which decreases at the heels to two and a half 
 inches. Directly before these impressions is a mark similar 
 to a scroll, of which the greatest length is two feet, seven 
 inches, and the greatest breadth twelve and a half inches. 
 The rock bearing these interesting impressions is of com- 
 pact limestone, bluish gray in color." The Duke of Saxe- 
 Weimar, who visited New Harmony only two years after 
 the departure of the Harmonists, says: '^ This piece of 
 stone was hewed out of the rock near St. Louis and sold to 
 Mr. Eapp." This theory, therefore, seems to have the 
 weight of authority. 
 
 Father Eapp taught humility, simplicity, self-sacrifice,, 
 neighborly love, regular and persevering industry, prayer, 
 and self-examination. He also demanded that each eve- 
 ning any one who had sinned during the day should come 
 to him and confess his transgression. !No quarrels were 
 allowed to pass through the night uncompromised, the rule 
 which declares, " Let not the sun go down upon thy wrath,'' 
 being literally enforced. Persons seeking admission to the 
 
 21
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 community were compelled to make full confession of their 
 sins, this being considered requisite to the forgiveness of 
 God. 
 
 Two periods of religious service were observed — one on 
 Sunday, when two services and a Sunday-school were con- 
 ducted, one on Thursday, when general services were held. 
 In the church were two bells, one of which called the peo- 
 ple to and from their daily labors, and another, said to 
 have been the largest imported up to that time, marked 
 the opening of religious services. Father Eapp presided 
 and preached at all the religious gatherings of the com- 
 munity. For the purpose of making religious instruction 
 more personal, the community was divided into classes ac- 
 cording to sex and age. Four holidays were observed, 
 Christmas, Easter Sunday, Pentecost, and Good Friday, 
 besides three feast-days, February 15th, the anniversary of 
 the founding of the society. Harvest Home, and an annual 
 '^^ Lord's Supper " in the autumn. 
 
 The day's work was conducted after a fixed routine. 
 Between five and six the people rose, breakfasted between 
 six and seven, lunched at nine, dined at twelve, ate an 
 afternoon lunch (Yesperbrod) at three, and supped between 
 six and seven. At nine o'clock the curfew-bell was rung. 
 Women as well as men labored in the fields, as many as 
 fifty sometimes being employed in a body, harvesting 
 wheat or breaking flax in the streets. Often they marched 
 to the fields to the music of a band which was one of the 
 regular institutions of the community. On summer eve- 
 nings this band, stationed in the public garden, discoursed 
 the old German hymns while the women busied themselves 
 with their housework, the stolid peasants dozed upon the 
 door-steps, and the children shouted at play in the streets. 
 It is said that this band often played upon the hillsides 
 while the peasants labored in the valley. A hundred acres 
 of wheat were harvested by the sickle in a day — a remark- 
 able result for that time. 
 
 /CrJ
 
 THE RAPPITES IN INDIANA 
 
 John Woods, a member of the settlement at English 
 Prairie, twenty miles from " Harmonic " on the Illinois 
 side of the Wabash, visited the Eappites in 1820. He says 
 that the value of their property was then estimated at a 
 million dollars. "Each lives in his own house," writes 
 Woods, ^' but all dine at one hour and take their meals in 
 the same manner." Woods says that the houses were dis- 
 tributed among the Harmonists by lot, but " though there 
 was of necessity much difference in the size and equipment 
 of the various buildings, there was no dissatisfaction or 
 disturbance over the apportionment." He declared them 
 to be a most industrious people, but said the greater part 
 of them were not very enlightened. " As I approached the 
 place in July, I met their plow-teams, sixteen in number, 
 just entering a field of wheat-stubble. I was much pleased 
 with their appearance." Woods counted eighty-seven 
 milch cows going to pasture, driven by a herdsman who, 
 according to another authority, lived in a house on wheels, 
 called " Noah's Ark." " The dress of the Harmonists," 
 writes Woods, " is uncommonly plain, mostly of their own 
 manufacturing. The men wear jackets and pantaloons, 
 with a coarse hat; the women a kind of jacket and petti- 
 coat, with a skullcap and straw hat made in the factory 
 here. As this society do not marry, I presume they de- 
 pend upon immigration from Germany to keep up their 
 numbers, as the Americans are not likely to join them; 
 most of them regard the Harmonists with jealousy on 
 account of their engrossing most of the business of this 
 part of the country." Woods's surmise as to the method 
 employed in keeping up the numbers was correct. In 1817 
 one hundred and fifty recruits from Wurtemberg swelled 
 the membership. 
 
 Morris Birkbeck, an associate of the Flowers in the 
 Edwards County settlement, visited Harmony frequently, 
 and in his diary of August 3, 1817, gives the following 
 account of a short stay there: " When I arrived on Sunday 
 
 23
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 evening, all were at services. I found even the tavern 
 deserted, and was compelled to call the keeper from the 
 church in order to secure accommodations. Soon the en- 
 tire body of people, which is about seven hundred, poured 
 out of the church, and exhibited so much health, peace, 
 and neatness that we could but exclaim: * Surely, the insti- 
 tutions which produce so much happiness must have more 
 of good than of evil in them,^ and here I rest, not lowered 
 in my abhorrence of the hypocrisy, if it be such, which 
 governs the ignorant by nursing them in superstition, but 
 inclined in charity to believe that the leaders are sincere. 
 
 " The colony is thrifty and useful to the community. 
 The Harmonists set a good example in neatness and in- 
 dustry. Though the population is ignorant, it is advanced 
 in the social scale perhaps a hundred years beyond their 
 solitary neighbors. 
 
 " I am quite convinced that the association of numbers 
 in the application of a good capital is sufficient to account 
 for all that has been done, and the unnatural restraint 
 which forms so prominent and revolting a feature of their 
 institutions is prospective, rather than immediate, in its 
 object. 
 
 " Strangers visit their establishment, and retire from it 
 full of admiration, but a slavish acquiescence, under a dis- 
 gusting superstition, is so remarkable an ingredient in their 
 character that it checks all desire of imitation." 
 
 Connected with George Eapp in the leadership of the 
 Harmonists was Frederick Eapp, who for many years served 
 as manager of the business interests of the Rappites. 
 Frederick Eapp was the adopted son of George Eapp, and 
 a man of intelligence and education. He met a violent 
 death in 1834, some allege at the instigation of George 
 Eapp, incensed at his son's refusal to put away his wife. 
 A more probable story is that he was fatally injured by a 
 falling tree at Economy, Pennsylvania. Frederick Eapp 
 contributed to the community most of its attractive fea- 
 
 24
 
 THE RAPPITES IN INDIANA 
 
 tures. By nature an artist, he was the originator of plans 
 which made Harmony one of the most attractive villages in 
 America. Had it not been for his influence upon George 
 Eapp, amusements would have been few in the place, and 
 the unrelieved monotony of the community might have im- 
 pelled even the stolid Rappites to renounce their allegiance 
 and seek happier homes. 
 
 While Father Rapp was king of the community Fred- 
 erick Rapp was his secretary of state. Father Rapp con- 
 trolled internal, Frederick Rapp external affairs. Through 
 Frederick Rapp the community held business and political 
 connection with the outside world. Frederick Rapp was 
 a member of the convention which met under the famous 
 elm at Corydon and framed the first constitution of In- 
 diana, preliminary to the admission of the Territory to the 
 Union. He was afterward a member of the State legis- 
 lature. Among the important committees upon which he 
 served was that which located the State capital at Indian- 
 apolis in 1820. 
 
 Under the younger Eapp's administration, Harmony 
 became a garden of neatness and beauty in the wilderness. 
 The gabled roofs of the buildings were lifted above the 
 forest of black locust-trees which the Rappites seemed to 
 love so well. The broad river, the vine-covered hills, the 
 fertile valley with its peaceful town, the stately church and 
 the fruitful orchards, furnished a scene of Arcadian beauty 
 which seemed a vision of promise to the Owenite commu- 
 nists who succeeded to the ownership of the estate. In the 
 language of Mr. John Holliday: " It would seem to the 
 traveled visitor like some quaint German village, trans- 
 ported from the Neckar or the Rhine, and set down in this 
 western waste like an Aladdin^s palace/' There were tables 
 and benches in the orchards, and on each machine in the 
 factories stood a vessel filled with flowers. 
 
 A work of art credited to Frederick Rapp still to be 
 seen in New Harmony is the figure of a rose and the 
 
 25
 
 TEE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 accompanying inscription carved upon stone to decorate 
 the doorway of the Eappite church. The reference, Micah 
 iv: 8, reads, in the Lutheran edition: " Unto thee shall come 
 the golden rose, the first dominion." 
 
 A short distance from the village was a famous horticul- 
 tural design which visitors came miles to see. It remained 
 as an object of curiosity during the years of the Owen 
 settlement, but the only present reminder of its existence 
 is a pleasant grove of locust-trees which marks the spot 
 where it stood. A labyrinth of vines and shrubs was con- 
 structed about a summer-house, rough on the exterior, but 
 beautifully furnished within. Eobert Owen was told, on 
 his first visit there, that this was the emblematic repre- 
 sentation of the life the colonists had chosen. Eobert Dale 
 Owen says: " It contained many circuitous walks, enclosed 
 by high hedges and bordered with flowering shrubbery. 
 It was arranged with such intricacy that without some 
 Daedalus to furnish a clew, one might walk for hours and 
 fail to reach a building erected in the center. This was a 
 temple of rough material, but covered with vines of grape 
 and convolvulus, and its interior neatly fitted up and pret- 
 tily furnished. Thus George Eapp had sought to shadow 
 iorth to his followers their final state of peace and har- 
 mony; and the rough exterior of the shrine, and the ele- 
 gance displayed within, were to serve as types of toil and 
 suffering succeeded by happy repose.'^ 
 
 The Eappites carried out strictly in every-day life the 
 moral laws and religious observances prescribed by Father 
 Happ. Any transgression of these regulations was pun- 
 ished, not by Father Eapp, but by a refusal of the remain- 
 ing members of the society to associate with the wrong- 
 doer until full forgiveness had been obtained. There is 
 no account of a single infraction of the law of celibacy. 
 In later years, elopements were not unknown, but the care 
 ivith which the sexes were separated prevented a frequent 
 repetition of the offense, and such transgressors were not 
 
 26
 
 THE RAPPITES IN INDIANA 
 
 again admitted to the society, except after the performance 
 of prolonged penance. The character of Father Eapp has 
 never been questioned, and his example went far toward 
 insuring good conduct on the part of his followers. The 
 reputation for honesty borne by the Rappites was one of 
 the secrets of their commercial prosperity. Flour, woolen 
 goods, or distillery products bearing the Harmony brand 
 were known to be of the best quality, and this fact secured 
 them trade from all parts of the country. Robert Owen 
 said of them: "It is due to the society who formed this 
 settlement to state that I have not yet met with more 
 kind-hearted, temperate, and industrious citizens, nor 
 found men more sincere, upright, and honest in all deal- 
 ings, than the Harmonists." 
 
 The jealousy of neighbors and the natural hatred of the 
 squatters for this simple sect led in the early years of the 
 settlement to the circulation of reports injurious to their 
 credit. It is related that when on one occasion Frederick 
 Eapp made his regular trip to Pittsburg for supplies, he 
 found himself denied credit by merchants of that city. 
 In deep discouragement and humiliation, he went to the 
 riverside to weep and pray. He was found there by a 
 merchant, who was so touched by Rapp's dependence on 
 prayer to release him from his troubles, that he offered 
 him all the supplies he could transport in two four-horse 
 wagons. The offer was accepted with thanksgiving, and 
 in a short time the merchant was paid in full. Several 
 years later this man was on the verge of financial embarrass- 
 ment during a period of business depression. When the 
 news reached the Harmonists, Frederick Rapp filled his 
 saddle-bags with coin, and hastening to Pittsburg, saved 
 their benefactor from bankruptcy. 
 
 The financial management of the society was always 
 most careful. Mr. Arthur Dransfield, librarian of the 
 working men's institute at New Harmony, has in his pos- 
 session a letter from Frederick Rapp, concluding a trans- 
 
 27
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 action with William Maclure involving over one hundred 
 thousand dollars, in which Rapp gives minute directions 
 for the disposition of a balance of sixty-five cents due the 
 society. 
 
 The moundless surface of the Rappite cemetery at New 
 Harmony, which occupies the site of an old Indian bury- 
 ing-ground, bears witness to the fact that the community 
 was one of perfect equality. Old and young, high and 
 low alike were at death laid to rest under the trees, with 
 only the elders as witnesses. Before morning the place of 
 burial had been sodded over, with nothing left to distin- 
 guish the spot, although a plan indicating the site of each 
 grave was retained. 
 
 Robert Dale Owen, in Threading My Way, gives us 
 the last information we have of the Rappites in their In- 
 diana home, describing them just as his father found them 
 before their departure from the Wabash valley: 
 
 " Harmony was a marvelous experiment from a pecu- 
 niary point of view, for at the time of their emigration 
 from Germany, their property did not exceed twenty-five 
 dollars a head, while in twenty-one years (i. e., in 1825), a 
 fair estimate gave them two thousand dollars for each man, 
 woman, and child, probably ten times the average wealth 
 throughout the United States; for at that time each per- 
 son in Indiana averaged but one hundred and fifty dollars^ 
 worth of property, and even in Massachusetts the average 
 fell far short of three hundred dollars for each adult and 
 child. Socially, however, it was doubtless a failure; as an 
 ecclesiastical aristocracy, especially when it contravenes 
 an important law of nature, must always be. Rapp was 
 an absolute ruler, assuming to be such by virtue of a divine 
 call, and it was said, probably with truth, that he desired 
 to sell Harmony because life there was getting to be easy 
 and quiet, with leisure for thought, and because he found 
 it difficult to keep his people in order excepting during the 
 bustle and hard work which attended a new settlement. 
 
 28
 
 THE RAPPITES IN INDIANA 
 
 At all events, he commissioned Mr, Flower to offer the 
 whole property for sale. 
 
 " When my father reached the place, he found among 
 the Germans, its sole occupants, indications of plenty and 
 material comfort, but with scarcely a touch of fancy or 
 ornament, save the flowers in the gardens, and what was 
 called the labyrinth. 
 
 " The toil and suffering had left their mark, however, 
 on the grave, stolid, often sad German faces. They looked 
 well fed, well clothed (so my father told me), and seemed 
 free from anxiety. The animal had been sufficiently cared 
 for, and that is a great deal in a world where millions can 
 hardly keep the wolf from the door, drudge as they will; 
 where hundreds of millions, manage as they may, live in 
 daily uncertainty whether in the next week or month 
 {chance of work or means of living failing), absolute 
 penury may not fall to their lot. A shelter from life-wear- 
 ing cares is something; but a temple typifies higher things 
 — more than what we shall eat, and what we shall drink, 
 and wherewithal we shall be clothed. Eapp's disciples 
 had bought this dearly — at the expense of heart and soul. 
 They purchased them by unquestioned submission to an 
 autocrat who had been commissioned — perhaps as he really 
 believed, certainly as he alleged — ^by God himself. He 
 bade them do this and that, and they did it — commanded 
 them to forego wedded life and all its incidents, and to 
 this also they assented." 
 
 29
 
 CHAPTEE IV 
 
 THE RAPPITE HEGIRA 
 
 *' In the twenty-fourth of May, 1824, we have departed. Lord, 
 with thy great help and goodness, in body and soul protect us," — In- 
 scription under a stairway in Community House No. 2, at New Har- 
 mony, left by one of the Kappites. 
 
 cc 
 
 Ten years after the Eappite advance-guard reached 
 Harmonie," the Harmonists made way for the advance of 
 a more interesting social experiment. The sale of the 
 estate is curiously connected with the history of the famous 
 English settlement in Edwards County, Illinois, established 
 by Eichard Flower on an estate of twenty thousand acres 
 in 1818. Mr. Flower and his associates had intimate busi- 
 ness relations with the Eappites, and frequently visited the 
 Harmonist colony. In 18^8, an effort was made to legalize 
 slavery in Illinois, and in the front rank of the opposition 
 were the English colonists in Edwards County, led by Eich- 
 ard Flower, and his son Edward, then a youth of eighteen. 
 The antislavery campaign was successful, but the activity 
 of the Flowers was so distasteful to those favorable to 
 slavery, that attempts were made to assassinate the young 
 man. His father deemed it prudent to take him to Eng- 
 land to remain until the excitement should subside. Before 
 leaving he was commissioned to sell the Harmonist prop- 
 erty by Father Eapp, who offered him a commission of 
 five thousand dollars. Edward Flower never returned to 
 America, but achieved great prominence in England as a 
 participant in several reform movements, notably the agi- 
 tation for the abolition of the check-rein on horses. His 
 daughter Sarah wrote the hymn. Nearer My God to Thee. 
 
 30
 
 THE RAPPITE HEGIRA 
 
 During the Civil War Edward Flower took the platform in 
 England in behalf of the Union cause. 
 
 The elder Flower visited New Lanark, and laid before 
 Eobert Owen the advantages of Harmony as a site for a 
 communistic establishment in the New World, where Mr. 
 Owen might work out in practise theories long promul- 
 gated by him. The sale was effected, the whole tract with 
 all its improvements, and most of the valuable equipments, 
 going for less than one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. 
 
 Strong reasons must have impelled Father Eapp in his 
 desire to move the colony back to Pennsylvania, for this 
 sale was made at a great sacrifice, though at a large advance 
 over the original expenditure ten years before. Double 
 the sum received would have been a modest estimate of the 
 value of this princely estate and well-built town. Eemoval, 
 too, meant the sacrifice of a trade extending all over the 
 adjacent States, and down the Mississippi to New Orleans, 
 as well as the abandonment of prosperous stores at Vin- 
 cennes, Indiana, and Shawneetown, Illinois. Nordhoff 
 catalogues the Eappites' reasons for leaving Indiana as 
 fever, ague, unpleasant neighbors, and remoteness from 
 business centers, from all of which causes they had indeed 
 suffered. But fever and ague, according to the statements 
 of the Harmonists themselves, had about disappeared in 
 1824, and the Eappites ought easily to have been able to 
 defend themselves against the depredations of unorganized 
 squatters. According to Dr. Schnack, one authority states 
 that the Harmonist property had become involved, and 
 that Eapp was compelled to sell; it is certain, however, that 
 the Eappites had sufficient funds to redeem their property 
 from any such complications, for within eight years after 
 their return to Pennsylvania, they not only paid for their 
 estate, and erected upon it the village of Economy, but 
 were able to pay one hundred and five thousand dollars 
 to a party of seceders. Another authority says: " I have 
 been informed that Mr. Eapp adopted this plan in order to 
 
 31
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 liave the new deeds made out in his name, and thus hold 
 possession of all the landed property, as well as the control 
 of the funds for which Harmony was sold." There seems 
 to be no evidence to corroborate this supposition. Doubt- 
 less the Harmonists found some difficulty in transporting 
 supplies from Pittsburg, and Frederick Eapp realized that 
 a better market for their products would be afforded in the 
 East. 
 
 With the proceeds of the Harmony sale, an estate was 
 purchased in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, eighteen miles 
 below Pittsburg, on the Ohio Eiver, not far from the site of 
 their first settlement. A steamboat was built for the Eap- 
 pites, and they ascended the Ohio in detachments. A vil- 
 lage was built, and called Economy. In Economy the Har- 
 monist society has remained, its uneventful history broken 
 only by the great secession of 1831-^32, a brief account 
 of which we obtain from Nordhoff's Communistic Societies 
 of the United States: 
 
 " In 1831 there came to Economy a German adventurer, 
 Eernhard Muller by name, who had assumed the title 
 ' Graf,^ or Count Maximilian de Leon, and had gathered a 
 following of visionary Germans, whom he imposed, with 
 himself, upon the Harmonists, on a pretense that he was a 
 believer with them in religious matters." (Another au- 
 thority states that Muller claimed to have come directly 
 from Wiirttemberg.) " He proved to be a wretched intri- 
 guer, who brought ruin on all those who connected them- 
 selves with him, and who began at once to make trouble in 
 Economy. Having secured a lodgment, he began to an- 
 nounce strange doctrines; marriage, a livelier life, and 
 other temptations to worldliness, and he finally succeeded 
 in effecting a serious division, which, if it had not been 
 prudently managed, might have destroyed the community. 
 After bitter disputes, at last affairs came to such a pass, 
 that a vote had to be taken in order to decide who were 
 faithful to the old order, and to Eapp, and who were to 
 
 32
 
 THE EAPPITE HEGIBA 
 
 Count de Leon, before an agreement was reached." When 
 the vote was taken, it was found that five hundred stood 
 with Father Eapp, and two hundred and fifty with Count 
 de Leon. When Father Rapp heard the result he quoted 
 from the book of Eevelation: " And the tail of the serpent 
 drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast 
 them to earth." 
 
 " The end of the dispute," continued Nordhoff, " was 
 an agreement, under which the society bound itself to pay 
 to those who adhered to Count de Leon, one hundred and 
 five thousand dollars in three instalments, all payable 
 within twelve months; the other side agreeing on their part, 
 to leave Economy within three months, taking with them 
 only their clothing and household furniture, and relin- 
 quishing all claims upon the property of the society. This 
 agreement was made in March, 1832, and Leon and his 
 followers withdrew to Philipsburg, a village ten miles below 
 Economy, on the other side of the river, where they bought 
 eight hundred acres of land. Here they set up a society 
 on communistic principles, but permitted marriage, and 
 here they very quickly wasted the large sum of money they 
 had received from the Rappites, and after a desperate and 
 lawless attempt to extort more money from the Economy 
 people, which was happily defeated. Count de Leon ab- 
 sconded with a few of his people in a boat to Alexandria, 
 on the Red River, where he perished of cholera in 1832. 
 Those he had deluded meantime divided the Philipsburg 
 property among themselves, and set up each for himself, 
 and a number afterward joined Dr. Keil in forming the 
 Bethel community in Missouri." 
 
 Nordhoff points out the fact that the Harmonists had 
 demonstrated in this transaction their great prosperity dur- 
 ing the few years of their existence as a community. In 
 twenty-seven years they had built three towns, and endured 
 all the expense and loss of three removals, and yet they 
 were able to produce this immense sum of ready cash. The 
 4 33
 
 TEE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 Harmonists, at the time of their removal from Indiana, 
 were reported to be worth a million dollars, and New Har- 
 mony tradition has it that bullion was conveyed from 
 Father Eapp's cellars in wagon-loads to the boat which 
 conveyed the Eappites to Economy. " During this whole 
 time, moreover," says Nordhoff, " they had lived a life of 
 comfort and social order, such as few individual settlers in 
 our Western States at that time could command/' 
 
 George Eapp died on August 7, 1847, greatly mourned 
 by his people. One of his last hours was spent in preaching 
 to the Harmonist congregation from his death-bed, through 
 the open window. Shortly before his death, he called the 
 members to his bedside, one by one, where he bade them 
 good-by and exhorted them to the perpetuation of the prin- 
 ciples he had taught them. After his burial, the members 
 again signed the agreement. R. L. Baker, long since dead, 
 and Jacob Henrici, who died on Christmas morning, 1892, 
 were elected to succeed him, ruling in conjunction with 
 seven elders. Henrici was succeeded in the senior trustee- 
 ship by John Duss, a young man who had been educated 
 in the schools of Economy, but drifted West in early man- 
 hood. In Missouri he became a school-teacher, a candi- 
 date for superintendent of public instruction, and owner of 
 a cattle-ranch. Being called to Economy to take charge 
 of the schools, he became successively elder, junior trustee 
 and senior trustee and ruler of the society. Strangely 
 enough, this successor to the authority of George Rapp is 
 a married man with two children. 
 
 But for the executive ability of John Duss, it is gen- 
 erally agreed that the accumulations of the Rappites would 
 have been entirely swept away. Large sums were lost 
 through unfortunate investments, and the mills ceased to 
 be profitable. Thirty years ago the wealth of the Rappites 
 was variously estimated at from $10,000,000 to $30,000,- 
 000, but when Trustee Duss succeeded to the management 
 of the society's affairs, the community was found to be 
 
 34
 
 THE RAPPITE HEGIRA 
 
 almost bankrupt, with lawsuits on hand that threatened 
 to wipe out the last vestige of the vast property. By 
 careful administration of the affairs of the community, 
 Mr. Duss succeeded in saving several hundred thousand 
 dollars after clearing the society of debt. 
 
 The Kappite organization long since ceased to be a com- 
 munity and became a close corporation administered for 
 the benefit of a dwindUng membership. Having placed 
 the affairs of the society on a safe financial basis. Trustee 
 Duss removed to New York, where he devotes himself to 
 music as leader of a celebrated concert orchestra. Mrs. 
 Duss was left to manage the town of Economy. Only six 
 members of the society remain, Mr. Duss and his wife and 
 four others related to the family. Under court decisions, 
 the litigation having been carried to the Supreme Court of 
 the United States, Trustee Duss is empowered to wind up 
 the affairs of the society, and with the passing of the prop- 
 erty into individual hands, the organization will cease to 
 exist even in name. In 1903, the Liberty Land Company, a 
 sjmdicate of Pittsburg capitalists, purchased the entire Eap- 
 pite estate of twenty-five hundred acres for a price said to 
 be four million dollars, only three blocks in the town of 
 Economy and some property in Beaver Falls being reserved. 
 With these three blocks were retained the Eapp mansion 
 and its gardens, the old music-hall and its quaint belfry, and 
 the large barn for live stock. Before many years have 
 passed the lands once tilled by the Rappites will be grown 
 over with factories and homes, the last of those who lived 
 and labored in the hope of realizing the communism of the 
 early Christians will be laid to rest under the moundless 
 greensward of the Eappite burying-ground, the last dollar 
 of the millions heaped up through the patient labor of the 
 stolid Harmonists will have passed to individual bank- 
 accounts, and amid the smoke and noise of a Pennsylvania 
 industrial center there will be no more to mark the spot 
 where George Eapp preached to his simple followers the 
 
 35
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 gospel of self-effacement, than remains in the quiet 
 Economy churchyard to indicate the place where the Rap- 
 pites laid their patriarchal leader to rest more than a 
 half century ago. 
 
 • >•••••«• 
 
 With the other buildings conveyed to Robert Owen at 
 New Harmony was the immense church of the Rappites. 
 For a time after the dissolution of the Owenite communi- 
 ties, this building was partitioned off in rooms, but after 
 William Maclure's death it was presented to St. Stephen's 
 Episcopal Church. The east wing was for years used as a 
 ballroom, and the room south for a theater, the walls 
 being, according to Dr. Schnack, " beautifully frescoed and 
 painted." Later a part of the building was used as a pork- 
 packing establishment. In 1874 the Rappites sent Jona- 
 than Lentz to New Harmony. He purchased the church 
 building and the lot upon which it stood. Of the large 
 building he tore down all but the east wing, using the brick 
 to construct the wall which protects the Rappite cemetery 
 to this day. This wall is one foot thick, five feet high, cov- 
 ered with a heavy limestone coping, and guarded by iron 
 gates. The Harmonists gave the church lot, together with 
 the remaining material and the wing standing, to the town 
 of New Harmony. They also gave two thousand dollars 
 of the sum necessary to construct the building which, 
 until a few years ago, was occupied by the library of the 
 working men's institute, and is now used as a public 
 school. According to an inscription, this building was 
 erected " In memory of the Harmony Society, founded 
 by George Rapp, 1805." With this act of philanthropy, 
 the connection of the Rappites with New Harmony ceased. 
 
 Thirty years ago, a writer in the Atlantic Monthly well 
 foreshadowed the destiny of the Harmony Society. "It 
 needs no second thought," he said, " to discern the end of 
 Rapp's schemes. His single strength sustained the colony 
 during his life, and since his death one or two strong wills 
 
 36
 
 1 
 
 THE OLD FORT AS BUILT. 
 From a drawing by J. L. Parke.
 
 THE LIBBARY 
 OF THE
 
 THE RAPPITE EEGIRA 
 
 • 
 
 have kept it from crumbling to pieces, and converted the 
 whole machinery of this system into a powerful money- 
 making agent. These men are the means by which it 
 keeps a hand on the world, on the market, perhaps I should 
 say. They are intelligent, able, honorable, too, we are glad 
 to know, for the sake of the quiet creatures drowsing away 
 their remnant of life, fat and contented, driving their plows 
 through the fields, or sitting on the stoops of the village 
 when evening comes. I wonder if they ever cast a furtive 
 glance at the world, and the life from which Kapp's edict 
 so early shut them out. When they finish working, one 
 by one, the great revenues of the society will probably fall 
 into the hands of two or three, and be returned into the 
 small currents of trade, according to the rapid sequence 
 which always follows the accretion of large properties in 
 this country." 
 
 From a sordid standpoint, at least, we may denominate 
 the Harmony Society a successful communism; its history 
 perhaps forms the nearest approach to • a justification of 
 communistic association, but to what extent this justifica- 
 tion continues is a question which can only be determined 
 by a careful analysis of the primary elements contributing 
 to this success. What may be said of the Harmony Society 
 in this connection may in large part be declared of all 
 religious communistic associations in America, which have 
 been the only successful attempts at community life. 
 " The temporary success of the Hernhutters, the Moravians, 
 the Shakers, and even the Eappites," says Miss Peabody, 
 in Christ's Idea of Society, " has cleared away difficulties 
 and solved problems of social science. It has been made 
 plain that the material goods of life are not to be sacrificed 
 in doing fuller justice to the social principles. It has been 
 proved that with the same degree of labor, there is no way 
 to compare with that of working in a community, banded 
 by some sufficient idea to animate the will of the laborers. 
 A greater quantity of wealth is procured with fewer hours 
 
 37
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 of toil, and without any degradation to the lahorer. AH 
 these commnnities have demonstrated what the practical 
 Dr. Franklin said, that if every one worked bodily three 
 hours daily, there would be no necessity of any one's work- 
 ing more than three hours." Many economic ideas of the 
 present day are based upon such suppositions regarding the 
 success of cooperative labor like that of the Harmonists. 
 Eobert Owen received much of his communistic inspiration 
 from the apparent success of the Eappites, and the origin 
 of every American communism can be traced to a belief 
 that these experiments have demonstrated the practicabil- 
 ity of communistic principles. This success, in a great 
 degree, however, seems to have sprung from favorable cir- 
 cumstances not the result of communistic association, while 
 we may reasonably inquire if there has not been, indeed, 
 a degradation of the laborer, and whether his life has not 
 been even harder and more barren of compensating advan- 
 tages than the life which the individual system would have 
 offered him. 
 
 In the first place, the Eappites, the Shakers, the Am- 
 anaites, and in fact most of the communistic societies which 
 have proved successful, secured advantages by the purchase 
 of large tracts of wild land at a low price. The land held 
 by the Harmonists in Indiana increased in value after 
 their departure far more in proportion than did the wealth 
 of the Eappites. They owned, before leaving Indiana, for 
 instance, a considerable portion of the site of the city of 
 Terre Haute, which George Eapp secured in foreclosing a 
 mortgage of something over a thousand dollars. This new 
 country, moreover, afforded an unusually profitable market 
 for manufactured goods, since manufactures had then been 
 little developed. The German peasants who made up the 
 Harmony Society, and other successful religious com- 
 munities, were thrifty and industrious. Moreover they 
 worked, not three, but ten hours a day. The Harmonists 
 were peculiarly prepared for their communistic state by 
 
 38
 
 THE RAPPITE HEGIRA 
 
 their previous experiences in Germany. They had little of 
 the American idea of liberty, and had endured such in- 
 tolerance of private opinion and suppression of religious 
 freedom that even the rigid discipline of the new society 
 afforded relief. In their simplicity, these peasants were 
 pleased and satisfied by the freedom from responsibility, 
 and the good food and clothing which the community 
 afforded them. The contemplation of the hard life of the 
 pioneers about them made the community seem a haven of 
 refuge. Their exclusive use of the German language fur- 
 nished another barrier against the outside world. Celibacy 
 was one secret of their material success. There were few 
 children to rear and educate; this unproductive class of ac- 
 cessions was supplanted by the entrance of able-bodied men 
 and women, many of whom added considerable wealth to 
 that of the society. Celibacy has been a rule of practically 
 every successful communism. We are frequently reminded 
 of the Amana Society, in Iowa, as an example of commu- 
 nistic success under the family system. But while the 
 wealth of the Harmonists twenty years after their removal 
 to America was thirteen times as much per capita as the 
 average in Indiana, and seven times that in Massachusetts, 
 it is shown in Historical Monograph No. 1 (1890), of the 
 University of Iowa, that the average per capita wealth of 
 the Amana Society in 1890 was about ten per cent less than 
 the average wealth in the State of Iowa: this after an 
 American residence of nearly fifty years, with practically 
 the same collateral advantages which contributed to the 
 wealth of the Rappites. The Zoarites, a communistic so- 
 ciety in Tuscarawas County, Ohio, which was until recent 
 years successful, had permitted marriage after the year 
 1830, although they taught that the celibate state is more 
 commendable, and that this teaching was observed is shown 
 by the fact that they added only seventy-five to their 
 original membership during the first fifty years of their 
 residence in this country. 
 
 39
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 Peculiar reasons made possible the peaceful and pros- 
 perous association of the Harmonists. Among these con- 
 ditions was ignorance in the masses, controlled by intelli- 
 gence in a limited leadership. " Jacobi,"> says Noyes, 
 "seems disposed to give special prominence to leadership 
 as a cause of success. He evidently attributes the decline 
 of the Beizelites, the Eappites, and the Zoarites to the old 
 age and death of their founders." We must also remember 
 the superstition which prevailed among the Eappites, cul- 
 tivated and directed by a theocratic head; akin to this their 
 belief in the near approach of the judgment-day, which 
 made them careless of private effects. 
 
 We can not overestimate the importance of religion as 
 a cohesive force in societies like that of the Harmonists. 
 Upon religious grounds their community was founded; 
 religion was the guiding principle of their daily lives. 
 " Eeligion," says Horace Greeley in his Kecollections of a 
 Busy Life, " often makes practicable that which were else 
 impossible, and divine love triumphs where human science 
 is baffled. Thus I interpret the past successes and failures 
 of socialism. . . . With a firm and deep religious 
 basis, any socialistic scheme may succeed, though vicious 
 in organization and at war with human nature; without 
 a basis of religious S3nnpathy and religious aspiration it 
 will always be difficult, though I judge not impossible.'^ 
 ^^ Communities based on religious views have generally 
 succeeded," said Charles A. Dana, in the New York Sun of 
 May 1, 1869. " The Shakers and the Oneida community 
 are conspicuous illustrations of this fact, while the failure 
 of the various attempts made by the disciples of Owen, 
 Fourier, and others, who have not the support of religious 
 fanaticism, proves that without this great force the most 
 brilliant social theories are of little avail." 
 
 How far has the destruction of the family in the Eapp- 
 ite and other communities contributed to the possibility of 
 individual effacement? Is the institution of marriage in 
 
 40
 
 THE RAPPITE HEGIRA 
 
 its present form based upon and a preserver of individual- 
 ism? Is family life as now constituted a stumbling-block 
 in the way of socialism, in so far as socialism proposes to 
 broaden sympathy for the circumscribed family circle until 
 it becomes sympathy for universal mankind? Advocates 
 of communism have almost invariably proposed to destroy, 
 change, or regulate the institution of marriage. Eobert 
 Owen declared that marriage based on the possession of 
 private property was " one of the great trinity of evils 
 which have cursed the world ever since the creation of 
 man." The Oneida Perfectionists " proposed to abolish 
 family ties by the institution of free love." The Zoarite 
 elders opposed marriage " because it makes a division of 
 interests among the brethren." Jacobi calls attention to 
 the fact that in nearly all communistic associations at- 
 tended by a degree of success, marriage is sacrificed for 
 communism. John Humphrey Noyes cites an article by 
 Charles Lane, a Fourierist, in the Dial of January, 1844, 
 in which he says: 
 
 " The maternal instinct, as hitherto educated, has de- 
 clared itself so strongly in favor of the separate fireside, 
 that association, which appears so beautiful to the young 
 and unattached soul, has yet accomplished little progress 
 in the affections of that important section of the human 
 race — the mothers. With fathers, the feeling in favor of 
 the separate family is certainly less strong; but there is an 
 indefinable tie, a sort of magnetic rapport, an invisible, 
 inseverable umbilical cord between the mother and the 
 child, which in most cases circumscribes her desires and 
 aspirations for her own immediate family. All the ac- 
 cepted adages and wise saws of society, all the precepts of 
 morality, all the sanctions of theology have for ages been 
 employed to confirm this feeling. . . . The question 
 of association and of marriage are one. If, as we have been 
 popularly led to believe, the individual or separate family 
 is the true order of Providence, then the associative life is 
 
 41
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 a false effort. If the associative life is true, then the sepa- 
 rate family is a false arrangement. By the maternal feel- 
 ing it seems to be decided that the coexistence of both is 
 incompatible, is impossible. . . . That the affections 
 can be divided, or bent with equal ardor on two objects so 
 opposed as universal and individual love, may at least be 
 rationally doubted. . . . The monasteries and con- 
 vents which have existed in all ages have existed solely by 
 the annihilation of that peculiar affection on which the 
 separate family is based. . . . Spite of the specula- 
 tions of hopeful bachelors and esthetic spinsters, there is 
 somewhat in the marriage-bond which is found to counter- 
 act the universal nature of the affections, to a degree, tend- 
 ing at least to make the considerate pause before they assert 
 that, by any social arrangements whatever, the two can be 
 blended into one harmony. . . . It is only the deter- 
 mination to do what parents consider best for their families 
 and themselves which renders the o'erpopulous world such 
 a wilderness of selfhood as it is. Destroy this feeling, they 
 ssLj, and you prohibit every motive to exertion." 
 
 42
 
 CHAPTEE Y 
 
 EOBEET OWEN AND THE INDUSTRIAL EEYOLUTION 
 
 V 
 
 " As long as he was merely a philanthropist he was rewarded with 
 nothing but applause, wealth, honor, and glory. He was the most 
 popular man in Europe- Not only men of his own class, but states- 
 men and princes listened to him approvingly." — Frederick Engels. 
 
 " The interest of the life of Eobert Owen/' as his friend 
 and biographer, Lloyd Jones, has said, "lies not in the 
 completeness of its success, but in its practical wisdom and 
 devotion to principle." Yet, measured from a strictly- 
 practical standpoint, the work of Eobert Owen has not 
 been without its great results. Frederick Engels declares: 
 "Every social movement, every real advance in England 
 on behalf of the workers, links itself on to the name of 
 Eobert Owen." Eobert Owen has been called " The Father 
 of English Socialism." The great labor cooperative socie- 
 ties of Great Britain, which now number sixteen hundred, 
 with two million registered members, and seven million 
 patrons, doing an annual business of four hundred million 
 dollars, have conferred inestimable benefits upon the 
 working people of Great Britain. They are in large part 
 a monument to Eobert Owen's philanthropic labors. " His 
 specific plans as a social reformer," writes Eobert Dale 
 Owen, " proved on the whole, and for the time, a 
 failure, . . . yet, with such earnestness, such indom- 
 itable perseverance, and such devotion and love for his 
 race, did he press, through half a century, his plans upon 
 the public, and so much truth was there mixed with vision- 
 ary expectation, that his name became known, and the 
 
 43
 
 TEE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 influence of his teachings has been more or less felt over 
 the civilized world. A failure in gross has been attended 
 by sterling incidental successes, and toward the great idea 
 of cooperation — quite impracticable as he conceived it — - 
 there has been, ever since his death, very considerable ad- 
 vance made, and generally recognized by earnest men as 
 eminently useful and important." 
 
 A brief review of the social and industrial conditions 
 which gave occasion and purpose to the career of Eobert 
 Owen is necessary to an understanding of his life and work. 
 The concluding years of the eighteenth century marked 
 the beginning of an industrial revolution. Human power 
 had received a magnificent impetus from an era of great 
 invention, but this increase of power brought in its imme- 
 diate train serious results for the laboring classes of Eng- 
 land. Machinery began to supplant manual labor so sud- 
 denly and so rapidly, especially in the great cotton 
 industry, that thousands of men, willing to labor, were de- 
 prived of employment. Factory-owners began to realize 
 immensely upon their investments. While their establish- 
 ments were enlarged, wages were reduced, for not only were 
 the recently employed clamoring for work, but the rural 
 population was flocking by thousands to the factories on 
 account of the prevalent agricultural depression. 
 
 In many ways the whole population of England suffered 
 from this rapid transformation. The expense of machin- 
 ery, and inability to compete with the greater facilities of 
 the large factories, caused the extinction of the smaller 
 establishments. As a result, the personal relation which 
 had formerly existed between employer and employee was 
 destroyed, to the infinite damage of the latter. Intoxi- 
 cated with the possibilities of wealth so suddenly opened 
 before them, the great factory-owners gave no heed to the 
 welfare of their thousands of employees. The workmen 
 were herded together in squalid and crowded quarters, with 
 none of the comforts or pleasures of wholesome home life. 
 
 44
 
 TEE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 
 
 No provisions were made for the education of eliildren who 
 were employed by thousands in the factories. The intel- 
 lectual and moral results of such a system were deplor- 
 able. The English laboring classes, but a generation be- 
 fore happy, independent, and respected, became, in effect, 
 slaves to their grasping employers. Everywhere in these 
 large establishments ignorance and vice were prevalent to 
 an alarming extent. Whereas the passage of an employee 
 from a lower to a higher state could formerly be effected 
 with little difficulty, under the new regime it became almost 
 impossible. The majority of those engaged in manufac- 
 turing must, from the nature of things, remain laborers. 
 It became more difficult to ascend the social ladder. The 
 division of labor resulted in simplifying the task of each 
 workman, making him a mere cog in a great machine, and 
 thus rendering him more dependent. Luxury increased 
 among the upper classes, and class feeling was developed. 
 ^' The rich man," says one writer, " came to labor only for 
 the increase of his capital, the poor man to satisfy the 
 cravings of his stomach." 
 
 By strange coincidence, this enslavement of the English 
 working classes came at a time when ideas of political free- 
 dom were everywhere in the ascendant. In France and in 
 America old political institutions had been shattered, and 
 flushed with their success, the people looked forward to the 
 near approach of a social as well as a political millennium. 
 They had looked upon monarchical institutions as the 
 source of all inequalities of condition, and seemed to think 
 that the disenthronement of royalty meant the end of all 
 unhappiness and oppression. The Continent produced a 
 school of philosophers who advocated a reorganized society 
 based upon higher conceptions of public duty. In France, 
 St. Simon, " representative of a discontented and impov- 
 erished aristocracy," was the first advocate of socialism. 
 Fourier, an idealist, one of the middle class, and Babeuf, 
 a social reconstructionist, were promulgating ideas of 
 
 45
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 social regeneration against which the English Channel 
 was no barrier. 
 
 " England," says Sidney Webb, a Fabian society social- 
 ist, " was covered with rotten survivals of bygone circum- 
 stances. The whole administration was an instrument for 
 class domination and parasitic nurture. The progress of 
 the industrial revolution was rapidly making obsolete all 
 laws, customs, proverbs, maxims, and nursery tales: and 
 the sudden increase of population was baffling all expecta- 
 tions and disconcerting all arrangements. At last . . . 
 ' every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost ' 
 became the social creed of what was still believed to be a 
 Christian nation." 
 
 " At this juncture," says Frederick Engels, " there came 
 forward as a reformer a manufacturer twenty-nine years 
 old, a man of almost sublime and childlike simplicity of 
 character, and at the same time one of the few born leaders 
 of men." Eobert Owen was born of humble parentage 
 at Newtown, Montgomeryshire, Wales, May 14, 1771. 
 Though fond of learning, his schooling was quite limited, 
 for when but ten years old he went to London to become 
 an apprentice to a Stamford draper. Fortunately he found 
 a well-selected library in the home of his employer, and 
 five hours a day were regularly spent by the boy in eager 
 reading. At the close of his apprenticeship, Eobert Owen 
 took service with Flint & Palmer, large retail drapers at 
 London Bridge, where he received one hundred and twenty- 
 five dollars a year and his board. Here he worked from 
 fifteen to eighteen hours a day, and managed to save almost 
 the whole of his salary, since during his whole lifetime, 
 according to his own statement, he "never indulged an 
 injurious or expensive habit." His next employer was 
 a Mr. Satterfield, with whom he remained until he 
 reached the age of eighteen. 
 
 Owen's first enterprise on his own account was a part- 
 nership with a wire-worker named Jones, who was inter- 
 
 46
 
 TEE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 
 
 ested in the new maclimes just invented for spinning cot- 
 ton. Into this business Owen took five hundred dollars 
 borrowed from his brother. The establishment was soon- 
 employing forty men in the manufacture of spinning-ma- 
 chines. As Jones was not a partner to young Owen^s taste, 
 he sold out for three of the " mules '' which they were mak- 
 ing. With this and other machinery, operated by three 
 men, Owen made fifteen hundred dollars as his first year's 
 profit. 
 
 Soon afterward Owen became superintendent of a Man- 
 chester cotton-mill owned by a Mr. Drinkwater. The- 
 young man assumed the whole responsibility of managing 
 the factory, in which five hundred men were employed. So 
 successfully did he fill this position that the quality of 
 goods manufactured by the Drinkwater mill soon com- 
 manded a fifty per cent advance above regular prices. His 
 services were recognized by an increase of salary, and an 
 agreement of partnership with Mr. Drinkwater, which was 
 signed by Owen at the age of twenty. In 1791 Mr. Owen 
 used the first sea-island cotton brought into England 
 from America, which was soon to furnish a large propor- 
 tion of the raw material used in English cotton-mills. 
 Soon after the partnership was formed, Mr. Drinkwater's -^ 
 daughter was married to a wealthy cotton-manufacturer, 
 who desired to enter the partnership. On the first intima- 
 tion of this plan, young Owen burned up the agreement 
 with Mr. Drinkwater, and, though he remained in his posi- 
 tion as superintendent until his successor could be secured, 
 he refused reemployment at any price. 
 
 During Mr. Owen's apprenticeship and his connection 
 with factory management, he was thrown into a daily con- 
 tact with the toiling classes which was largely to influence 
 his conduct as an employer. He regarded with sorrow and 
 indignation the debased condition of the laboring people, 
 and with alarm the frequent riots indicative of the deep- 
 seated discontent prevailing in the factory towns. The - 
 
 47
 
 TEE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 condition of the children employed in factories especially 
 appealed to him. Denied a knowledge of even the elements 
 of education, separated from all the influences of home 
 which are so important a determinant of character, chil- 
 dren of honest parents were forced to work side by side 
 with those brought from the workhouses to labor at star- 
 vation wages. These children were habitually flogged and 
 debarred from moral and religious instruction. In such 
 squalid and vicious surroundings, they grew to a sour and 
 debased maturity. Some employers attempted in a clumsy 
 way to better these conditions, but such rare efforts were 
 generally rendered useless by the ignorant sensitiveness 
 of the poor. Though the factory act of Eobert Peel (1803) 
 limited the hours of labor to twelve, and provided for the 
 elementary education of all apprentices, the provisions for 
 the enforcement of this law were so feeble as to render 
 it practically inoperative. 
 
 Eobert Owen, soon after his release from the Drink- 
 water establishment, accepted an offer of partnership with 
 Borrowdale & Atkinson, a wealthy and established firm. 
 In this factory he superintended the manufacture and sale 
 of yarn. During his connection with this concern he was 
 elected a member of the Manchester literary and philosoph- 
 ical society, with which he maintained a conspicuous con- 
 nection for many years. It was under the supervision of 
 this society, at the instigation of Mr. Owen, that the inves- 
 tigations were carried on which formed the basis for Sir 
 Eobert Peel's later bills for the relief of the laboring 
 classes. 
 
 Eobert Owen's marriage was the culmination of a very 
 business-like romance. While on a business trip to Glas- 
 gow, he met a Miss Dale, daughter of David Dale, owner 
 of an extensive manufacturing establishment at New Lan- 
 ark, Scotland. Something in Miss Dale's enthusiastic 
 descriptions of this great factory, and doubtless something 
 in the pleasure which he felt in her companionship, in- 
 
 48
 
 THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 
 
 duced him to make a trip to New Lanark on a visit to the 
 Dale establishment. Upon his return to Manchester, young 
 Owen wrote a proposal of marriage to Miss Dale. Her 
 acceptance was conditioned on the doubtful approval of her 
 father. The young manufacturer was too shrewd to plead 
 his own cause at once, unknown as he was, but trusted to 
 the results of a business venture to win the coveted con- 
 sent. He again visited the factory, thoroughly investigated 
 its workings, returned to Manchester, and gained the con- 
 sent of his partners to a project for purchasing the New 
 Lanark mills in connection with another firm in which he 
 had also become a partner. The bargain was soon con- 
 cluded, the purchase price being three hundred thousand 
 dollars. His marriage with Miss Dale was soon arranged, 
 and the union seems to have been a most happy one, 
 though Miss Dale was a stanch Presbyterian in religious 
 doctrine, and Kobert Owen was, to say the least, unortho- 
 dox in his views concerning religion. 
 
 On January 1, 1800, Robert Owen assumed control 
 of the New Lanark mills, and began his illustrious career 
 as a practical philanthropist. He found drunkenness, neg- 
 lect of work, and theft common among the New Lanark 
 operatives, though Mr. Dale had been an employer more 
 than usually considerate. In the town of New Lanark 
 were thirteen or fourteen hundred families, and from four 
 to five hundred pauper children. The work which Robert 
 Owen accomplished in the training and development of 
 these miserable creatures into educated and contented men 
 and women gave to him and to New Lanark an interna- 
 tional reputation. Representatives of royalty, philanthro- 
 pists, and educators from all parts of Europe journeyed 
 thither to study the processes which Mr. Owen put in opera- 
 tion for the betterment of the working people in his mills. 
 
 Mr. Owen first sought out the recognized leaders among 
 his employees, and explained his plans to them. Though 
 these were first regarded with suspicion, the New Lanark 
 5 49
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 operatives soon began to realize his sincerity and to coop- 
 erate with him. Owen taught cleanly habits, and enforced 
 them in the town with such rigor that there were frequent 
 complaints from people with an aversion to soap and sani- 
 tation. He discouraged the credit system and established 
 a store in which the people were furnished goods at cost, 
 the saving being estimated at twenty per cent. He insti- 
 tuted a system of checks to detect pilfering, and opened a 
 debit and credit account which at the end of each year 
 served as a complete record of each workman's conduct, 
 and as a guide in the promotion and increase of salaries of 
 the more worthy. These were called " books of character.'' 
 
 In 1806 the United States placed an embargo on cotton, 
 and Mr. Owen was afforded an opportunity to display his 
 real feeling toward the people in his employ, and as Lloyd 
 Jones says, " to make a complete conquest of their good- 
 will." The advanced price of raw material crippled the 
 English factories, and, among others, the New Lanark 
 mills were compelled to close. To the surprise of the 
 employees, their wages were continued in full during this 
 suspension. Ever after this occurrence, Mr. Owen com- 
 manded the love and respect of the workmen of New 
 Lanark. 
 
 Mr. Owen's partners, however, did not fully indorse 
 such extraordinary consideration for the comfort of their 
 employees, and while such plans were well enough as ex- 
 periments in philanthropy, they did not regard them as 
 business-like. It could not be alleged that Mr. Owen's 
 management was unprojfitable, since the mills, now begin- 
 ning to be filled with a better educated, more capable and 
 more willing class of employees, made money as never be- 
 fore. Mr. Owen would not consent to any change of policy, 
 and was therefore compelled to form a new partnership and 
 make a new purchase of the establishment, which now sold 
 for four hundred and twenty thousand dollars. Mr. Owen 
 proceeded with his work of establishing schools and im- 
 
 50
 
 THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 
 
 proving the condition of the working people until the mem- 
 bers of the new partnership in turn became dissatisfied, 
 and finally forced the sale of the property at auction. 
 Though Owen^s enemies alleged that the value of the estab- 
 lishment had depreciated during his management, an ex- 
 citing contest for its possession took place between the old 
 partners and Mr. Owen, who had enlisted financial support 
 from several wealthy Quakers. The property was finally 
 sold to Mr. Owen for seven hundred and seventy thousand 
 dollars. The employees at New Lanark had watched with 
 anxious interest the progress of the sale, and when the 
 news of Mr. Owen's success came, a general celebration was 
 held. Mr. Owen rode through the streets in a carriage 
 drawn by a long line of his workmen, and there was an 
 illumination of the town and rejoicing among its people. 
 When the books of the second copartnership were balanced, 
 it was found that the profits of the four years, after setting 
 aside five per cent interest for the capital employed, were 
 eight hundred thousand dollars. 
 
 Mr. Owen was destined again to be embarrassed by 
 troubles in the partnership. From the standard of belief 
 held by his associates in business, Mr. Owen was heretical 
 in his moral and religious teachings. In their eyes the 
 games of the kindergarten were frivolous and vain. Will- 
 iam Allen and others accused him of infidelity, and of pro- 
 mulgating such sentiments among the people of New Lan- 
 ark. Though a committee under the chairmanship of the 
 Duke of Kent, grandfather of the present King of Eng- 
 land, acquitted him of the charge, everything possible was 
 thrown in the way of the new schools. Mr. Owen was 
 finallv forced out of the New Lanark mills. From the be- 
 ginning his management had been financially prosperous, 
 and the community had been made by him one of the hap- 
 piest and most orderly in England. The results of Kob- 
 ert Owen's work at New Lanark are summed up by an 
 American traveler (Mr. Griscom), who stayed some time 
 
 51
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 at the place : " There is not, I apprehend, to be found in 
 any part of the world, a manufacturing community in 
 which so much order, good government, tranquillity, and 
 rational happiness prevail." 
 
 " Up to this time," says a biographer, " we see Robert 
 Owen fighting with the difficulties by which he was imme- 
 diately surrounded; reforming such abuses as were oper- 
 ating to the injury of the people; giving to them more 
 comfort, more independence, more manliness, more hope; 
 above all, gaining among them that confidence and coop- 
 eration which might enable him to work out the changes on 
 which he relied for proving the practicability of reforms 
 that might be applied to the rapidly growing cotton indus- 
 try in all its branches throughout the kingdom." 
 
 52
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 AGITATION IN ENGLAND 
 
 Labor troubles which culminated in the riots of 1811 
 at last awakened the conscience of the English people^ and 
 brought them face to face with the evil results of the 
 factory system. Eobert Owen and his following of reform- 
 ers began to be accorded a respectful hearing. Until the 
 dissatisfaction of the laboring classes found expression in 
 desperate crusades against machinery and the assumption 
 of a threatening attitude toward the emplojdng classes, the 
 "poverty, degradation, deformity, ignorance, and prema- 
 ture death " suffered in the crowded factory settlements as 
 the result of overwork, scanty food, and unwholesome sani- 
 tary conditions, seemed to be regarded with carelessness. 
 
 Since 1803 Robert Owen had devoted a large portion of 
 his time to the consideration of the labor problem, and 
 upon this question wrote voluminously. The year 1815 
 was for him a period of great activity. He called a meeting 
 of factory-owners at Glasgow for the purpose of asking the 
 repeal of the revenue tariff on raw cotton, and considering, 
 means of improving the condition of the working people. 
 The first suggestion was unanimously adopted; Owen^s 
 motion regarding the second purpose did not even receive 
 a second. Mr. Owen flooded the kingdom with copies of 
 the address delivered by him at this session. In part he 
 had said : 
 
 " True, indeed, it is, that the main pillar and prop of 
 the political greatness and prosperity of our country is a 
 
 53
 
 TEE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 manufacture which, as now carried on, is destructive of the 
 health, morals, and social comfort of the mass of the peo- 
 ple engaged in it. It is only since the introduction of the 
 cotton trade that children at an age before they had ac- 
 quired strength or mental instruction, have been forced 
 into cotton-mills, those receptacles, in too many instances, 
 for living human skeletons, almost disrobed of intellect, 
 where, as the business is often now conducted, they linger 
 out a few years of miserable existence, acquiring every bad 
 habit which they may disseminate throughout society. It 
 is only since the introduction of this trade that children 
 and even grown people were required to labor more than 
 twelve hours in a day, not including the time allotted for 
 meals. It is only since the introduction of this trade that 
 the sole recreation of the laborer is to be found in the pot- 
 house or gin-shop, and it is only since the introduction of 
 this baneful trade that poverty, crime, and misery have 
 made rapid and fearful strides throughout the community. 
 " Shall we then go unblushingly and ask the legislators 
 of our country to pass legislative acts to sanction and 
 increase this trade — to sign the death-warrants of the 
 strength, morals, and happiness of thousands of our fellow 
 creatures, and not attempt to propose corrections for the 
 evils which it creates ? If such shall be your determination, 
 I, for one, will not join in the application — no, I will with 
 all the faculties I possess oppose every attempt to extend 
 a trade that, except in name, is more injurious to those 
 employed in it than is the slavery in the West Indies to the 
 poor negroes, for deeply as I am interested in the cotton- 
 manufacture, highly as I value the extended political power 
 of my country, yet knowing as I do from long experience 
 both here and in England the miseries which this trade, 
 as it is now conducted, inflicts on those to whom it gives 
 emplo3rment, I do not hesitate to say: Perish the cotton 
 trade, perish even the political superiority of our country, 
 if it depends on the cotton trade, rather than that they 
 
 54
 
 AGITATION IN ENGLAND 
 
 shall he nplield by the sacrifice of everything valuable in 
 lifer 
 
 During the next session of Parliament, Eobert Owen was 
 actively urging a bill stipulating that no child under ten 
 years of age, or unable to read, should be employed in the 
 factories, proposing the establishment of schools for their 
 especial benefit where reading, writing, and arithmetic 
 should be taught, and stipulating that the hours of work 
 in mills, including two hours for meals and recreation, 
 should not exceed twelve and a half a day. The bill also 
 provided for more thorough methods of factory inspection 
 by government agents. Xothing more significant of the 
 devotion of Eobert Owen to the welfare of the workers 
 could be cited than the fact that he worked assiduously for 
 the passage of this measure, not only in direct opposition 
 to the wishes of his fellow manufacturers, but of most of 
 the operatives, who had been taught to regard him as an 
 enemy of the industry which gave them employment. " At 
 this period,^^ Mr. Owen writes, " I had no public inter- 
 course with the operatives and working classes in any part 
 of the two islands, not even in the great metropolis. They 
 were strangers to me and to all my views and future inten- 
 tions. I was at all periods of my progress, from my ear- 
 liest knowledge and emploj^ment of them, their true friend : 
 while their democratic and much mistaken leaders taught 
 them that I desired to make slaves of them in my village 
 of unity and cooperation." When reviled and repudiated 
 by those in whose behalf he labored, Eobert Owen con- 
 tinued fighting their battles with ardor undaunted by their 
 misinterpretation of his motives. 
 
 A meeting was called of the members of the House of 
 Commons favorable to factory-reform legislation, and Sir 
 Eobert Peel was chosen to introduce the measure. It took 
 four years to secure its passage, when the measure came 
 out so mutilated that its provisions brought little relief to 
 those for whose relief it was intended. AMiile this bill was 
 
 55
 
 TEE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 pending, Eobert Owen remained in London, and conducted 
 a campaign of education such as England had never wit- 
 nessed before, and which made his name a household word 
 throughout the kingdom. Thousands of tracts and papers 
 were circulated. Owen bought by the ton copies of news- 
 papers containing his arguments, and on one occasion the 
 London mails were delayed twenty minutes by a deluge of 
 documents posted by him. In 1816 appeared Observa- 
 tions on the Effect of the Factory System. " From certain 
 parliamentary reports," says Eobert Dale Owen, " in con- 
 nection with Sir Eobert Peel's factory bill, my father 
 derived data in proof that the machinery employed in 
 Great Britain in cotton-spinning alone, in one branch 
 therefore of one manufacture, superseded at that time the 
 labor of eighty million adults; and he succeeded in prov- 
 ing to the satisfaction of England's ablest statistician 
 (Colquhoun) that if all the branches of the cotton, woolen, 
 flax, and silk manufactures were included, the machine- 
 saving labor in producing English textile fabrics exceeded 
 in those days the work which two hundred millions of 
 operatives could have turned out previous to the year 
 1760.'' In 1817 Mr. Owen issued: A Eeport Addressed 
 to the Committee for the Eelief of the Laboring and Manu- 
 facturing Poor. In this treatise colonies for the poor 
 were advocated, and the destruction of pauperism by a sys- 
 tem of education and manual training was proposed. 
 
 It may well be said that Eobert Owen secured in the 
 enactment of such legislation the first embodiment of the 
 principle of governmental interference in internal trade 
 relations, a principle which has come to assume large 
 importance in modern legislation. These early laws 
 advocated by Mr. Owen were the first industrial measures 
 designed for the relief of the laboring classes, and estab- 
 lished a precedent for all labor legislation since effected 
 in England and America. 
 
 About this time Mr. Owen made a public declaration of 
 
 56
 
 AGITATION IN ENGLAND 
 
 religious principles, insistent advocacy of which brought 
 him, in the language of Sargent, "neglect, hatred, cal- 
 umny, contempt, and all the evils which follow an excom- 
 municated man." From this time his popularity as a 
 reformer began to wane, for the strong religious sentiment 
 of the English people regarded with apprehension his 
 sweeping attacks on existing creeds. This declaration was 
 a strategic mistake, but it revealed the thorough independ- 
 ence of Eobert Owen. It lost him the friendship of his 
 most influential allies, brought him an irresponsible follow- 
 ing which injured his cause, and connected his theories in 
 the popular mind with atheism and anarchy. 
 
 Soon after this declaration Mr. Owen visited the educa- 
 tional establishment of M. de Felenberg, at Hoifwyl, Swit- 
 zerland, whither he had sent his sons for their education. 
 On this trip he presented a memorial in behalf of the 
 laboring classes to the crowned heads in convention at 
 Aix-la-Chapelle. In 1819 he stood for Parliament in Lan- 
 ark borough. By the combined efforts of labor leaders 
 and factory-owners he was defeated in his aspirations. 
 There was nothing of demagogy in his Appeal to the La- 
 boring Classes, issued in 1819, and an opponent who more 
 loudly swore his fealty to the common people was returned. 
 Only the working people of a district in which so many 
 years of Robert Owen^s life had been spent in philanthropic 
 undertakings were to blame for the inability of Mr. Owen 
 to advocate his principles at the succeeding session of Par- 
 liament. 
 
 At this time Richard Flower arrived in England, bear- 
 ing a commission from George Rapp to sell the great Har- 
 monist estate. He found Robert Owen in the disappoint- 
 ment of several of his plans, and suggested " Harmonic " 
 as an eligible site for putting in practical operation plans 
 for communistic colonization which Mr. Owen had long 
 been publicly advocating. " The offer tempted my father,'' 
 writes Robert Dale Owen. " Here was a village ready built, 
 
 67
 
 TEE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 a territory capable of supporting tens of thousands, in a 
 country where the expression of thought was free, and 
 where the people were unsophisticated. I listened with 
 delight to Mr. Flower's account of a frontier life, and when, 
 one morning, my father asked me, ' Well, Eobert, what say 
 you, New Lanark or Harmony ? ' I answered without hesi- 
 tation, ' Harmony.' Aside from the romance and novelty, 
 I think one prompting motive was that if our family settled 
 in western America, it would facilitate my marriage with 
 Jessie," a young woman who quickly forgot the younger 
 Owen after his emigration to America. " Mr. Flower could 
 not conceal from us his amazement, saying to me, I remem- 
 ber, ' Does your father really think of giving up a position 
 like this, with every comfort and luxury, and taking his 
 family to the wild life of the far West ? ' He did not know 
 that my father's one ruling desire was for a vast theater 
 in which to try his plans of social reform." Then, too, 
 the younger Owen tells us, "the success of the Eappites 
 greatly encouraged my father." The preliminaries were 
 arranged with Mr. Flower, and in December, 1824, Mr. 
 Owen came to the United States to complete the purchase 
 of the property afterward officially known as New Har- 
 mony. The bargain was closed in the spring of 1825, and 
 Mr. Owen became the owner of an estate consisting of 
 nearly thirty thousand acres of land — ^three thousand acres 
 under cultivation by the Harmonists, nineteen detached 
 farms, six hundred acres of improved land occupied by 
 tenants, some fine orchards, eighteen acres of bearing vines, 
 and the village of Harmony, with its great church, its 
 brick, frame, and log houses, and its factories, with almost 
 all the machinery. It constituted an admirable site for 
 the great experiment which Robert Owen had decided to 
 inaugurate. 
 
 58
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE NEW MORAL WORLD 
 
 " Civilization ! How the term is misapplied ! A state of society 
 based upon ignorance, deranging the faculties of all ! 
 
 " The affairs of the world carried on by violence and force, through 
 massacres, legal robberies, and devastations, superstitions, bigotry, and 
 selfish mysteries ! 
 
 " By living a continual life of hypocrisy, and public and private 
 deception ! 
 
 " By supposing that the most degrading and injurious vices are the 
 highest virtues ! 
 
 "And yet this conduct of gross ignorance and rank insanity is 
 called civilization ! " 
 
 The New Moral World^ from which the sentences just 
 quoted are taken, while not published at the time of the 
 New Harmony experiment, was a later compilation of the 
 beliefs held and promulgated by Robert Owen at that time. 
 It embodies the theories upon which the New Harmony 
 communities were founded, and a brief review of its teach- 
 ings will serve to throw much light upon the history of 
 the New Harmony venture. 
 
 " The New Moral World/^ Mr. Owen declared, " is an 
 organization to rationally educate and employ all, through 
 a new organization of society which will give a new exist- 
 ence to man by surrounding him with superior circum- 
 stances only.'' " New and strange as this statement will 
 appear, even to the most learned and experienced of the 
 present day," the author declares, " let no one rashly pro- 
 nounce it to be visionary, for it is a system, the result of 
 
 59
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 much reading, observation, and reflection, combined with 
 extensive practical experience and confidential communi- 
 cation with public official characters in various countries, 
 and with leading minds among all classes: a system 
 founded on the eternal laws of nature, and derived from 
 facts and experience only: and it will be found on full 
 examination, by competent minds, to be the least visionary 
 and the most easy of practise of all systems which have 
 been proposed in ancient or modern times to improve the 
 character and to insure the happiness of the human race." 
 
 " The religious, moral, political, and commercial 
 arrangements of society have been on a wrong basis since 
 the commencement of history," declared Mr. Owen. The 
 new society which would be possible by the adoption of his 
 principles he prophesied would be a heaven of happiness. 
 
 As a basis for his philosophy, Mr. Owen stated what he 
 called " the fundamental laws of human nature." In brief, 
 these were as follows : 
 
 Human nature is a compound of animal propensities, 
 intellectual faculties, and moral qualities. 
 
 These are united in different proportions in each indi- 
 vidual. 
 
 The diversity constitutes the difference between indi- 
 viduals. 
 
 These elements and proportions are made by a power 
 unknown to the individual and consequently without his 
 consent. 
 
 Each individual comes into certain existing circum- 
 stances which act upon his original organization, more 
 especially during early life, and by impressing their gen- 
 eral character upon him, form his local and national 
 character. 
 
 This influence is modified by the original character of 
 the individual ; thus character is formed and maintained. 
 
 No one decides his time or place of birth, his circum- 
 stances, or his training. 
 
 60
 
 ^Si.
 
 THE LIBilAfly 
 OF THE
 
 THE NEW MORAL WORLD 
 
 Each individual may receive, in early training, either 
 true or false fundamental ideas. 
 
 He may be trained to either beneficial or injurious 
 habits, or a mixture of both. 
 
 Each person must believe according to the strongest 
 conviction that is made upon his mind, which conviction 
 is not determined by his will. 
 
 He must like or dislike, according to his experience. 
 
 His feelings and convictions are formed for him by the 
 impression of circumstances upon his original organization. 
 His will is formed by his feelings or convictions, therefore 
 his physical, mental, and moral characters are formed 
 independent of himself. 
 
 Impressions which are at first pleasurable become by 
 repetition indifferent, and finally painful. Impressions 
 which succeed each other beyond a certain rapidity are 
 finally dissipated and weakened, and at last destroy enjoy- 
 ment. 
 
 Health, improvement, and happiness depend upon the 
 due cultivation of all physical, intellectual, and moral 
 qualities, upon their being called into action at a proper 
 period of life, and being afterward exercised temperately, 
 according to their strength and capacity. 
 
 Bad character results from bad innate tendencies 
 placed in the midst of bad surroundings ; a medium char- 
 acter from bad tendencies in good surroundings, good tend- 
 encies in unfavorable surroundings, or mixed tendencies 
 in mixed surroundings. A superior character results from 
 a good constitution placed among favorable circumstances, 
 when the laws, institutions, and customs are in accordance 
 with the laws of nature. 
 
 From these beliefs regarding human nature, Mr. Owen 
 formed the following " laws " : 
 
 I. — Man can not be a subject of merit or demerit. 
 
 II. — The feelings and convictions are instincts of hu- 
 man nature. 
 
 61
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 1 
 
 I 
 
 III. — The individual should always express his feelings ] 
 
 without restraint. The will is the mental feeling, and \ 
 when we speak of the will keeping us from certain action, 
 
 we simply mean that our mental feeling was stronger than ■ 
 
 our physical feeling. Nature's laws require that physical, ; 
 
 mental, and moral feelings should in all temperance be i 
 
 exercised. \ 
 
 IV. — Personal ambition and vanity will be destroyed ; 
 
 by a knowledge of the fact of mental and moral irrespon- ) 
 
 sibility. ] 
 
 V. — The practise means the removal from the world \ 
 
 of all inferior circumstances tending to produce bad i 
 character. 
 
 Happiness depends upon the harmony of physical, men- v 
 tal, and moral proportions. The diversity of mankind is [ 
 essential to human happiness. The individual who is mor- 
 ally, mentally, or physically weak calls for our compassion, j 
 not for our condemnation. Good habits must be given to ! 
 all, or they can not be given to any. A superior human ; 
 being, or any one approaching a character deserving the '' 
 name of rational, has not yet been known among mankind. ■ 
 Before such a being can appear, a great change must \ 
 occur in the whole proceedings of mankind : their feelings, ' 
 thoughts, and actions must arise from principles altogether j 
 different from the vague and fanciful notions by which ' 
 the mental part of the character of man has been hitherto ! 
 formed; the whole external circumstances relative to the j 
 production and distribution, of wealth, the formation of | 
 character, and the government of men must be changed, i 
 remodeled, and reunited into a new system. The funda- : 
 mental errors of the old system have prevented man from | 
 becoming rational ; the new laws will produce charity, kind- j 
 ness, intelligence, and happiness. j 
 
 The elements of the science of society, Mr. Owen de- j 
 
 clared to be as follows: I 
 
 1. A knowledge of the principles and the application j 
 
 62 :
 
 tSe new moral world 
 
 to practise of the laws of human nature ; laws derived from 
 demonstrable facts, and which prove man to be a social 
 being. 
 
 2. A knowledge of the principles and practise of the 
 best modes of producing in abundance the most beneficial 
 necessaries and comforts for the support and enjoyment of 
 human life. 
 
 The most necessary wealth Mr. Owen declared to be air, 
 water, food, health, clothing, shelter, instruction, amuse- 
 ments, the affection of our associates, and good society. To 
 secure these, there must be a cordial union of mankind. 
 Upon a certain amount of land should be combined skill, 
 labor, capital, and population. These elements should be 
 directed by those who understand the laws of God and 
 principles of society. The greatest loss and waste result 
 from the disunited minds and feelings of mankind. 
 Armies, churches, lawyers, doctors, and exclusive univer- 
 sities are the greatest obstacles to progress. The profes- 
 sions as such should be done away with, and the profes- 
 sional men employed as teachers or rulers of the people 
 under the new principles. There is a great loss from the 
 separation of trades, and the expense of exchange and 
 transportation. Four departments will be instituted in 
 the new social state: (1) of production of wealth; (2) of 
 distribution; (3) of formation of character; (4) of gov- 
 ernment. These elements should be united in each com- 
 munity. Beautiful surroundings should also characterize 
 each of these new settlements. The greatest saving will 
 result from having the best of all that society requires. 
 These arrangements, with the destruction of the profes- 
 sions, will cause a saving of from fifty to sixty per cent. 
 The departments of production will be made so attract- 
 ive that labor will be a pleasure which all will desire. As 
 a result of all these arrangements wealth will be put into 
 the hands of the consumer at one-fourth the present 
 cost. 
 
 63
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 3. A knowledge of the principles and practise of the 
 best methods of distributing wealth. 
 
 The middleman Mr. Owen declared to be an expensive 
 luxury. The three classes of these, retailers, wholesalers, 
 and extensive merchants, all strive to get the most out of 
 their materials. There are more establishments than are 
 necessary for handling the goods, and much capital and 
 labor is thus rendered useless. The present system of dis- 
 tribution is a dead weight on society. It is a contrivance 
 " to add to the cost of production, to deteriorate qualities, 
 to employ unnecessary capital, to demoralize the character 
 of those employed, and it trains men to become slaves to 
 their customers and tyrants to their dependents. By keep- 
 ing separate storehouses in separate establishments on the 
 premises where the material is produced, and from these 
 distributing for daily consumption, ninety-nine per cent of 
 this expense can be saved. Mr. Owen inveighed against 
 " imaginary representations of wealth, such as gold, silver, 
 or paper," and claimed that the monetary systems of Eng- 
 land and America were the causes of great distress. He 
 proposed the establishment of " banks of real wealth," with 
 a rather indefinite method of transacting business. The 
 new medium of exchange must have the power of expan- 
 sion and contraction, as the value of material expanded or 
 contracted. 
 
 4. A knowledge of the principles and practises by 
 which to form the new combination of circumstances for 
 training the infant to become the most rational being. 
 The care of the infant has been entrusted to the inferior 
 in mind, manner, and knowledge, and its education has 
 consisted of placing the child within four walls, to sit on a 
 seat and ask no questions. Children should be treated 
 with kindness and judgment. 
 
 5. A knowledge of how to govern man most effectively 
 under these new principles. Government must be active 
 to create, watchful and observing to maintain rationallaws. 
 
 64
 
 THE NEW MORAL WORLD 
 
 6. To unite these general principles into a rational state 
 of society. Society has been a chaos. The instinct of man 
 is to be happy, but he has learned to think that wealth 
 and happiness are synonymous. There is no necessary con- 
 nection. Utopian philosophers from Plato to Fourier have 
 failed in their purposes because they taught contradict- 
 ory principles and practises. " From the contamination, 
 through so many ages, of the errors of theoretical men 
 without practise, and those of practical men without any 
 accurate or extensive knowledge of principle, it will now be 
 difficult, except by practical demonstration, to convince 
 these two classes that by a union of principles derived from 
 unchanging facts, with the experience emanating from ex- 
 tensive practise in accordance with these principles, an 
 intelligent, united, wealthy, virtuous, and happy society 
 may be now formed and made permanent." 
 
 Happiness, "the instinct of the universe," Mr. Owen 
 declared to be dependent upon the practise of the prin- 
 ciples of The K'ew Moral World. To provide for this 
 general happiness, schools were to be founded for the edu- 
 cation of the children, as well as asylums for the afflicted, 
 and to all should be given the opportunity for study, social 
 enjoyment, travel, and the liberty of expressing opinions 
 on all subjects. Women should be accorded the same 
 rights and privileges as men, 
 
 A Supreme Power, Eobert Owen declared, was the 
 cause of all existence. The practise of religion includes 
 charity, a knowledge of the laws of nature, and efforts to 
 do good for our fellow men. " The practise of the rational 
 religion will consist in promoting, to the utmost of our 
 power, the happiness and well-being of every man, woman, 
 and child, without regard to their sect, class, party, or color, 
 and its worship, in those inexpressible feelings of wonder, 
 admiration, and delight, which, when man is surrounded 
 by superior circumstances only, will naturally arise from 
 the contemplation of the infinity of space, of the eternity 
 
 6 65
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 of duration, of the order of the universe, and of that In- 
 comprehensible Power by which the atom is moved and 
 the aggregate of nature is governed." Formerly religions 
 have divided man from man and nation from nation; the 
 new religion will bind all men into one great family, based 
 on charity and love. All men should exert themselves to 
 remove evil from society and create good. 
 
 Upon these beliefs as a basis, Eobert Owen constructed 
 a social scheme for which he seemed to expect universal 
 and immediate acceptance. He declared the United States 
 Constitution to mark the greatest progress of mankind so 
 far made in the direction of liberty. He stated, however, 
 that Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe had expressed 
 keen disappointment in the result of the Constitution and 
 the character of the American people as developed under it. 
 Thomas Jefferson, Mr. Owen declared, had confessed to 
 him a feeling that society should be reorganized, but had 
 expressed an inability to undertake the work of reforma- 
 tion. The foundation laid by the framers of the Constitu- 
 tion was one of sand, and would yet be dissolved. 
 
 Eational government, Mr. Owen declared, will attend 
 solely to the happiness of the governed. There must be 
 liberty of conscience and of speech. Private property 
 must be abandoned as soon as the children of the present 
 generation had been taught in the principles of the new 
 social system. There should be no rewards or punish- 
 ments except those awarded by nature. 
 
 From one to five years of age, the children in Mr. 
 Owen^s communities were to be well clothed and fed, and 
 given ample opportunity for exercise; the next five years 
 were to be given to light employment and the continuance 
 of education, which was to be acquired largely by observa- 
 tion, directed by skilled teachers. From ten to twelve 
 years of age they were to assist in the gardens and houses, 
 and from twelve to fifteen, to be given technical training. 
 From fifteen to twenty the education was to be continued, 
 
 66
 
 THE NEW MORAL WORLD 
 
 the pupil now assisting in the instruction of the younger 
 children. From twenty to thirty the member was to act 
 as a superintendent in the departments of production and 
 education; from thirty to forty to govern the homes, and 
 from forty to sixty, to assist in the management of the 
 external relations of the communities, or travel abroad, 
 " as suited the will." 
 
 The family, Mr. Owen declared, must give way to the 
 scientific association of from five hundred to two thousand 
 people. In these, men, women, and children were to be 
 gathered together " in usual proportions." The various 
 communities were to be united in tens, hundreds, thou- 
 sands, etc., all assisting one another. Each of these com- 
 munities was to possess adjacent land sujficient to support 
 its maximum membership. Provisions for "swarming" 
 from these establishments, when they became crowded, 
 were to be made. The communities were to be arranged 
 so as to give each member, so far as practicable, equal 
 advantages with all the rest. Easy communication from 
 colony to colony was provided for by pleasant walks through 
 groves, and other improved methods of travel. 
 
 Each community was to be governed in all its home 
 departments by a general council, composed of all members 
 between the ages of thirty and forty. Each department 
 was to be placed under a committee formed of members 
 of the general council chosen by the leader in an order to 
 be determined upon. In its external, or foreign relations, 
 each community was to be governed by its members between 
 the ages of forty and sixty years. There was to be no 
 election to office. All members must act as rational phys- 
 ical and mental beings, or be removed to an asylum. 
 
 This, in brief (for The New Moral World fills nearly 
 three hundred closely printed pages), is the panacea pre- 
 sented by Mr. Owen for the cure of social ills. " With this 
 view of society in prospect of easy attainment," said Mr. 
 Owen, " shall the present system, based on falsehood, be 
 
 67
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 longer supported; a system organized, classified, and ar- 
 ranged in accordance with the fundamental errors on which 
 society is based — errors producing all manner of inequality, 
 vices, crimes, and misery, making man an inferior and ir- 
 rational being, and the earth a pandemonium? Will the 
 human race longer insanely maintain such a heterogeneous 
 mass of folly and absurdity, and doom their offspring, 
 through succeeding generations, to be inferior, irrational 
 men and women, filled with every injurious notion, and 
 governed by most ignorant and misery-producing institu- 
 tions, while excellence, superior external circumstances, 
 and happiness lie directly before them and easy of attain- 
 ment?^' 
 
 68
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE FOUNDING OF NEW HARMONY 
 
 " In 1825 Robert Owen stirred the very life of the nation with his 
 appeals to Kings and Congresses, and his vast experiments at New 
 Harmony, Think of his family of nine hundred members on a farm 
 of thirty thousand acres ! A magnificent beginning that thrilled the 
 world." — Jno. Humphrey Notes. 
 
 On February 25 and March 7, 1825, Robert Owen de- 
 livered addresses in the Hall of the House of Repre- 
 sentatives at Washington, before two of the most 
 distinguished audiences ever gathered in the national 
 capital, including almost the entire membership of 
 both houses of Congress, the judges of the Supreme 
 Court, the President and several members of his Cabi- 
 net, besides many other men of distinction. To this 
 assemblage Robert Owen explained his plans for the 
 redemption of the human race from the evils of the exist- 
 ing state of society. In connection with these lectures, Mr. 
 Owen exhibited a model of the buildings to be erected, first 
 for the New Harmony community, and afterward for each 
 of the communities to be established. The buildings were 
 to form a hollow square one thousand feet long, including 
 a complete school, academy, and university. Within the 
 squares were the culinary, dining, washing, and similar de- 
 partments. In the larger buildings which marked the cen- 
 ters of the sides and the corners of the quadrangle were 
 to be lecture-rooms, laboratories, chapel, ball, concert, 
 committee, and conversation rooms. Between these larger 
 buildings were dwelling-rooms occupying the first and sec- 
 
 69
 
 TEE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 ond stories. On the third floor were to be departments for 
 the unmarried and the children above two years of age. 
 Each department was to be supplied with gas, water, and 
 all the modern conveniences. 
 
 In concluding this memorable address, Mr. Owen de- 
 clared that he meant to carry these purposes of ameliora- 
 tion into immediate execution, to the full extent of his 
 means. The town of New Harmony, he said, did not pre- 
 sent such a combination as his model, and therefore it 
 would present only a temporary purpose for the objects 
 which he had in view. ^^ But it will enable us to form 
 immediately," he declared, ^^ a preliminary society in which 
 to receive the new population, to collect, prepare, and ar- 
 range material for erecting several such combinations as 
 the model represents, and of forming several independent, 
 yet united associations, having common property and one 
 common interest. This new establishment will be erected 
 on the high lands of Harmony, from two to four miles 
 from the river and its island, of which the inhabitants will 
 have a beautiful and extensive view, there being several 
 thousands of acres of cultivated land on the rich second 
 bottom lying between the highlands and the river. And 
 here it is, in the heart of the United States, and almost in 
 the center of its unequaled internal navigation, that Power 
 which governs and directs the universe and every action 
 of man has arranged circumstances which were far beyond 
 my control, and permits me to commence a new empire 
 of peace and good- will to men, founded on other principles 
 and leading to other practises than those of present or 
 past, and which principles in due season, and in the allotted 
 time, will lead to that state of virtue, intelligence, enjoy- 
 ment, and happiness which it has been foretold by the sages 
 of the past would at some time become the lot of the 
 human race. 
 
 " I have, however, no wish to lead the way. I am de- 
 sirous that governments should become masters of the sub- 
 
 70
 
 7-H 
 
 >> .2 
 
 ^ i
 
 THE LlBfiARK 
 
 H 
 
 r. TUv- 
 
 T 
 
 jv^V 
 
 nrnv 

 
 THE FOUNDING OF NEW HARMONY 
 
 ject, adopt the principles, encourage the practise, and 
 thereby retain the direction of the public mind for their 
 own benefit and the benefit of the people. But as I have 
 not the control of circumstances to insure success in this 
 public course, I must show what private exertions, guided 
 by these new principles, can accomplish at New Harmony, 
 and these new proceedings will begin in April." 
 
 Mr. Owen took occasion to deny the report which al- 
 leged the unhealthfulness of New Harmony. Many of the 
 Rappites, he said, had died at first, " but last year only two 
 died." The land, he declared, was well drained and culti- 
 vated. " I have been asked," said Mr. Owen, " what would 
 be the effect upon the neighborhood and surrounding coun- 
 try where one or more of these societies of union, coopera- 
 tion, and common property should be established. My con- 
 viction is that every interest and inclination of the 
 individual or old system of society would break up and soon 
 terminate; every interest, because the communities would 
 undersell all individual producers, both of agricultural pro- 
 ductions and manufactured commodities; every inclination, 
 because it is scarcely to be supposed that any would con- 
 tinue to live under the miserable, anxious, individual sys- 
 tem of opposition and counteraction, when they could with 
 ease form themselves into or become members of one of 
 these associations of union, intelligence, and kind feelings. 
 
 " ' If,' it has further been asked of me, ^ these societies 
 spread by their commercial operations, and the increased 
 advantages and comforts which they offer, to the whole 
 population, what effect will they have upon the govern- 
 ment and general prosperity of an extensive empire?' I 
 again reply that a country, however extensive, divided into 
 these arrangements of improved social buildings, gardens, 
 and pleasure-grounds, and these occupied and cultivated 
 by people possessing superior dispositions, will be governed 
 with more ease than it can be with the same number of 
 people scattered over the country, living in common vil- 
 
 71
 
 TEE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 lages, towns, and cities under the individual system. The 
 expense of government will be diminished by as much as 
 the trouble and anxiety, and it is not unlikely that these 
 would be diminished to one-tenth of the present amount. 
 The effect which would be produced on the prosperity of 
 the country would be equally beneficial and important* 
 Any country will be prosperous in proportion to the num- 
 ber and physical and mental superiority of its people." 
 
 With the publication of these addresses in 1825 wa9 
 issued a manifesto announcing that " a new society is about 
 to be formed at Harmony in Indiana." The invitation 
 to membership included all who were in sympathy with the 
 founder in his desire for a new state of society. 
 
 The second community at Harmony was instituted 
 under the most auspicious circumstances. The attention 
 of the whole country had been drawn to the project by the 
 addresses of Mr. Owen at Washington and in other Ameri- 
 can cities. Many of the most distinguished men of the 
 time, both in Europe and America, were giving at least 
 partial approval to the plans of the celebrated English 
 philanthropist. The previous success of the Rappites on 
 the very site of the proposed Utopia furnished an object- 
 lesson in communistic prosperity. There appeared to be 
 no reason why a measure of success even greater should 
 not come to the new community, which seemed to be based 
 on all the good in Harmonist doctrine, with the more dis- 
 agreeable features eliminated, while it contemplated the 
 practise of theories in local government and education 
 which had proved highly successful at New Lanark. The 
 grade of intelligence in the Harmonist society had been 
 low, and ignorance and superstition had been the most 
 marked characteristics of the membership. The members 
 of the new community would be persons of liberal and 
 progressive ideas, striving toward a high ideal of social life, 
 with superior intelligence and skill. Mr. Owen had de- 
 monstrated his business ability as one of the leading cotton 
 
 72
 
 TEE FOUNDING OF NEW HARMONY 
 
 manufacturers of England, and was prepared to give sub- 
 stantial backing to his experiment. The hundreds who 
 flocked to New Harmony from every State in the Union, 
 and from every country in the north of Europe, found as 
 the site of the new settlement a princely estate comprising 
 several square miles of fertile land. The extensive indus- 
 tries established by the Eappites seemed to await only the 
 touch of American ingenuity, while the comfortable homes 
 the German communists had built in " Harmonic, the home 
 of love," insured the absence of the privation of early set- 
 tlement which discouraged many similar communities in 
 later years. The orchards which stood at the edge of the 
 village, and the vineyards that covered the hillsides, were 
 visible promises of plenty during the early spring days of 
 the settlement. The quietly retreating Eappite thousand, 
 too, it was said, had conveyed their golden hoard by bushels 
 from Father Eapp^s cellar to the boat which bore them to 
 their new Pennsylvania home. Surely, this was the El 
 Dorado of communistic hopes; surely, as Eobert Owen had 
 declared, this was a place providentially set apart for the 
 first great victory of communism. 
 
 It was not the hope of even optimistic Robert Owen 
 that a community of equality, based on lofty and liberal 
 principles, could spring full grown into being, as had the 
 Eappite society of religious asceticism in 1805. There 
 must be some years of educational training, of instruction 
 in the principles of the new moral world; the members 
 must be gradually weaned away from "the errors and 
 prejudices which had existed since the time of Adam " — 
 from all the evil ideas and associations of the selfish in- 
 dividual system in which they had been born and reared, 
 before they could, with safety, form themselves into a com- 
 munity such as Eobert Owen contemplated. To this end, 
 Mr. Owen enlisted the interest of William Maclure, of 
 Philadelphia, a wealthy scientist who combined excellent 
 ideas on education with peculiar notions in political econ- 
 
 73
 
 TEE NEW HARMONY 31 07 EM E NT 
 
 omy, which, while they did not coincide with Eobert 
 Owen^s methods of social reconstruction, agreed in the in- 
 dictment of existing conditions. William Maclure was in 
 many respects a remarkable man, of varied experience, 
 broad views, and a spirit truly philanthropic. In awaken- 
 ing his interest in New Harmony, Mr. Owen certainly pro- 
 cured a promise of educational excellence for his social 
 experiment. Maclure was born in Ayre, Scotland, in 
 1763. When thirty-three years of age, he came to America 
 with the ambitious intention of making a geological survey 
 of the United States. This purpose he followed with in- 
 defatigable energy until the publication of the results of 
 his labors in 1809. In the course of this work he crossed 
 and recrossed the Alleghanies more than fifty times, and 
 tramped on foot through every State and Territory then 
 within the limits of the United States in the search for 
 data. In 1817 he published a revised edition, incorpo- 
 rating the results of further observation. He became justly 
 known, through this herculean pioneer work, as '^The 
 Father of American Geology." ^ 
 
 Mr. Maclure was the principal founder of the Phila- 
 delphia Academy of Natural Sciences, and for twenty-three 
 years, beginning with 1817, he was the president of that 
 organization. To this institution he contributed liberally, 
 transferring to it in later years his library and collections. 
 He was the patron of many American scientific organiza- 
 tions, including the American Geological Society, of which 
 he was president. 
 / Maclure's interest in education was second only to his 
 scientific enthusiasm. He visited Pestalozzi's school in 
 Switzerland, and was the first to introduce the system of 
 the great Swiss educator into the United States. He was 
 one of the earliest champions of the idea of industrial 
 education. He founded an agricultural school near the 
 city of Alicante, Spain, on an estate of ten thousand acres, 
 purchased for this purpose, but an end was put to these 
 
 H
 
 THE FOUNDING OF NEW HARMONY 
 
 plans by a political revolution which resulted in the con- 
 fiscation of the property. Maclure's friendship for Eobert 
 Owen began with a visit to New Lanark, where he was 
 greatly attracted by the plans there in operation for the 
 amelioration of the condition of the working classes. 
 
 Mr. Maclure, according to Mr. Owen^s subsequent state- 
 ment, put about one hundred and fifty thousand dollars 
 into the New Harmony experiment, his liability, however, 
 being limited to ten thousand dollars. The avowed inten- 
 tion of Mr. Maclure was to make New Harmony the center 
 of American education through the introduction of the 
 Pestalozzian system of instruction, in which he and Mr. 
 Owen had a common interest. To this end, with the assist- 
 ance of Mr. Owen, he brought to New Harmony the most 
 distinguished coterie of scientists and educators in Amer- 
 ica. Among these was Thomas Say, who has been called 
 " The Father of American Zoology." Thomas Say, the 
 son of a medical practitioner in Philadelphia, and a mem- 
 ber of the Society of Friends, was born in Philadelphia 
 on July 27, 1787. He was destined by his father to a busi- 
 ness life, but failed so signally that he was soon without 
 means. He then became a scientist, having from early 
 life displayed a strong predilection for the study of natural 
 history. He served through the War of 1812 as a volun- 
 teer, afterward resuming his scientific studies. Mr. Say 
 was a charter member of the association which founded the 
 Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences. Under the 
 auspices of this organization he began the work of cata- 
 loguing and describing the American fauna, contributing 
 from time to time the results of his labors to the journal 
 published by the association. In 1817 he was, with Will- 
 iam Maclure, a member of a party engaged in investiga- 
 ting the natural history of the Florida peninsula, and in 
 1818 explored the islands off the coast of Georgia. He 
 became chief zoologist with Long's expedition to the Kocky 
 Mountains in 1819, and in 1823 accompanied this party 
 
 .75
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 to the St. Peter's Eiver. After coming to New Harmony, 
 he devoted his time unremittingly to the study and teach- 
 ing of natural history. He contributed many scientific 
 articles to the New Harmony Disseminator, and contribu- 
 tions from his pen are to be found in the Journal of the 
 Philadelphia Academy of Sciences, Transactions of the 
 American Philosophical Society, Maclurean Lyceum, 
 Nicholson's Encyclopedia, American Journal of Science 
 and Art, and the Western Quarterly Reporter. His scien- 
 tific papers in all number about one hundred. He edited 
 and arranged almost all of the publications of Prince 
 Charles Lucien Bonaparte written while in America. 
 While at New Harmony his American Entomology, pro- 
 jected in 1816, was completed in three parts. His Ameri- 
 can Conchology had been carried through six volumes 
 at the time of his death. Copies of these works are to be 
 found in the New Harmony library. They are orna- 
 mented by beautiful colored plates, drawn and painted 
 by Mrs. Say, whom, as Miss Lucy Sistare, Mr. Say mar- 
 ried at New Harmony. The exquisite engravings, many 
 of them made at New Harmony, were by C. H. Lesueur, L. 
 Lyon, and James Walker. The American Conchology was 
 printed at New Harmony. " He was one of the truest and 
 noblest students of natural science," writes Dr. Schnack. 
 ^^ He was noted for his modesty and reticence — only his 
 intimate friends were aware of his true worth. He has 
 left his impression on every department of natural science 
 that he touched; and his fellow workers after him have 
 given his name to one or more species in every branch of 
 natural history. Thus he will forever remain immortal- 
 ized through the objects he so much loved and studied." 
 J. S. Kingsley says of Thomas Say, in the Popular Science 
 Monthly : " The number of new species which Say described 
 has probably never been exceeded except in the case of 
 those two exceedingly careless workers, John Edward Gray 
 and Francis Walker, of the British Museum. There is this 
 
 76
 
 THE FOUNDING OF NEW HARMONY 
 
 in Say's favor which can not be said of the two just men- 
 tioned : that his descriptions are almost without exception 
 easily recognized, and almost every form which he de- 
 scribed is now well known. Working as he did almost 
 without books, and without that traditional knowledge 
 which obtains among the continental workers, it was un- 
 avoidable that he should redescribe forms which were 
 known before, but owing to the clear insight he possessed, 
 and the discrimination he exercised in selecting the im- 
 portant features of the form before him, his work has 
 never caused that confusion which many, in much more 
 favorable circumstances, have produced/' 
 
 Charles Alexander Lesueur came from the West Indies 
 to New Harmony. "He had been engaged," writes Dr. 
 Schnack, " by the Jardins des Plantes, at Paris, to make 
 a collection of the various objects of natural history; he 
 was attached to the unfortunate expedition of La Perouse 
 and was left on the coast of Australia to examine and 
 describe the remarkable animals of that continent, other- 
 wise he would have been lost, as all the rest were, by ship- 
 wreck. He was the first to explore, and publish an account 
 of the mounds found in Indiana." Lesueur was also the 
 first to classify the fishes of the Great Lakes. He was an 
 adept painter, and sketches from his pencil are to be found 
 in the New Harmony library. 
 
 Constantino Samuel Raffinesque was a frequent visitor 
 to New Harmony during community days, and associated 
 himself as closely with the experiment there as his nomadic 
 nature would permit. Dr. Jordan calls Raffinesque " the 
 first student of our western fishes," and "the very first 
 teacher of natural history in the West," and devotes to 
 him an interesting chapter in his Science Sketches. Raffi- 
 nesque was born in Constantinople in 1784, and in him were 
 blended French, Turkish, German, and Grecian blood. His 
 early boyhood was spent at Marseilles, where, he says in 
 his Autobiography, he became a zoologist and a naturalist. 
 
 n
 
 TEE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 At the age of twelve he published his first scientific paper. 
 At the outbreak of the French Eevolution he was sent, with 
 a brother, to Philadelphia, where he became a merchant's 
 clerk, and devoted his spare time to the study of botany, 
 traveling on foot, in pursuit of his studies, over Virginia 
 and Pennsylvania. In 1805 he went to Sicily, where he 
 spent ten years. There he discovered the medicinal squill, 
 which was the beginning of a profitable business for the 
 natives of the island. In 1810 he published two works on 
 the fishes of Sicily. In 1815 he again sailed for America. 
 Off the harbor of New London the vessel upon which he 
 was a passenger went down, carrying with it Eaffinesque's 
 books and scienl^ific collections. Kaffinesque drifted west- 
 ward, making pioneer explorations of the botany of the 
 Ohio Eiver country. After a short time spent at New Har- 
 mony, he became professor of natural history and modern 
 languages in Transylvania University, at Lexington, Ken- 
 tucky. After a stormy experience there, he closed his 
 career as a college professor, for which he was ill fitted. 
 During the course of his travels he visited Audubon, then 
 keeping a small store and studying birds at Henderson, 
 Kentucky. Audubon gives an entertaining description of 
 his queer guest. " His attire,'^ writes Audubon, " struck 
 me as extremely remarkable. A long, loose coat of yellow 
 nankeen, much the worse for the many rubs it had got in 
 its time, hung about him loosely, like a sack. A waistcoat 
 of the same, with enormous pockets and buttoned up to the 
 chin, reached below, over a pair of tight pantaloons, the 
 lower part of which was buttoned down over his ankles. 
 His beard was long, and his long black hair hung loosely 
 over his shoulders. His forehead was broad and prom- 
 inent, indicating a mind of strong power. His words im- 
 pressed an assurance of rigid truth; and, as he directed 
 the conversation to the natural sciences, I listened to him 
 with great delight." Eeturning to Philadelphia, Eaffi- 
 nesque began the publication of The Atlantic Journal and 
 
 78
 
 THE FOUNDING OF NEW HARMONY 
 
 Friend of Knowledge, Annals of Nature, and other period- 
 icals, of which, as Dr. Jordan remarks, he was not only 
 editor, publisher, and usually sole contributor, but finally 
 sole subscriber also. Says Dr. Jordan: "He became a 
 monomaniac on the subject of new species. He was uncon- 
 trolled in this matter by the influence of other writers, 
 that incredulous conservatism as to another's discoveries 
 which furnishes a salutary balance to enthusiastic workers. 
 Before his death so much had he seen, and so little had he 
 compared, that he had described certainly twice as many 
 fishes, and probably nearly twice as many plants and shells, 
 as really existed in the regions over which he traveled. 
 '.. . . Thus it came about that the name and work of 
 Raffinesque fell into utter neglect. . . . Long before 
 the invention of railroads and steamboats, he had traveled 
 over most of southern Europe and eastern North America. 
 Without money except as he earned it, he had gathered 
 shells and plants and fishes on every shore from the Helles- 
 pont to the Wabash.'' Eaffinesque died in abject pov- 
 erty in Philadelphia in 1840, entirely without the repu- 
 tation as a scientist which attaches to his name now that 
 zoologists realize the value of his pioneer work. 
 
 Dr. Gerard Troost, a Holland geologist, was also one 
 of the group of scientists brought to New Harmony by 
 Mr. Maclure. Troost was a pioneer in the study of west- 
 ern geology, and became a professor in the Nashville 
 University and State geologist of Tennessee after leaving 
 New Harmony. John Chappelsmith, who accompanied 
 Mr. Owen to New Harmony, was a wealthy English artist 
 and engraver. Prof. Joseph Neef, who came to take 
 charge of the educational features of the New Harmony 
 experiment, had come from Pestalozzi's reform school at 
 Iverdun, at the solicitation of Mr. Maclure, to introduce 
 the Pestalozzian system of education into this country. 
 Madame Marie D. Frotageot and Phiquepal d'Arusmont, 
 also Pestalozzian teachers, came with Mr. Maclure's party 
 
 79
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 from Philadelphia, in which city they had been conducting 
 private schools. Professor Neef had conducted two acade- 
 mies on the Pestalozzian system with indifferent success, 
 near Philadelphia. Frances Wright, who became the wife 
 of Phiquepal d'Arusmont, was at New Harmony during 
 the Rappite removal, and accompanied the Harmonists to 
 their new home in Pennsylvania, for the purpose of obser- 
 vation. She was an enthusiastic advocate of the " new 
 principles," the first American advocate of women^s rights, 
 and one of the earliest among abolition agitators. The 
 four sons of Eobert Owen, Robert Dale, William, David, 
 and Richard, were strong factors in the educational 
 life of New Harmony. All had received their early 
 educational training under private tutors, later enter- 
 ing the manual training and grammar schools founded 
 at New Lanark by their father. All attended the educa- 
 tional institution of Emmanuel Fellenburg at Hoffwyl, 
 Switzerland, David and Richard pursuing a special course 
 in chemistry, and, with Robert, acquiring a knowledge of 
 French and German. David and Richard entered the 
 chemical and physical classes of Dr. Andrew lire, in the 
 Andersonian Institution at Glasgow, and in November, 
 1827, left Liverpool to join their father at New Harmony, 
 where they engaged in teaching and conducting chemical 
 experiments with apparatus brought from Glasgow. 
 
 Robert Dale Owen was, in his earlier years, an enthusi- 
 astic believer in the social theories of his father, and 
 thought with him that three or four hours' work a day, 
 under a system of common property, would support a man. 
 In September, 1825, at the age of twenty-four, he left 
 Liverpool for New York. He landed at New York harbor 
 in November, and set foot on what he called " the Canaan 
 of his hopes." He was accompanied by a Captain McDon- 
 ald, a young English officer who was an enthusiastic Owen- 
 ite. They remained at New York for several weeks, and 
 were joined there by the Maclure party of scientists and 
 
 80
 
 THE FOUNDING OF NEW HARMONY 
 
 educators, including, besides those mentioned above, " sev- 
 eral cultivated ladies, among them. Miss Sistare, afterward 
 the wife of Thomas Say, and her sisters." Kobert Dale 
 Owen is not sure whether William Maclure joined them at 
 New York, or whether he arrived at New Harmony shortly 
 after they reached the place. While in New York, Eobert 
 Dale Owen declared his intention to become an American 
 citizen. The trip to New Harmony from Pittsburg was by 
 a keel boat, which has ever since been known as " The Boat- 
 load of Knowledge." The party reached New Harmony 
 in the middle of January, 1826, eight months after Eobert 
 Owen had formally launched his experiment. 
 
 81
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE PRELIMINARY SOCIETY 
 
 " Land of the West, we come to thee, 
 Far o'er the desert of the sea ; 
 Under thy white-winged canopy, 
 Land of the West, we fly to thee ; 
 Sick of the Old World's sophistry ; 
 Haste then across the dark, blue sea, 
 Land of the West, we rush to thee ! 
 Home of the brave : soil of the free, — 
 Huzza! She rises o'er the sea." 
 
 — Sung hy the Owen paHy on shipboard^ en route to New 
 Harmony. 
 
 During the spring of 1825, the New Harmony experi- 
 ment was a subject of general discussion all over the coun- 
 try. The National Intelligencer quoted the Philadelphia 
 papers as saying that " nine hundred inhabitants of that 
 city have expressed a desire to accompany Mr. Owen to 
 New Harmony/' although Owen was generally decried by 
 the press as " an unbeliever." New Harmony became the 
 rendezvous of enlightened and progressive people from all 
 over the United States and northern Europe. On the other 
 hand, there came to New Harmony scores of cranks with 
 curious hobbies, many persons impelled by curiosity and 
 many others attracted by the prospect of life without labor. 
 The heterogeneous mass would have afforded Charles Dick- 
 ens an unlimited supply of character studies, for eccen- 
 tricity ran riot in a hundred directions. The large ma- 
 jority were freethinkers, attracted by Robert Owen's 
 unorthodox religious views. New Harmony was denom- 
 inated by Alexander Campbell, " the focus of enlightened 
 
 82
 
 CHAELES ALEXANDRE LESUEUR.
 
 % 
 
 •^ 
 
 %
 
 THE PRELIMINARY SOCIETY 
 
 atheism." This fact accounted, in no small degree, for the 
 exodus of scientific men to the place at a time when there 
 was thought to be irreconcilable disagreement between sci- 
 ence and religion. Macdonald says that Owen's proclama- 
 tion was more successful than he had expected, and that he 
 was deprived of an opportunity to select the members of 
 his community by finding the place filled to overflowing 
 on his arrival. 
 
 On April 27, 1825, Eobert Owen addressed the com- 
 munity membership, together with many others who had 
 gathered from the surrounding country to witness the 
 launching of this strange experiment. The meeting was 
 held in the old Rappite church, which had been converted 
 into the " Hall of New Harmony," and dedicated to free 
 thought and free speech. Amid surroundings so favorable 
 to the success of his project, Mr. Owen could not be blamed 
 for speaking optimistically. ^' I am come to this country," 
 he said, " to introduce an entire new state of society; to 
 change it from an igijorant, selfish system to an enlight- 
 ened social system which shall gradually unite all interests 
 into one, and remove all causes for contest between indi- 
 viduals." Reiterating his declaration that happiness, vir- 
 tue, and the rational being can not be attained under the 
 individual system, he said that former attempts at social 
 regeneration had not been made with an accurate knowl- 
 edge of human nature, but were based on an unnatural and 
 artificial view of our own nature. Man claims not our 
 praise and blame, but our compassion, care, attention, and 
 kindness. The change in system, however, Mr. Owen de- 
 clared, could not be accomplished at once. New Harmony 
 is "the half-way house between the old and the new." 
 The people must for a time admit a certain degree of pecu- 
 niary inequality, partly, Mr. Owen explained, because scien- 
 tists and educators would be brought to the settlement 
 under inducements. But there would be no social ine- 
 qualities. He would consider himself no better than the 
 
 83
 
 TEE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 humblest member. The only distinction in the deference 
 accorded individuals should be that commanded by age and 
 experience. While his desire was that the community 
 should be self-governing, it>would be necessary for him to 
 take the direction of affairs for a time. " Ardently as I 
 long for the arrival of that period when there shall be no 
 artificial inequality among the whole human race, yet, as no 
 other individual has had the same experience as myself in 
 the practise of the system about to be introduced, I must, 
 for some time, partially take the lead in its direction, but I 
 shall rejoice when I can be relieved from this task by the 
 population of this place becoming such proficients in the 
 principles and practises of the social system, as to be en- 
 abled to carry it on successfully without my aid and assist- 
 ance." . " I now live," said Mr. Owen in closing, " but to 
 see this system established in the world." 
 
 This first address of Robert Owen at New Harmony was 
 received with enthusiasm. The strong personality of Mr. 
 Owen impressed itself vividly upon the inhabitants. " He 
 is an extraordinary man," wrote W. Pelham to his son, W. 
 C. Pelham, " a wonderful man — such a one, indeed, as the 
 world has never before seen. His wisdom, his comprehen- 
 sive mind, his practical knowledge, but above all, his open- 
 ness, candor, and sincerity, have no parallel in ancient or 
 modern history." 
 
 On May 1, 1825, the " Preliminary Society of New Har- 
 mony " was formed and the constitution proposed by Rob- 
 ert Owen on April 27th was adopted. This constitution 
 is so complete an exposition of the purposes of the Owen- 
 ite communists, and so fully sets forth the scheme of gov- 
 ernment devised for " the half-way house between the old 
 system and the new," that it is worth reproducing in its 
 entirety. The constitution is preceded by the statement: 
 " The society is instituted generally to promote the hap- 
 piness of the world," and continues as follows: 
 
 84
 
 THE PRELIMINARY SOCIETY 
 
 " This Preliminary Society is particularly formed to im- 
 prove the character and conditions of its own members, 
 and to prepare them to become associates in independent 
 communities, 'having common propertylj 
 
 " The sole objects of these communities will be to pro- 
 cure for all their members the greatest amount of happi- 
 ness, to secure it to them, and to transmit it to their chil- 
 dren to the latest posterity. 
 
 "Persons of all ages and descriptions, exclusive of per- 
 sons of color, may become members of the Preliminary 
 Society. ( Persons of color may be received as helpers to the 
 society, if necessary; or it may be found useful to prepare 
 and enable them to become associates in communities in 
 Africa, or in some other country, or in some other part of 
 this country. 
 
 ^\The members of the Preliminary Society are all of the 
 same rank, no artificial inequality being acknowledged; 
 precedence to be given only to age and experience, 
 and to those who may be chosen to offices of trust and 
 utility. 
 
 " As the proprietor of the settlement, and founder of 
 the system, has purchased the property, paid for it, and 
 furnished the capital, and has consequently subjected 
 himself to all the risk of the establishment, it is nec- 
 essary for the formation of the system, and for its se- 
 curity, that he should have the appointment of the 
 committee which is to direct and manage the affairs of 
 the society. 
 
 "This committee will conduct all the affairs of the 
 society. It will be, as much as possible, (^omposed of men 
 of experience and integrity, who are competent to carry 
 the system into effect^ and to apply impartial justice to all 
 the members of the society. 
 
 " The number of the committee will be augmented from 
 time to time, according as the proprietor may secure the 
 assistance of other valuable members. 
 
 85
 
 TEE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 T At the termination of one year from the establishment 
 of the settlement, which shall be dated from the first day 
 of May, the members of the society shall elect, by ballot, 
 from among themselves, three additional members of the 
 committee. Their election is for the purpose of securing 
 to all the members a full knowledge of the proceedings of 
 the committee, and of the business of the society; but it 
 is delayed for one year, in order to afford time for the 
 formation of the society, and to enable the members to 
 become acquainted with the characters and abilities of 
 those who are proper to be elected. 
 
 " It is expected that at the termination of the second 
 year, or between that period and the end of the third year, 
 an association of members may be formed to constitute a 
 community of equality and independence to be governed 
 according to the rules and regulations contained in the 
 printed paper entitled Mr. Owen's Plan for the Per- 
 manent Eelief of the Working Classes, with such altera- 
 tions as experience may suggest and the localities of the 
 situation may require. 
 
 " The independent community will be established upon 
 property purchased by the associated members. 
 
 '^ The Preliminary Society will continue to receive 
 members preparatory to their removal into other inde- 
 pendent communities. ' 
 
 " Every individual, previous to admission as a member, 
 must sign the constitution, which signature shall be regu- 
 larly witnessed. The members must join the society at 
 their own expense. 
 
 " The society shall not be answerable for the debts of 
 any of its members, (iior in any manner for their conduct, 
 no partnership whatsoever existing between the members 
 of the Preliminary Society. 
 
 " The members shall occupy the dwellings which the 
 committee may provide for them. 
 
 The live stock possessed by members will be taken 
 
 86 
 
 ((
 
 TEE PRELIMINARY SOCIETY 
 
 and placed to their credit, if wanted for the society, but if 
 not required, it shall not be received. 
 
 " All members must provide their own household and 
 kitchen furniture, and their small tools, such as spades, 
 hoes, axes, rakes, etc., and they may bring such provisions 
 as they have already provided. 
 
 "All the members shall willingly render their best 
 services for the good of the society, according to their age, 
 experience, and capacity, and if inexperienced in that 
 which is requisite for its welfare, they shall apply them- 
 selves diligently to acquire the knowledge of some useful 
 occupation or employment. 
 
 " They shall enter the society with a determination to 
 promote its peace, prosperity, and harmony, and never, 
 under any provocation whatever, act unkindly or unjustly 
 toward, nor speak in an unfriendly manner of, any one 
 either in or out of the society. 
 
 " Members shall be temperate, regular, and orderly in 
 their whole conduct, and they shall be dihgent in their 
 employments, in proportion to their age, capacity, and con- 
 stitution. 
 
 " They shall show a good example, it being a much bet- 
 ter instructor than precept. 
 
 " They shall watch over, and endeavor to protect, the 
 whole property from every kind of injury. 
 
 " The members shall receive such advantages, living, 
 comfort, and education for their children as this society and 
 the present state of New Harmony affords., , v 
 
 " The living shall be upon equal terms for all, with the 
 exceptions hereafter to be mentioned. 
 
 " In old age, in sickness, or when an accident occurs, 
 care shall be taken of all parties, medical aid shall be 
 afforded, and every attention shown to them that kindness 
 can suggest. 
 
 " Each member shall, within a fixed amount in value, 
 have the free choice of food and clothing; to effect this, a 
 
 87
 
 TEE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 credit (to be hereafter fixed by the committee), will be 
 opened in the store for each family, in proportion to the 
 number of its useful members, also for each single member, 
 but beyond this amount, no one will be permitted to draw 
 on credit. The exceptions to this rule are the following, 
 to wit^ 
 
 " 11 When the proprietor of the establishment shall 
 deem it necessary for the promotion of the system, and the 
 interest and improvement of the society, to engage scientific 
 and experienced persons to superintend some of the most 
 difficult, useful, or responsible situations, at a fixed salary, 
 then such individuals shall have a credit upon the store in 
 proportion to their income. 
 
 " 2. When any peculiar or unforeseen case may arise, a 
 general meeting of all the members shall be called by the 
 committee, who shall state the particulars of the case to 
 the meeting; the members present shall deliberate upon 
 the subject, and give their vote by ballot, and the question 
 shall be decided by the majority. 
 
 "Each family and individual member shall have a 
 credit and debit account, in which they will be charged 
 with what they receive, at the prices the Harmonists usually 
 received for the same articles and credits by the value of 
 their services, to be estimated by the committee, assisted by 
 the persons at the head of the departments in which the 
 respective individuals may be employed; the value of their 
 services over their expenditure shall be placed at the end 
 of each year to their credit in the books of the society, 
 but no part of this credit shall be drawn out, except in the 
 productions of the establishment, or in store goods, and 
 with the consent of the committee. 
 
 "Members may visit their friends, or travel whenever 
 they please, provided the committee can conveniently sup- 
 ply their places in the departments in which they may be 
 respectively employed. 
 
 " To enable the members to travel, they will be supplieci 
 
 8B
 
 TEE PRELIMINARY SOCIETY 
 
 with funds to half the amount placed to their credit, not, 
 however, exceeding one hundred dollars in any one year, 
 unl^ the distance they have to travel from home exceeds 
 six hundred miles. 
 
 " Members may receive their friends to visit them, pro- 
 vided they be answerable that such visitors, during their 
 stay, do not transgress the rules of the society. 
 
 " The children wil^ be located in the best possible man- 
 ner in day-schools, and will board and sleep in their parents' 
 houses. Should any members, however, prefer placing 
 their children in the boarding-school, they must make a 
 particular and individual engagement with the committee; 
 but no members shall be permitted to bind themselves nor 
 their children to the society for a longer period than one 
 week. 
 
 " All the members shall enjoy complete liberty of con- 
 science, and be afforded every facility for exercising those 
 practises of religious worship and devotion which they may 
 prefer. 
 
 " Should the arrangements formed for the happiness of 
 the members fail to effect their object, any of them, by giv- 
 ing a week's notice, can quit the society, taking with them, 
 in the productions of the establishment, the value of what 
 they brought, which value shall be ascertained and fixed 
 by the committee. The members may also, in the same 
 manner, take out the amount of what appears to their credit 
 in the books of the society, at the end of the year imme- 
 diately preceding their removal, provided that amount still 
 remain to their credit. 
 
 "Any families or members contravening any of the 
 articles of this constitution, or acting in any way improp- 
 erly, shall be dismissed by the committee from the society 
 and settlement, upon giving them the same notice by which 
 they are at liberty to quit the society. 
 
 " Persons who possess capital, and who do not wish to be 
 employed, may partake of the benefits of this society, by 
 
 89
 
 TEE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 paying such sum annually as may be agreed upon between 
 them and the committee, always paying a quarter in 
 advance. 
 
 " Persons wishing to invest capital on interest in the 
 funds of the society may do so by making a particular 
 agreement with the committee/' 
 
 After the adoption of this constitution, Eobert Owen 
 addressed the meeting. At the end of the second year, 
 he declared, the members might choose one-half of the 
 committee of control. The next step, which might be 
 taken in the following year, would be the establishment 
 of the perfect community. He recommended that each 
 family consume, so far as possible, " those articles which 
 are the productions of America," so that the society might 
 speedily become independent. He urged that wherever it 
 was possible vegetable gardens be attached to the house- 
 hold premises, and that the dwellings, inside and out, be 
 kept neat and clean. All differences between the members 
 should be settled by arbitration, and all disputes, quarrel- 
 ing, and drunkenness were to be strictly prohibited. It was 
 his desire " to forbid the use of liquors altogether," but 
 he considered " such rigor impracticable for the present." 
 The youth were to be organized into militia companies and 
 drilled for healthful exercise and defense, but children were 
 to be taught that war was contrary to the spirit of the 
 social system. 
 
 Though many of the less competent desired to enter at 
 once into communistic association, there were no imme- 
 diate manifestations of dissatisfaction at the adoption of 
 a temporary semiindividual system. While the power of 
 naming the entire membership of the committee of con- 
 trol was vested in Robert Owen, he contented himself with 
 designating four members, who, wdth the rest, were elected 
 by the society. Little over a month after the formation of 
 the Preliminary Society, Mr. Owen left N'ew Harmony, en 
 
 90
 
 THE PRELIMINARY SOCIETY 
 
 route for New Lanark, with the intention of bringing his 
 family to Indiana. He embarked for Liverpool from New 
 York on July 17, 1825, and did not return to New Har- 
 mony until the following January. Before leaving, he 
 recommended that the inhabitants meet together three eve- 
 nings in each week — one for the general discussion of sub- 
 jects connected with the welfare of the community, another 
 for a concert of vocal and instrumental music, and a third 
 for a public ball. He left a school of one hundred and 
 thirty children, who were educated, clothed, and boarded 
 at the public expense. Mr. Maclure did not remain at New 
 Harmony, but, during the greater part of the lifetime of 
 the experiment, was traveling for his health. 
 
 91
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 "the half-way house" 
 
 DuKiNG the absence of Robert Owen in Europe, the 
 New Harmony Gazette, the official organ of the commu- 
 nity, was established. Its first issue is dated October 1, 
 1825, and bears the motto: "If we can not reconcile all 
 opinions, let us endeavor to unite all hearts." The pro- 
 spectus stated: "In our Gazette, we purpose developing 
 more fully the principles of the social system, that the 
 world, with ourselves, may, by contrast, be convinced that 
 individuality detracts largely from the sum of human hap- 
 piness." "Although our columns will ever be closed 
 against personal invective," stated the prospectus, "yet 
 they will ever be open to the free expression of opinions, 
 which, however erroneous, may become useful, where rea- 
 son and truth are left free to combat them." The pub- 
 lication continued through three volumes. Like all its 
 contemporaries of that period, the Gazette devoted little 
 space to what w^e now denominate local news. Its columns 
 were filled with essays on such subjects as Moral Respon- 
 sibility and Human Happiness, alternating with selec- 
 tions from Mr. Owen's works, dissertations on agricultural 
 topics, scientific articles, and such general news as might 
 come to the attention of the editor through the medium of 
 exchanges which could not be called recent by the time the 
 river boat or overland carrier had delivered them at New 
 Harmony, which had only a weekly mail service. The 
 more important events at New Harmony are, however, re- 
 corded, and from the' pages of the Gazette we must draw 
 
 9^
 
 ''THE HALF-WAY HOUSE'' 
 
 the larger part of our information concerning the active 
 community history. 
 
 In one of the first numbers of the Gazette appears an 
 official View of New Harmony, and a review of the work 
 accomplished by the society during the first six months 
 of settlement. " The village/' says the Gazette, " is regu- 
 larly laid out in squares, forming four streets running north 
 and south, and six running east and west: the whole in- 
 cluded in six wards, containing thirty-five brick, forty-five 
 frame, and one hundred log buildings, occupied for various 
 purposes. Some of the buildings are spacious and costly, 
 the principal of which are the town-hall, the mansion- 
 house, formerly occupied by Mr. Eapp, the public store and 
 manufactories, the boarding-school, and several large board- 
 ing-houses for the accommodation of the members of the 
 society. Great uniformity of structures is observed in the 
 dwelling-houses, which have an air of neatness, although 
 small, and inconvenient for families accustomed to a city 
 life." Of the town-hall, heretofore described as the Rap- 
 pite church, the Gazette said: " The whole building has a 
 grand and imposing appearance. The second stories of 
 two of the wings are laid off into small rooms, which serve 
 for music, reading, debating, and other social meetings. 
 The large lower room is appropriated to deliberative assem- 
 blages of the citizens, to balls and concerts, and is lighted 
 up every evening for the convenience of those who may 
 choose to pass the time together. The church is a neat 
 frame building, painted white, the spire of which is fur- 
 nished with two heavy bells, and is set apart for religious 
 meetings, and for day and evening schools, to which every 
 member desirous of elementary instruction has access. The 
 boarding-school is a convenient, airy, three-story brick 
 building, ninety feet by sixty-five, and contains accommo- 
 dations for one hundred and sixty children. The institu- 
 tion is at present under a favorable organization, and the 
 number of pupils amounts to upward of one hundred." 
 
 93
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 '^Manufactures and trades," continued the Gazette, 
 "are among the leading objects to which associations 
 formed on the cooperative plan should turn their attention, 
 for in no other way can a desirable state of independence 
 be secured. The experience of our predecessors convinced 
 them of this fact, and they have left behind them respect- 
 able evidences of their devotion to these two branches of 
 industry. Their principal manufacturing establishment 
 consisted of two spacious buildings, one occupied as a mer- 
 chandise-mill, and the other filled with machinery for 
 manufacturing cotton and wool, all driven by a steam- 
 engine of sixty horse-power. The weaving, dressing, and 
 dye-houses are built on an extensive and convenient plan, 
 calculated for operations far exceeding the wants of the 
 society. The cloths and flannels hitherto produced at this 
 place have been in high reputation throughout the country. 
 The present society has a no less cheering prospect before 
 them in their capacity of growing to any extent the raw 
 materials of cotton and wool than in their means of prose- 
 cuting the manufacture of these articles, equal to the con- 
 sumption of themselves and their neighbors. 
 
 " The mechanical branches possess the requisite facili- 
 ties for carrying on their respective trades, in workshops 
 and tools, and include an extensive brewery, tan-yard, soap 
 and candle factory, etc., but an accession of skilful hands 
 in nearly all these branches of industry, as well as in some 
 other departments, is still desirable. No fears, however, 
 are entertained that these wants will long remain unsup- 
 plied, if an opinion can be formed from the daily applica- 
 tions for admission to membership which the society is 
 and has been under the necessity of rejecting through want 
 of suitable accommodations. In future, or until such ac- 
 commodations can be provided, no applications can meet 
 with success, except from those who possess a knowledge 
 of the most useful and indispensable arts. 
 
 " Our manufacturing and mechanical branches may be 
 
 94
 
 ''THE HALF-WAY HOUSE" 
 
 considered in a state of infancy. Notwithstanding the pur- 
 chase included most things necessary for prosecuting them 
 on a pretty extensive scale, yet we have had no good cause 
 to calculate even on the limited degree of success which 
 has attended them. The commencement of this society 
 may be dated on the first of May last, two months previous 
 to which time our Mr. Owen, with a few exceptions, was 
 an entire stranger to the persons now composing his new 
 association. The transatlantic concerns of our founder left 
 him but little time for completing his arrangements here, 
 and a population of eight hundred persons was, in the 
 short space of three weeks, drawn together, necessarily 
 without much deliberation, or any reference to their pro- 
 fessional skill or immediate usefulness. This state of things 
 left us but little to expect from their ability to carry on 
 successfully the multifarious operations necessary for the 
 continuance and comfort of so large a population. Under 
 these and many other unfavorable circumstances, our man- 
 ufactories have been at work since the middle of June. 
 With the machinery now in hand, our operations in the 
 wool business should turn out one hundred and sixty 
 pounds of yarn per day, but the want of spinners reduces 
 the business. The frilling and dressing departments have, 
 at present, neither regular superintendents nor workmen, 
 consequently they are not prosecuted with effect. The 
 cotton-spinning establishment is equal to producing be- 
 tween three and four hundred pounds of yarn per week, 
 and is under very good direction, but skilful and ready 
 hands are much wanting, which time will furnish from our 
 present population. The dye-house is a spacious brick 
 building, furnished with copper vessels, capable of con- 
 taining between fifteen hundred and two thousand gallons, 
 and will probably compare in convenience with any in the 
 United States. At present this valuable establishment is 
 doing nothing for want of a skilful person to undertake 
 the direction of it. The manufacture of soap, candles, and 
 
 95
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 glue has hitherto rather exceeded our consumption. A 
 convenient and moderately extensive ropewalk has fur- 
 nished the store with articles of that trade. The hat-manu- 
 factory is under good organization, and has attached to it 
 eight efficient workmen. The boot and shoe department 
 is doing well, seventeen workmen being constantly em- 
 ployed. Besides these, in the employed professions, are 
 thirty-six farmers and field laborers, four tanners, two 
 gardeners, two butchers, two bakers, two distillers, one 
 brewer, one tinner, two watchmakers, four black and white 
 smiths, two turners, one machine-maker, four coopers, three 
 printers, one stocking-weaver, three sawyers, seven tailors, 
 twelve seamstresses and mantua-makers, nine carpenters, 
 four bricklayers, two stonecutters, four wheelwrights, one 
 cabinet-maker and three cloth-weavers. Of the unemployed 
 professions we have three tobacconists and two paper- 
 makers. The pottery is doing nothing for want of hands, 
 and we have at present neither saddlers, harness-makers, 
 leather-dressers, coppersmiths, brush-makers, comb-mak- 
 ers, glaziers, painters, nor bookbinders. 
 
 " The merchant-mill, driven by water, at the cut-off 
 (beside the one in the village operated by steam), is a large 
 establishment, having three sets of stones, and complete 
 fixtures for the manufacture of flour, and is capable of 
 turning out sixty barrels in twenty-four hours. One mile 
 from the town is a sawmill capable of furnishing an un- 
 limited quantity of lumber." Evidently both these estab- 
 lishments were still lying idle, as their operation is not 
 mentioned. " A cotton-gin of sixty saws is at this time in 
 active operation, doing a good business for the society as 
 well as for the surrounding country. We have a well-sup- 
 plied apothecary shop, under the direction of a highly re- 
 spectable physician, who gives his attendance and dispenses 
 medicine without charge to the citizens. 
 
 " The mercantile store is doing an extensive business 
 with the country, while it supplies all the inhabitants with 
 
 96
 
 " THE HALF-WA Y. HO USE '' 
 
 all their necessaries. The tavern, which is large, commo- 
 dious, and well regulated, is much frequented by strang- 
 ers, who are attracted to visit us either through curios- 
 ity or from a desire to partake of our social amusements." 
 " In taking a survey of ISTew Harmony," said the Ga- 
 zette of October 22d, " the mind is struck with a degree of 
 admiration at the appearance, which designates the prog- 
 ress of its late industrious inhabitants, both in the arts of 
 life and in their progress toward a more perfect state of 
 society. Here, the rude log cabin marks their first humble 
 efforts, there the neat frame house bespeaks their improve- 
 ment in taste and skill; again, their spacious, substantial 
 community houses tell us of their ability to supply an 
 increase of comforts, and the public buildings exhibit a 
 great amount of surplus labor and skill. The two spacious 
 granaries, calculated to lay up stores for the consumption 
 of years, are among the most prominent objects of the 
 place. One is a four-storied frame, one hundred feet by 
 eighty; the other is a vast building of brick and stone, 
 with a tiled roof, and having five floors laid with tile brick. 
 From its strength and appearance, it might have been 
 taken for a fortress rather than a storehouse for grain. 
 The public buildings are calculated to attract the attention 
 of strangers who visit the place, as much from the novelty 
 of design as from the amount of labor and materials con- 
 sumed in their construction." 
 
 The Gazette also stated that the river abounded in fish, 
 "of the description usually found in the western waters. 
 We think our neighborhood is not infected with mis- 
 chievous animals. Of the panther, the bear, and the fox 
 we have heard nothing. Wolves are said to depredate on 
 our pigs and calves when running in retired forests. Deer 
 are often seen bounding over our fields, and browsing on 
 our corn. Numbers of fawns are offered for sale on our 
 streets during the spring months." 
 
 Under date of October 10th, a member of the society 
 
 8 97
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 wrote to a friend in Boston : " Tlie society has not been 
 long enough together to acquire any particular character: 
 you can judge yourself that a collection of individuals from 
 all parts of the earth, of all kinds, sects, and denomina- 
 tions, who have hastily rushed together, can have no char- 
 acter as yet, except indeed the absence of one. If this is not 
 strictly true, the exceptions to it are that the people gen- 
 erally show a disposition to do as well as they know how, 
 and to learn to do as much better as they can, which is all 
 that appears to be expected by those who have the burdens 
 to bear." Another letter from a member to an eastern 
 friend, under date of October 30th, stated that " so far, 
 domestic quarrels, disputes between individual members, 
 and religious and political controversies are unknown, at 
 least they are so very infrequent as to be unknown to the 
 writer, probably because we have no opposing interests to 
 generate quarrels ; and also because there is no such thing, 
 under the new system, as an insult; every man speaks 
 according to the impression which dictates his words, and 
 all impressions are made upon him by the exercise of facul- 
 ties over which he has no control." 
 
 The Gazette of October 29th contains the following 
 review of the condition of the community affairs: 
 
 " Every State in the Union, with the exception of the 
 two most southern, and almost every country in the north 
 of Europe, has contributed to make up our population. We 
 may readily conceive that a population collected from so 
 many different countries, and of different habits and opin- 
 ions, possessing no common ties of interest or sympathy, 
 could not immediately coalesce nor present to the observer 
 any marked prevailing character. 
 
 " In comparing the moral condition of our citizens with 
 the state of the old society, we are struck with the degree 
 of advantage which the former has over the latter; and 
 the mind, accounting for the difference, is involuntarily 
 directed in search of some new principle. Here, social 
 
 98
 
 "TBE HALF-WAY HOUSE 
 
 }> 
 
 intercourse is not disturbed by conflicting interests^ nor 
 the long catalogue of bad feelings generated by them, but 
 every man meets his neighbor with honest confidence. 
 
 " This society regards education as public property, 
 . . » and holds that the educating and training of 
 youth should be among the first objects of its solicitude 
 and care. . . . Well-regulated amusements should be 
 no less a part of the business of life than other occupa- 
 tions, but this important object has hitherto been mostly 
 directed by chance: in consequence, immorality and dis- 
 order have to a great extent prevailed. . . . This 
 society has made it its especial care to blend amusements 
 with industry and study. Tuesday evenings are appro- 
 priated to balls, at which we have an able band of music, 
 and a general attendance of the youthful population: 
 Friday evenings to concerts, at which, in addition to the 
 regular band, such of the children as have musical talent 
 are introduced. On Wednesday evening, public meetings 
 are held, when all subjects relating to the well-being of 
 the society are freely and fully discussed. 
 
 " The military of this place consists of one company of 
 infantry, one of artillery, and a corps of riflemen, which 
 together with a company of veterans, and one of riflemen 
 just forming, will amount to two himdred and fifty sol- 
 diers ; thus, while the people provide for their own protec- 
 tion against the social ills of life, they do not neglect the 
 means of national defense. 
 
 " From a review of the circumstances existing at this 
 place, our readers will now perceive that if we have not yet 
 been able to accomplish all the objects contemplated in the 
 formation of this association, so much has, however, been 
 completed, as to convince us of the practicability and assure 
 us of the ultimate success of Mr. Owen^s plans for the 
 amelioration of the condition of mankind." 
 
 On November 7th occurred the installation of oiBBcers 
 of the first secret society in the community — The New 
 
 99
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 Harmony Philanthropic Lodge of Masons, showing that 
 Mr. Owen's plans did not contemplate the abolition of 
 secret societies. In the Gazette of that date, this announce- 
 ment is made : " The Eegnlar Meeting of the Female Social 
 Society is postponed until Monday evening." There is no 
 earlier record of a woman's club. The first marriage in 
 the community recorded by the Gazette was that of " Mr. 
 Alfred Salmon to Miss Elizabeth S. Palmer/' which took 
 place on October 27th^ the ceremony being performed 
 by a minister of the gospel named Meek. In spite of 
 the inauguration of the social system, the New Harmony 
 store was advertising magistrates' blanks. 
 
 In an early October issue of the Gazette appeared a com- 
 munication signed *^ An Illinois Farmer," in which he 
 declared, " in the most unequivocal manner," that " the 
 principles of Eobert Owen, or any society founded upon 
 them, will not and can not succeed. They will at the out- 
 set commit suicide on themselves, if steadily adhered to." 
 The editor remonstrated with the correspondent, and 
 assured him of the present and future success of tKe com- 
 munity. In reply to a further communication the Gazette 
 said editorially : " We would inform the Illinois Farmer, 
 in answer to his second communication on dancing, that 
 we suffer not our amusements to interfere with our regular 
 employments; but, after the fatigue of the day, when we 
 can not see to handle a plow, we consider ourselves at 
 perfect liberty to devote our evenings to intellectual im- 
 provement or to any rational recreation." 
 
 In an editorial advocating increased rights for women, 
 the Gazette declared : " It is, we believe, contemplated in 
 Mr. Owen's system, by giving our female population as 
 good an education as our males, to qualify them for every 
 situation in life in which, consistently with their organiza- 
 tion, they may be placed." 
 
 As early as September 19, 1825, the first society formed 
 on Eobert Owen's principles, other than that at New Har- 
 
 100
 
 ''TEE HALF-WAY HOUSE" 
 
 mony, was in process of organization in Green County, 
 Ohio. This society was called the Yellow Springs com- 
 munity, and a correspondent writes the Gazette hopefully 
 of its progress. 
 
 While 'New Harmony was generally looked upon as a 
 center of infidelity, there were frequent religious services 
 there. The only reservation made with regard to the use 
 of the church was that two hours on Sunday morning were 
 occupied by a lecture on the social" system, " the lecturer 
 confining his remarks to subjects calculated to suppress 
 discord and vice, and studiously avoiding anything that 
 might arouse ill feeling or wound the religious prejudices 
 of his hearers." There was a wide-spread prejudice against 
 the New Harmony schools on account of a belief that athe- 
 istic principles were taught. Eeligious matters, however, 
 were not discussed in the schools, " that being left to the 
 parents or religious instructors." Permission to speak at 
 the church was given to any minister who asked it, " his 
 creed not being asked." Sunday in the community was a 
 day of rest, and to most of the members of the society a 
 day of recreation. 
 
 By Christmas of 1825, the population of New Harmony 
 numbered about one thousand. The Gazette published a 
 review of the operations of the society, in which it con- 
 gratulated the members on their advancement in the direc- 
 tion of unity and harmony, which it declared had been 
 effected by reducing Mr. Owen's principles to practise. 
 " Popular opinion being now decidedly opposed to indo- 
 lence and vice, the idle member must become industrious, 
 and the vicious become more virtuous, or they can not rest 
 contentedly in the bosom of our community." 
 
 Kobert Owen had arrived with his party at New York 
 on November 7th, but remained for some time in the East 
 pushing the new propaganda. A Washington paper of 
 December 5th stated.: " On Saturday last. Captain Mc- 
 Donald and Stedman Whit well, friends of Mr. Owen, and 
 
 101
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 deputed by him, waited by appointment upon the Presi- 
 dent, and presented to him for the use of the general 
 government a model of one of the cities for two thousand 
 people, which Mr. Owen proposes to execute himself, and 
 which he recommends to be universally adopted in society. 
 The model is almost six feet square, and is, therefore, upon 
 a scale sufficiently large to exhibit satisfactorily the various 
 descriptions of buildings and their relative dimensions." 
 
 On December 28th, the Gazette said : " From the nu- 
 merous applications which we have received for member- 
 ship ; from the rapidity with which the liberal principles of 
 the social system are embraced by intelligent and reflect- 
 ing minds, and from the general disposition, wherever they 
 have been received, toward reducing them to practise, and 
 from the number of social communities springing up in 
 this State, independent of every advantage offered to in- 
 dividual settlers, we have reason to believe that the increase 
 in population will be greater than at any former period; 
 and were it possible to accommodate the applicants with 
 houses, this little town, before the next sitting of the legis- 
 lature, would have an increase of many times its present 
 population.'^ 
 
 103
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE "permanent COMMUNITY" 
 
 The devil at length scrambled out of the hole 
 Discovered by Symmes at the freezing North Pole : 
 
 He mounted an iceberg, spread his wings for a sail. 
 And started for earth with his long, barbed tail. 
 
 He heard that a number of people were going ■ 
 
 To live on the Wabash with great Mr. Owen : ] 
 
 He said to himself, " I must now have a care, 
 Circumstances require that myself should be there. 
 
 " I know that these persons think they are impelled. 
 And by power of circumstance all men are held, 
 And owe no allegiance to heaven or me : 
 "What a place this for work for the devil will be. 
 
 ** Since Adam first fell by my powerful hand, 
 I have wandered for victims through every known land, 
 But in all my migrations ne'er hit on a plan 
 That would give me the rule so completely o'er man. 
 
 " I have set sects to fighting and shedding of blood. 
 And have whispered to bigots they're all doing good, 
 
 Inquisitions I've founded, made kings my lies swallow, 
 But this plan of free living beats all my schemes hollow 
 
 *' I have tempted poor Job, and have smote him with sores : 
 I have tried all good men, and caught preachers by scores, 
 But never on earth, through my whole course of evil. 
 Until now could I say, ' Here's a plan beats the devil.* 
 
 " I am satisfied now this will make the coast clear. 
 For men to all preaching will turn a deaf ear : 
 
 Since it's plain that religion is changed to opinions, 
 I must hasten back home, and enlarge my dominions." 
 
 The devil then mounted again on the ice. 
 And dashed through the waves, and got home in a trice, 
 And told his fell imps whom he kept at the pole 
 Circumstances required they should widen the hole ! 
 
 — Poem in opposition to the Owen community in the Philadelphia 
 Gazette^ January, 1826. 
 
 103
 
 TEE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT \ 
 
 I 
 
 On January 18, 1826, Eobert Owen, with his " boat- i 
 
 load of knowledge/^ arrived again at New Harmony. He i 
 
 was greeted with great rejoicing by the inhabitants, the I 
 
 children from the boarding-school escorting him from the ' 
 
 limits of the village to the tavern. Eobert Owen was ! 
 
 delighted with the apparent success of the society, and j 
 
 declared that the people had progressed far toward the ; 
 
 conditions necessary for the formation of a perfect com- j 
 
 munity. The people generally believed that the arrival ; 
 
 of their leader, with his party of " wise men from the i 
 
 East," would rally all retreat and lead on to victory. Un- | 
 
 der Mr. Owen's practised hand the idle factories would i 
 soon be in full operation and all the projected plans of the 
 
 founder, including the building of his new village of unity \ 
 
 and cooperation, would soon be undertaken. The educa- j 
 
 tional feature of the experiment was certain to receive a ] 
 
 great impetus from the accession of such a corps of scholars i 
 
 as that which had accompanied Mr. Owen from New York. j 
 
 Mr. Owen was enthusiastic and optimistic, as well as \ 
 
 anxious for the immediate trial of his ultimate plans. One , 
 week after his arrival, he announced that in consideration 
 
 of the progress which had been made, the Preliminary j 
 
 Society would be cut off two years before its time, and a j 
 
 community of perfect equality inaugurated. " I think my ' 
 
 father must have been as well pleased with the condition ! 
 
 of things at New Harmony as I myself was/' writes Robert | 
 
 Dale Owen. " At all events ... he disclosed to me i 
 
 his intention to propose to the Harmonites that they should > 
 
 form themselves into a community of equality, based on ; 
 
 the principle of common property. This took me by sur- j 
 
 prise." j 
 
 On the 25th of January, 1826, it was resolved in a | 
 
 meeting of the Preliminary Society to organize a Com- ; 
 
 munity of Equality from among the members of the ; 
 
 society. The meeting resolved itself into a constitu- ■ 
 
 tional convention, which was organized by the election of j 
 
 104 i
 
 jijj|ipf^fff;3 
 
 o 
 % 
 
 < 
 
 o 
 
 /r 
 
 ! --
 
 THE LIBRARY 

 
 THE ''PERMANENT COMMUNITY 
 
 i> 
 
 Dr. Philip M. Price as president and Thomas Pears as 
 secretary. A committee of seven was chosen hy ballot 
 to frame a draft of the constitution to be submitted at 
 a future meeting of the convention. 
 
 The following named persons were chosen : Warner W. 
 Lewis, James 0. Wattles, John Whitby, William Owen, 
 Donald McDonald, R. L. Jennings, and Robert Dale Owen. 
 On February 1st this committee made its report, which 
 was vigorously debated through several sessions, several 
 substitute plans being submitted by members of the con- 
 vention. At the sixth session, the whole subject was sub- 
 mitted to the committee for revision. " The committee 
 again reported at the seventh session,^' says the Gazette, 
 "and the constitution proposed, after having undergone 
 several alterations and amendments, was at the ninth ses- 
 sion of the convention, held on Sunday evening, February 
 5th, formally adopted." 
 
 The constitution was preceded by an interesting and 
 comprehensive declaration of principles. " When a num- 
 ber of the human family associate in principles which do 
 not yet influence the rest of the world," stated the pre- 
 amble, " a due regard to the opinions of others requires a 
 public declaration of the object of their association, of 
 their principles, and of their intentions." The " Declara- 
 tion" continued: 
 
 " Our^ object is that of all sentient beings, happi- 
 ness. 
 
 Our principles are: 
 
 Equality of rights, uninfluenced by sex or condi- 
 tion, in all adults. 
 
 " Equality of duties, modified by physical and mental 
 conformation. 
 
 " Cooperative union, in the business and amusements 
 of life. 
 
 " Community of property. 
 
 "Freedom of speech and action. 
 
 105 
 
 6i
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 ^ Sincerity in all our proceedings. 
 
 "Kindness in all our actions. 
 
 " Courtesy in all our intercourse. 
 
 " Order in all our arrangements. 
 
 " Preservation of health. 
 
 " Acquisition of knowledge. 
 
 " The practise of economy, or of producing and 
 using the best of everything in the most beneficial 
 manner, 
 
 " Obedience to the laws of the country in which we 
 live. 
 
 " We hold it to be self-evident : 
 
 " That man is uniformly actuated by a desire of hap- 
 piness. 
 
 " That no member of the human family is born with 
 rights either of possession or exemption superior to those of 
 his fellows. 
 
 " That freedom in the sincere expression of every sen- 
 timent and opinion, and in the direction of every action, 
 is the inalienable right of each human being, and can not 
 justly be limited except by his own consent. 
 
 " That the preservation of life, in its most perfect 
 state, is the first of all practical considerations. 
 
 " And that, as we live in the State of Indiana, sub- 
 mission to its laws and to those of the general govern- 
 ment is necessary. 
 
 " Experience has taught us : 
 
 " That man's character, mental, moral, and physical, is 
 the result of his formation, his location, and of the cir- 
 cumstances within which he exists. 
 
 " And that man, at birth, is formed unconsciously to 
 himself, is located without his consent, and circum- 
 stanced without his control. 
 
 " Therefore, man's character is not of his own forma- 
 tion, and reason teaches us that to a being of such nature, 
 artificial rewards and punishments are equally inappli- 
 
 106
 
 THE "PERMANENT COMMUNITY 
 
 >f 
 
 cable; kindness is the only consistent mode of treatment, 
 and courtesy the only rational species of deportment. 
 
 " We have observed, in the affairs of the world, that 
 man is powerful in action, efficient in production, and 
 happy in social life, only as he acts cooperatively and 
 unitedly. 
 
 " Cooperative union, therefore, we consider indispen- 
 sable to the attainment of our object. 
 
 " We have remarked that where the greatest results 
 have been produced by cooperative union, order and 
 economy were the principal means of their attainment. 
 
 "Experience, therefore, places order and economy 
 among our principles. 
 
 " The departure from the principle of man's equal 
 rights, which is exhibited in the arrangement of indi- 
 vidual property, we have seen succeeded by competition 
 and opposition, by jealousy and dissension, by extrava- 
 gance and poverty, by tyranny and slavery. 
 
 " Therefore we revert to the principle of community 
 of property. 
 
 " Where the will and the power exist, the result pro- 
 duced is proportioned to the knowledge of the agent; 
 and in practise we have found that an increase of intel- 
 ligence is equally an increase of happiness. 
 
 " We seek intelligence, therefore, as we seek happiness 
 
 itself. 
 
 " As the first and most important knowledge, we de- 
 sire to know ourselves. 
 
 "But we search for this knowledge in vain if our 
 fellow creatures do not express to us openly and unre- 
 servedly what they feel and think. 
 
 " Our knowledge remains imperfect, therefore, with- 
 out sincerity. 
 
 " We have seen misery produced by the great leading 
 principles which prevail over the world; therefore we 
 have not adopted them. 
 
 107
 
 TEE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 " We have always found truth productive of happi- 
 ness and error of misery: truth;, therefore^ leads to our 
 object, and we agree to follow truth only. 
 
 " Truth is consistent, and in unison with all facts : 
 error is inconsistent, and opposed to facts. 
 
 ^^ Our reason has convinced us of the theoretical truth 
 of our principles — our experience, of their practical 
 utility. 
 
 ^^For these reasons — with this object — and on these 
 principles, we, the undersigned, form ourselves and our 
 children into a society and Community of Equality, for 
 the benefit of ourselves and our children and of the 
 human race, and do agree to the following articles of 
 union and cooperation.'^ 
 
 The official name of the community was to be " The 
 New Harmony Community of Equality." " All members 
 of the community shall be considered as one family, and 
 no one shall be held in higher or lower estimation on 
 account of occupation. There shall be similar food, cloth- 
 ing, and education, as near as can be furnished, for all 
 according to their ages; and, as soon as practicable, all 
 shall live in similar houses, and in all respects be accom- 
 modated alike. Every member shall render his or her best 
 services for the good of the whole, according to the rules 
 and regulations that may be hereafter adopted by the com- 
 munity. It shall always remain a primary object of the 
 community to give the best physical, moral, and intellectual 
 education to all its members. 
 
 " The power of making laws shall be vested in the 
 assembly," consisting of " all the resident members of the 
 community above the age of twenty-one years, one-sixth of 
 whom shall be necessary to constitute a quorum for the 
 transaction of business. The executive power of the com- 
 munity shall be vested in a council, to consist of the secre- 
 tary, treasurer, and commissary of the community, and four 
 superintendents of departments to be chosen as hereinafter 
 
 108
 
 THE ''PERMANENT COMMUNITY 
 
 >> 
 
 provided. The secretary, treasurer, and commissary shall 
 be elected by the assembly/^ 
 
 " The community shall be divided into six departments : 
 Of agriculture; of manufactures and mechanics; of liter- 
 ature, science, and education; of domestic economy; of 
 general economy; of commerce. These departments shall 
 be divided into occupations. The individuals of each occu- 
 pation, above sixteen years of age, shall nominate to the 
 assembly for confirmation, their intendent, and the intend- 
 ents of each occupation, which shall consist of three or 
 more persons, shall nominate the superintendent of their 
 own department; provided, that the commissary shall be 
 superintendent of the department of domestic economy, 
 and the treasurer of the department of commerce ; and for 
 the purpose of nominating superintendents the department 
 of commerce shall be united to the department of litera- 
 ture, science, and education, and the department of domes- 
 tic economy to that of general economy." Where nomi- 
 nations fail of confirmation by the assembly, new nomina- 
 tions must be made. " The secretary, superintendents, and 
 intendents shall hold their offices during the pleasure of 
 the assembly." 
 
 It was made the duty of the executive council to make 
 all contracts, to carry into effect all general regulations, 
 and generally to conduct and superintend all the concerns 
 of the community, subject at all times to directions ex- 
 pressed by a majority in the assembly, and communicated 
 in writing by the clerk of the assembly to the secretary. 
 
 " The executive council shall also report weekly to the 
 assembly all the proceedings, accounts, receipts, and ex- 
 penditures of each department and occupation, and their 
 opinion of the character of each intendent, and the intend- 
 ents' opinion of the daily character of each person attached 
 to their occupation. All the accounts of the community 
 shall be balanced at least once in each week, and the results 
 communicated to the assembly. All the reports of the 
 
 109
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 superintendents and of the secretary, and all the transac- 
 tions of the assembly, shall be registered and carefully kept 
 for perpetual reference. The assembly shall also register 
 weekly its opinion of the executive council, and the coun- 
 cil in like manner its opinions of the proceedings of the 
 assembly. 
 
 " No person shall hereafter be admitted a member of 
 this community without the consent of a majority of all 
 the members of the assembly ; and no person shall be dis- 
 missed from the community but by a vote of two-thirds 
 of all the members of the assembly; and, in neither in- 
 stance, until the subject shall have been discussed at two 
 successive weekly meetings. 
 
 " The real estate of the community shall be held in per- 
 petual trust forever for the use of the community and all 
 its members, for the time being; and every person leaving 
 the community shall forfeit all claim thereto or interest 
 therein, but shall be entitled to receive his or her just pro- 
 portion of the value of such real estate acquired during 
 the time of his membership, to be estimated and deter- 
 mined as is provided in cases of settlement for the services 
 of members so leaving the community. 
 
 " Each member shall have the right of resignation of 
 membership on giving the community one week's notice 
 of his or her intention; and when any member shall so 
 leave the community, or shall be dismissed therefrom, he 
 shall be entitled to receive, in proper products of the com- 
 munity, such compensation for previous services as justice 
 shall require, to be determined by the council, subject to 
 an appeal to the assembly, respect being had to the gains 
 or losses of the community during the time of his mem- 
 bership, as well as to the expenses of the individual and 
 of his or her family for education or otherwise." 
 
 The community was not to be responsible for individual 
 debts contracted by members. " No credit shall, on any 
 account, be given or received by the community or its 
 
 110
 
 THE ''PERMANENT COMMUNITY 
 
 i> 
 
 agent or agents except for sncTi property or money as may 
 be advanced by Eobert Owen, or William Maclure, or mem- 
 bers of the community." Money brought into the com- 
 munity by members shall be returned to them on with- 
 drawal from the society. " Every member shall enjoy the 
 most perfect freedom on all subjects of knowledge and 
 opinion, especially on the subject of religion. Children of 
 deceased members shall continue to enjoy all the privi- 
 leges of membership. All misunderstandings that may 
 arise between members of the community shall be adjusted 
 within the community. 
 
 '' As this system is directly opposed to secrecy and exclu- 
 sion of any kind, every practical facility shall be given to 
 strangers to enable them to become acquainted with the 
 regulations of the community, and to examine the results 
 which these have produced in practise ; and an unreserved 
 explanation of the views and proceedings of the com- 
 munity shall be communicated to the government of the 
 country. 
 
 " The constitution may be altered or amended by a vote 
 of three-fourths of all the members of the assembly, but 
 not until the subject has been discussed at four successive 
 public meetings to be held in four successive weeks." 
 
 This was "liberty, equality, and fraternity in down- 
 right earnest," wrote Eobert Dale Owen. " It found favor 
 with that heterogeneous collection of radicals, enthusiastic 
 devotees to principle, honest latitudinarians, and lazy theo- 
 rists, with a sprinkling of unprincipled sharpers thrown in." 
 Services to the community were no longer to be rewarded 
 in proportion to their worth, as under the Preliminary 
 Society, but equal privileges and advantages were assured 
 to every member of the community. " I made no opposi- 
 tion to all this," says Eobert Dale Owen. " I had too much 
 of my father^s all-believing disposition to anticipate results 
 which any shrewd, cool-headed business man might have 
 predicted. How rapidly they came upon us ! " 
 
 111
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE SOCIAL SYSTEM ON" TKIAL 
 
 Aftek the adoption of the constitution of the Com- 
 munity of Equality, it was resolved that all members of the 
 Preliminary Society signing the constitution within three 
 days could, with their families, become members. Most of 
 the members of the society signed the document, but a few 
 refused to do so. The Gazette failed to state the exact 
 cause of the defection, simply announcing that "a new 
 community in friendly connection with the first is about 
 to be formed on the estate of New Harmony, within a 
 few miles of the town by some respectable families who 
 were members of the Preliminary Society, but from con- 
 scientious motives have declined signing the new constitu- 
 tion.^' Among the members leaving at this time was Cap- 
 tain Donald McDonald, a disciple of Eobert Owen, who had 
 sufficient faith in the new principles to follow their author 
 from Scotland to New Harmony. McDonald was one of 
 the founders of the Edinburgh " Practical Society '' of six 
 hundred families which formed the nucleus of the famous 
 Orbiston community. He accompanied Robert Owen to 
 Ireland on one occasion when Mr. Owen was investigating 
 the condition of the poor in that country. Evidently Mc- 
 Donald's self-esteem had been wounded in the discussions 
 over the constitution, for he stated in a card published 
 in the Gazette that he had not been accorded "the con- 
 fidence he had looked for in the community." A further 
 objection of his was that he " did not believe in a written 
 constitution." The defection seems to have occurred, how- 
 ever, almost entirely on religious grounds. The new com- 
 
 112
 
 THE SOCIAL SYSTEM ON TRIAL 
 
 munity, which was called Macluria, included some of the 
 best members of the Preliminary Society, many of whom 
 were not in sympathy with the religious latitudinarianism 
 of Kobert Owen. Its constitution was largely modeled 
 after that of the parent community. A unanimous vote 
 was required for admission of a member, but any person 
 voted on could remain one month on trial for each black- 
 ball, if the number of these did not exceed twenty-five; a 
 larger number being cast against the applicant, he might 
 remain one month for every two blackballs. The legis- 
 lative body, under the final direction of the assembly, was 
 called "The Council of the Fathers," which consisted of 
 the five oldest male members under the age of sixty-five 
 years. Women were denied the privilege of voting in the 
 assembly, though accorded in all other matters equal privi- 
 leges with men. The system of intendents and superin- 
 tendents contemplated in the constitution of the parent 
 community was perpetuated in the constitution of Ma- 
 cluria. 
 
 About the 15th of February, superintendents were 
 elected by the parent community as follows : 
 
 Agriculture: Dr. William Price. 
 
 Manufactures and Mechanics : J. K. Coolidge. 
 
 Literature, Science, and Education: Thomas Say. 
 
 General Economy : Stedman Whitwell. 
 
 Commerce: William Owen. 
 
 Secretary: W. W. Lewis. 
 
 On February 17th, six new families were admitted, but 
 matters were already in a state of anarchy. The consti- 
 tution had failed to work effectively, and the disorder was 
 so general and so disastrous that on February 19th, two 
 weeks after the inauguration of the " permanent commu- 
 nity," the executive committee unanimously requested 
 Mr. Owen to assume the directorship of the community 
 for one year. Practically a dictatorship was established, 
 although the constitution remained in effect. Mr. Owen. 
 
 9 113
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 accepted the trust, and a brief period of comparative 
 tranquillity and contentment ensued. 
 
 On February 22d, the Gazette stated that since the adop- 
 tion of the constitution the community had been engaged 
 in organizing the several departments and making such 
 arrangements as were deemed necessary to effect the pur- 
 poses of association. " Numerous meetings have been held, 
 and various plans suggested to carry into practise the com- 
 munity principles. In a work of such magnitude, combi- 
 ning so many interests and such a variety of feeling, the 
 progress already made affords a sure presage of the har- 
 monious and efficient cooperation of all the members. 
 Most of the community officers have now been elected." 
 
 Early in March the second offshooting society was 
 formed, under the name of Feiba Peveli. The name of 
 this community is an evidence that some of the philoso- 
 phers who came to New Harmony did little else than to 
 evolve fantastic schemes. As a sample of the imaginative 
 productions of one of these oddities — Stedman Whitwell, 
 a London architect and social reformer given to writing 
 verses and planning community palaces on paper — the 
 process by which the name of this community was secured 
 is interesting. Whitwell noted some of the incongruities 
 in American nomenclature, and deplored the repetition 
 which was producing " Washingtons " and " Springfields " 
 in every State in the Union. He proposed to give each 
 locality a distinctive name by expressing in a compound 
 word the latitude and longitude of the place, thus enabling 
 one to locate any community geographically when the name 
 was once known. Letters were proposed as substitutes for 
 the numerals used in expressing latitude and longitude, 
 as follows : 
 
 1234567 8 9 
 
 Latitude a e i o u y ee ei ie ou 
 
 Longitude b dfklmn p r t 
 
 114
 
 TEE SOCIAL SYSTEM ON TRIAL 
 
 The first part of the town name expressed the latitude, 
 the second the longitude, by a substitution of letters for 
 figures according to the above table. The letter " S " in- 
 serted in the latitude name denoted that it was south lati- 
 tude, its absence that it was north, while " V " indicated 
 west longitude, its absence east longitude. Extensive rules 
 for pronunciation and for overcoming various difficulties 
 were given. According to this system, Feiba Peveli indi- 
 cated 38.11 N., 81.53 W. Macluria, 38.12 N., 87.52 W., 
 was to be called Ipad Evenle; New Harmony, 38.11 N., 
 87.55 W., Ipba Veinul; Yellow Springs, Green County, 
 Ohio, the location of an Owenite community, 39.48 N., 
 83.52 W., Irap Evifle; Valley Forge, near Philadelphia, 
 where there was another branch community, 40.7 N., 75.24 
 W., Outeon Eveldo; Orbiston, 55.34 N., 4.3 W., Uhio 
 Vouti ; New York, Otke Notive ; Pittsburg, Otf u Veitoup ; 
 Washington, Feili Neivul; London, Lafa Vovutu. The 
 principal argument in favor of the new system presented 
 by the author was that the name of a neighboring Indian 
 chief, " Occoneocoglecococachecachecodungo," was even 
 worse than some of the effects produced by this " rational 
 system^' of nomenclature. 
 
 The constitution of Feiba Peveli contained a declaration 
 of principles almost identical with that set forth in the 
 parent constitution, while the plan of government coin- 
 cided with that adopted by Macluria. The legislative 
 power of the community was vested in its '' male members 
 over the age of twenty-one years.'' The executive duties 
 were vested in the five eldest male members under the 
 age of fifty-five years, " provided three of them shall be 
 good, practical agriculturists." Managers, intendents, and 
 clerks were to be appointed by this council, which in turn 
 was responsible to the assembly. Any person applying for 
 membership receiving no more than five blackballs might 
 reside in the society as a probationary member one month 
 for each blackball received. Arbitration was provided for 
 
 115
 
 TEE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 not only between members of the community, but between 
 Feiba Peveli and any other similar community. " No debt 
 shall be contracted/' the constitution declared, "but with 
 Eobert Owen and William Maclure, or some society based 
 on similar principles with our own ; and no credit shall be 
 given but to some society instituted on similar principles." 
 
 " Since our last notice of the proceedings of the com- 
 munity/' said the Gazette of March 8, 1826, " circum- 
 stances have occurred which have produced much ani- 
 mated and interesting debate. All minds seem now to 
 comprehend the true grounds of future cooperation, and 
 all hearts have united in claiming the benefit of Mr. Owen's 
 experience and knowledge in reducing to practise the prin- 
 ciples which form the basis of our association. General 
 satisfaction and individual contentment have taken the 
 place of suspense and uncertainty. Under the sole direc- 
 tion of Mr. Owen the most gratifying anticipations of the 
 future may be indulged in, for knowledge and experience 
 are the only safe guides through the intricacies of the 
 untried system." 
 
 Considerable difficulty had arisen from a crowded popu- 
 lation, but the formation of new communities began to 
 relieve the congestion. Some inconvenience, the admin- 
 istration declared, must be endured until suitable accom- 
 modation could be procured for the members. On March 
 22d, the Gazette said: " The friends of the new social 
 system will learn with pleasure that we are steadily advan- 
 cing toward the firm final establishment of the principles 
 of our association. It has been seen and sensibly felt that 
 while we have been discussing the abstract ideas, while we 
 have been in vain trying to reconcile contrary and clashing 
 opinions, we have neglected the practical means within our 
 reach which alone can bind man to his fellow men. In 
 short, we have discovered that our energies have been 
 wasted in fruitless efforts, each one endeavoring to con- 
 vince others that he alone possessed the power of unlocking 
 
 116
 
 TEE SOCIAL SYSTEM ON TRIAL 
 
 the pleasures of social life. This error is happily dispelled. 
 By the indefatigable attention of Mr. Owen, a degree of 
 order, of regularity, of system, has been introduced into 
 every department of business which promises increase and 
 permanency. The town now presents a scene of active 
 and steady industry, the effects of which are visible and 
 palpable. The society is gradually becoming really as well 
 as ostensibly a community of equality based on equal rights 
 and equal duties of all. Our streets no longer present 
 groups of idle talkers, and each one is busily engaged in 
 the occupation he has chosen for his employment. Our 
 public meetings, instead of being the arena of contending 
 orators, have assumed a different character, and are now 
 places of business, where familiar consultations are held, 
 and the most eflBcient measures are adopted for the com- 
 forts of life for all the members. No vain disputes grate 
 upon the ear of patient industry, and all seem strongly im- 
 pressed with the importance of applying their powers to 
 realize the object of cooperative association. During the 
 past week there has been much done in this way, and there 
 is every reason to believe that progress will not be impeded 
 by idleness, listlessness, and erroneous views of our situa- 
 tion. It would indeed be strange if the experience gained 
 by the greater part of the population during eleven months' 
 schooling, with the aid of Mr. Owen's practical knowledge' 
 for the past eight weeks, should be lost upon us." On April 
 12th, the Gazette declared that "the formation of com- 
 munities is now pretty generally understood among us, and 
 is entered upon like a matter of ordinary business. The 
 same thing will probably occur throughout the country." 
 
 Evidently the administration had begun to realize the 
 impossibility of unifying the interests of any great number 
 of persons associated in a community. The administration 
 organ stated early in April that no more than twenty to 
 thirty persons should form the basis of a community, for 
 if the number be greater, the greater the chance of the 
 
 117
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT \ 
 
 members being uncongenial. As far as possible the opera- i 
 
 tions of the society should be very simple and upon an ; 
 
 agricultural basis. From this the communities could pro- i 
 
 ceed to mechanical operations at a later date. The com- \ 
 
 munity should first make itself useful, and then proceed I 
 
 to the higher development of community life, such as I 
 
 education, etc. " No attempt to combine an unintelligible i 
 mass of discordant interests can result favorably unless it 
 
 be under the direction of a mind, disposition, and talent | 
 
 long exerted in similar combinations." .; 
 
 The pages of the Gazette from this time on continue j 
 to reveal the difficulties encountered by the projectors of 
 
 the social experiment at New Harmony. The numerous j 
 
 suggestions of new plans made by correspondents through ! 
 
 the Gazette are evidence of considerable dissatisfaction j 
 
 among the community membership. " A Friendly Spec- i 
 
 tator " in the Gazette of April 19, 1826, expressed a belief \ 
 
 that " the chief good of the community system is that it de- | 
 stroys the love of show and luxury. It also economizes time 
 
 and enables a man to pay attention to his higher nature." > 
 
 " But," continued the writer, " it appears doubtful to me i 
 
 whether human nature can be brought to such moral per- : 
 
 fection as to execute the social system entirely. There must \ 
 
 be a controlling motive to urge men to physical exertion. ' 
 
 He now has that in the possession of all that his work can \ 
 
 give him. In the social system you must make his disposi- ' 
 
 tion so virtuous as to make him feel his responsibility. Can ; 
 
 you do this ? " While a man gains in moral freedom and j 
 
 independence under the new system, this correspondent i 
 
 remarked, he loses in personal liberty. He suggested that : 
 
 extra compensation be given for extra work, but that no ' 
 
 one be allowed to spend his money to the loss of society; i 
 
 each person to do a fixed amount of work for his subsist- ; 
 
 ence, and that no one be allowed at table until that assign- ! 
 
 ment of labor had been performed. " You have indolence i 
 
 or the love of ease among you at New Harmony." There ; 
 
 118 i
 
 TEE SOCIAL SYSTEM ON TRIAL 
 
 should be a ■uniformity of dress and diet, he declared, but 
 each person should be allowed to choose his occupation; 
 all children under eleven years of age should be busied 
 alone with their education ; at eleven the child should per- 
 form one-seventh of a day's work ; at twelve, two-sevenths, 
 and so on until at seventeen the full amount should be 
 demanded from all. 
 
 The administration about this time published some 
 ^^ considerations " for those who desired to unite under the 
 new system, as follows: 
 
 (1) It will be necessary to sink individual interests, and 
 (2) to discard all useless and vexatious regulations; (3) 
 persuasion, instead of- force, must be employed; (4) there 
 must be no abuse, growling, or loud talking, and (5) no 
 grumbling, carping, or murmuring against the work of 
 other individuals; those who shirk their work are deserving 
 of pity; (6) distinctions in eating and drinking among the 
 members must be discarded; (7) children must be excluded 
 from the dining-room during meals; adult members should 
 not stalk about the dining-hall during meals; (8) the in- 
 temperate must never be abused; (9) when individual mem- 
 bers are " affected with the disease of laziness " the utmost 
 forbearance will be necessary; (10) criticism should not be 
 resented; (11) cleanliness and regularity must be enforced; 
 (12) " no anger ought to be felt against the female members 
 upon their aversion to the work of cooperation; or when 
 they brawl, quarrel, or indulge in loud talk." The chil- 
 dren, however, should be taught better. There is a strong 
 undercurrent of suggestion in all this as to evils evidently 
 existing in the community. 
 
 In April the community was disturbed by negotiations 
 said to be going on for the purchase of the estate as private 
 property. An attempt was made to divide the town into 
 several communities. This Mr. Owen resisted, but selected 
 twenty-five men as a nucleus, this body to elect new mem- 
 bers, subject to veto by Mr. Owen. Three grades of 
 
 119
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 membership were proposed: full members, probationary 
 members, and persons on trial. " The community was to 
 be under the direction of Mr. Owen, until two-thirds of the 
 members should think fit to govern themselves, provided 
 the time was not less than one year." 
 
 In the Gazette of May 17, 1826, appeared a contribu- 
 tion signed " M.," complaining that " industrious members 
 have been compelled to experience the unpleasant sensa- 
 tion of working for others who are either unwilling or un- 
 able to do their share of the labor. An effort has been 
 made to bring about a change in this," stated the contrib- 
 utor, " by individual reports of production and making 
 public the number of hours each was occupied in the day, 
 the practise of which was rather invidious, and difficult to 
 be executed impartially ; but even if it were possible to get 
 correct returns, it was liable to work injustice, as one work- 
 man might do as much in one hour as another might in 
 four." The correspondent suggested that it would be bet- 
 ter to divide the members of the community into occupa- 
 tions, or departments, fixing the amount of work to be done 
 by each occupation, and allowing the managers to distribute 
 this amount of work among the individuals of each com- 
 munity. The quality and quantity of the work would be 
 inspected by impartial judges. If it were impossible for the 
 occupations to work together, they might be divided into 
 separate communities, and they might federate into a joint 
 community. " The population must be some time accus- 
 tomed to the social system to be convinced that those who 
 work with their heads are as productive as those who work 
 with their hands, and it is equally difficult to reconcile a 
 mechanic at one dollar and fifty cents or two dollars a day 
 to putting himself on an equality with the agriculturist at 
 a quarter of a dollar a day." The success of commu- 
 nity Number 2, the members of which had been unable 
 to work harmoniously with the original community, but 
 who had progressed admirably since the separation, was 
 
 120
 
 THE SOCIAL SYSTEM ON TRIAL 
 
 pointed to as an indication that the change suggested 
 would be advisable. A division into twenty or thirty 
 societies was therefore suggested " as the best, and per- 
 haps the only way to apportion the labor either justly 
 or accurately, and to reduce the responsibility of pay- 
 ments within the sphere of the previous habits of cal- 
 culation; education and amusements to remain upon the 
 same footing as before/' 
 
 In the spring of 1826 the Constitution of the Coopera- 
 tive Association of Wainborough, Illinois, modeled after 
 the New Harmony plan, was printed in the Gazette. This 
 community was agricultural, and "based upon the prin- 
 ciples of union of labor and capital." Food and clothing 
 would be supplied to members of the society. An equal 
 division of the proceeds of the labor and capital of the 
 society should be made annually, after interest charges had 
 been met, including a payment of four per cent on the 
 advances of members contributing capital, ten per cent of 
 the profit to be set apart for the purpose of paying the 
 indebtedness of the society. After fourteen years members 
 of the society should have a claim upon it for the full value 
 of property or money contributed. The direction of the 
 business affairs of the community was placed in the hands 
 of a committee of three. 
 
 A correspondent of the Gazette, writing under date of 
 May 24, 1826,^ suggested names for prospective societies, 
 " as the sanguine friends of the cooperative system believe 
 that in a few years hundreds, and even thousands, may be 
 founded." Among the names offered for consideration 
 were Lovedale, Peace Glen, Everblest, New Duty, Phi- 
 losophy, Glee, Lovely, Voltaire, Elysium, Olympus, Pla- 
 tonea, Socrates, Utopia, Confucia, and Powhatan. 
 
 C. S. Kaffinesque, writing from Lexington in April, 
 1826, to WiUiam Maclure, outlined " a plan for cooperative 
 association," and the letter was published in the Gazette. 
 "Money," he said, "is no longer to be a medium of ex- 
 
 121
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 change, but stocks, rendered divisible at pleasure ad libitum 
 according to the principle of my patent divitial invention. 
 . . . Any number of persons, from five to five thousand, 
 may associate themselves into an organization; they to 
 select trustees of the deposited stocks or sums invested. 
 They shall place a value upon the property merged into the 
 association. The product of material labor will also be re- 
 ceived in store and in kind, while mental service done will 
 be estimated according to their need, purposes, or utility 
 to the association. The other forms of income will be 
 received, appraisers to be appointed to determine the ex- 
 change value of everything. As soon as any value is de- 
 posited, there shall be given to the depositor, not by name, 
 a certificate or certificates of the same upon the principle 
 of the patent divitial invention, divisible into any required 
 amount, and exchangeable into any other required amount, 
 transferable and available by the bearer for their nominal 
 value in dollars and cents. When any profitable value is 
 deposited the certificates will bear four or five per cent 
 interest. . . . These certificates shall be accepted in 
 payment of accounts at the store, for rent or any other 
 purpose. Everything will be exchanged at cost, but a com- 
 mission of from two to five per cent shall be deducted to 
 meet the general expenses of the society. The profits will 
 be used for the benefit of the sick, the infirm, and other 
 members unable to labor. Instruction and amusement will 
 be provided, to be paid for in deposit tickets. General 
 meetings and mutual intercourse will be provided, and the 
 members shall consider themselves a great family. All 
 books shall be deposited and considered as a public library. 
 Although the mainspring of this scheme is my divitial 
 invention, which I have patented in order to give to it 
 a higher legal claim, it is my intention to allow these 
 societies to use it at such a trifling rate as benevolent insti- 
 tutions, that I hope no selfish views will be ascribed to n>r! 
 on that score." 
 
 122
 
 CHAPTEK XIII 
 
 THE DUKE OF SAXE-WEIMAR AT NEW HARMONY 
 
 New Haemony became an important point on the 
 itinerary of European travelers, as well as a rendezvous 
 of American scientists, early in 1826. Count Bernhard, of 
 Weimar, Saxony, and Eisenach, better known as the Duke 
 of Saxe-"Weimar, who made a tour of this country in 1825 
 and 1826, and recorded his impressions in a published vol- 
 ume, gives a detailed account of what he saw in New Har- 
 mony, where he arrived on April 13, 1826. Count Bern- 
 hard states that he found Eobert Owen and his ideas 
 unpopular in the Eastern States, where he had created an 
 unfavorable impression by publishing a proclamation to the 
 Americans on his arrival at New York, in which he told 
 them that " among many virtues they possessed great 
 faults," among which he alluded to ill-directed propensity 
 to religious feelings, and proposed himself as their re- 
 former in this respect. One public man had told Mr. Owen 
 that he considered his intellect deranged. He had heard fa- 
 vorable opinions of Mr. Owen expressed by those who knew 
 him well, and with these conflicting estimates of the man, he 
 came to New Harmony " with the utmost expectation and 
 curiosity to become acquainted with a man of such extraor- 
 dinary sentiments. In the tavern," wrote the duke, " I ac- 
 costed a man, very plainly dressed, about fifty years of age, 
 of rather low stature, who entered into a conversation with 
 me concerning the situation of the place, and the disordered 
 state in which I would find everything where all was newly 
 
 123
 
 TEE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 established. When I asked the man how long before Mr. 
 Owen would be there, he announced himself to me, to my 
 surprise, as Mr. Owen. He expressed pleasure at my visit, 
 and offered to show me everything and explain whatever 
 remained without explanation." Mr. Owen outlined his 
 plans for improving the place, which included the removal 
 of the cabins and the fences, " so that the whole would 
 present the appearance of a public park, in which the 
 houses should be scattered about." Mr. Owen first took his 
 distinguished guest to the old Rappite church, " the 
 wooden building provided with a steeple and a clock. 
 This church was at present occupied by joiners' and shoe- 
 makers' shops in which the boys were instructed in these 
 mechanical arts." Count Bemhard then visited the old 
 Rapp mansion, " now occupied by Mr. Maclure as a resi- 
 dence and office. . . . Mr. Owen, on the contrary, 
 contented himself with a small apartment in the same 
 tavern where I lodged." 
 
 The duke was introduced to Mr. Owen's two eldest sons 
 (William and Robert), "pupils of Fellenberg, who is 
 greatly respected here." ..." Afterward Mr. Owen 
 made me acquainted with Mr. Lewis, secretary of the soci- 
 ety, from Virginia, and a relative of the great Washington. 
 He was already pretty well advanced in years, and appeared 
 to have united himself with the society from liberal princi- 
 ples. Another acquaintance I made was with Mr. Jennings, 
 of Philadelphia, a young man who was educated as a clergy- 
 man, and had left the profession to follow this course of 
 life. He intended, nevertheless, to leave this place and go 
 back to Philadelphia; many other members have the same 
 design, and I can hardly believe the society will have a long 
 duration. Enthusiasm, which soon abandons its subjects, 
 as well as the itch for novelty, had contributed much to 
 the formation of this society. In spite of the principles of 
 equality which they recognized, it taxes the feelings to live 
 on the same footing with others indiscriminately, and eat 
 
 124
 
 THE DUKE OF SAXE-WEIMAB 
 
 with them at the same table. The society consisted, as I 
 was informed, of about one thousand members; at a dis- 
 tance of about two miles are founded two new communities. 
 Until the common table shall be established, according to 
 the fundamental constitution of the society, the members 
 are placed in four boarding-houses, where they must live 
 very frugally. Some of the most turbulent, with an Irish- 
 man who wore a long beard, wished to leave the society 
 immediately to go to Mexico, there to settle themselves, 
 but where their subsistence will be procured with much 
 difficulty. 
 
 " In the evening, Mr. Owen took me to a concert in a 
 sort of nondescript building. Most of the members of the 
 society were present." The duke describes a concert by a 
 ^' surprisingly good " orchestra, and male and female solo- 
 ists, with several recitations. " Mr. Jennings recited Lord 
 Byron^s stanzas on his wife, very good. . . . Be- 
 tween the two parts of the concert, the orchestra played 
 a march; each gentleman gave a lady his arm and a prom- 
 enade took place, resembling a polonaise, with pretty 
 figures, sometimes in two couples, sometimes in four; two 
 ladies in the middle, the gentlemen separated from the 
 ladies, then again all together. The concert closed with a 
 lively cotillion. I was, on the whole, amused. . . . 
 This general evening amusement takes place several times 
 a week, besides which there is on Tuesday evening a gen- 
 eral ball. There is a particular costume adopted for the 
 society. That for the man consists of white pantaloons, 
 buttoned over a boy's jacket, made of light material, with- 
 out a collar; that of the woman of a coat reaching to the 
 knee, and pantaloons such as little girls wear among us. 
 These dresses are not universally adopted, but they have a 
 good appearance. All the men did not participate in the 
 dance, i. e,, the lower classes, but read newspapers which 
 were scattered over the side-tables. 
 
 "We went to Eapp's distillery. It will be removed 
 
 125
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 altogether. Mr. Owen has forbidden distilling, as well as 
 the use of ardent spirits. Notwithstanding this, the Irish- 
 men here find opportunities of getting whisky and fuddling 
 themselves, from the flatboats that stop here. 
 
 *^ The greater number of the young girls whom we 
 chanced to meet at home were found employed in plaiting 
 straw hats. I became acquainted with Madame F., a native 
 of St. Petersburg. She married an American merchant, 
 but had the misfortune to lose her husband three days after 
 marriage, and as she was somewhat eccentric and sentimen- 
 tal, quickly became attached to Mr. Owen's system. She 
 told me, however, in German, that she found herself egre- 
 giously deceived, that the highly vaunted equality was not 
 altogether to her taste; that some of the society were too 
 low, and that the table was below all criticism. The good 
 lady appeared to be about to run from one extreme to the 
 other, for she added that in the summer she would go to a 
 Shaker establishment near Vincennes. 
 
 " I renewed acquaintance here with Mr. Say, a distin- 
 guished naturalist from Philadelphia, to whom I had been 
 introduced there, but unfortunately he had found himself 
 embarrassed in his fortune, and was obliged to come here 
 as a friend of Mr. Maclure. The gentleman appeared quite 
 comical in the costume of the society, with his hands cov- 
 ered with hard lumps and blisters, occasioned by the 
 unusual labor he was obliged to undertake in the garden. 
 
 " In the evening I went for a walk in the streets, and 
 met several ladies of the society, who rested from the labors 
 of the day. Madame F. was among them, to whose com- 
 plaints I had listened. I accompanied the ladies to a dan- 
 cing assembly which was held in the kitchen of one of the 
 boarding-houses. I observed that this was only an hour of 
 instruction for the unpractised in dancing, and that there 
 was some restraint on account of my presence ; from polite- 
 ness I went away and remained at home the rest of the 
 evening. . . . 
 
 126
 
 TEE DUKE OF 8AXE-WEIMAB 
 
 " Mr. Owen took me into one of the newly built houses, 
 in which the married members of the Society are to live. 
 It consisted of two stories, in each two chambers and two 
 alcoves, with the requisite ventilators. The cellar of the 
 house is to contain a heating apparatus to heat the whole 
 with warm air. Each family will have a chamber and an 
 alcove, which will be sufficient, as the little children will 
 be in the nursery and the larger at school. They will not 
 require kitchens, as all are to eat in common. Unmarried 
 women will live together, as will also unmarried men, in 
 the manner of the Moravian brothers. 
 
 " I had a long conversation with Mr. Owen relative to 
 his system and his expectations. He looks forward to 
 nothing else than to remodel the world entirely; to root 
 out all crime; to abolish punishment; to create similar views 
 and similar wants, and in this manner to abolish all dis- 
 sension and warfare. When his system of education shall 
 be brought into connection with the great progress made 
 in mechanics, which is daily increasing, every man can 
 then, as he thinks, provide his simpler necessaries for him- 
 self, and trade will cease entirely. I expressed a doubt of 
 the practicability of this system in Europe, and even in the 
 United States. He was too unalterably convinced of the 
 result to admit the slightest room for doubt. It grieved 
 me to see that Mr. Owen Should be so infatuated by his 
 passion for universal improvement as to believe and assert 
 that he is about to reform the whole world, and yet that 
 almost every member of his society with whom I talked, 
 acknowledged that he was deceived in his expectations, and 
 expressed their opinion that Mr. Owen had commenced on 
 too grand a scale, and had admitted too many members 
 without the requisite selection. 
 
 " I went with Dr. McNamee to the newly established 
 communities, Number 2, Macluria; the other lately founded. 
 Number 3. Number 2 lies two miles distant from New 
 Harmony, at the entrance to the forest, which will be 
 
 127
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 cleared to make the land fit for cultivation. The settle- 
 ment, which was established about four weeks ago, con- 
 sists of nine log houses. The inhabitants number about 
 eighty. They are mostly backwoodsmen with their fam- 
 ilies, who have separated from community Number 1 in 
 New Harmony because no religion is allowed there, and 
 these people desire to hold their prayer-meetings undis- 
 puted. The fields in the neighborhood of this community 
 were, of course,, very new. Community Number 3 con- 
 sisted of English country people, who formed a new asso- 
 ciation, as the cosmopolitanism of New Harmony did not 
 suit them; they left the colony planted by Mr. Birkbeck at 
 English Prairie, about twenty miles hence on the right 
 bank of the Wabash, after the unfortunate death of that 
 gentleman, and came here. This is a proof that there are 
 two evils that strike at the root of the young societies: one 
 is a sectarian or intolerant spirit; the other natural preju- 
 dice. 
 
 " In the evening there was a general meeting in the 
 large hall. It opened with music; then one of the mem- 
 bers, an English architect of talent, who came to the United 
 States with Mr. Owen, whose confidence he appeared to 
 possess, and was here at the head of the architectural de- 
 partment, read some extracts from the newspapers, upon 
 which Mr. Owen made a very good commentary; for ex- 
 ample, upon the extension and improvement of the steam- 
 engine, upon its adaptation to navigation and the advan- 
 tages resulting therefrom. He lost himself in his theories, 
 however, when he expatiated on an article which related to 
 the experiments which .have been made with the Perkins 
 steam-gun. During these lectures I made my observation 
 on the much-vaunted equality, as some tatterdemalions 
 stretched themselves on the platform close by Mr. Owen. 
 The better-educated members kept themselves together, 
 and took no notice of the others. I remarked also that 
 members belonging to the higher classes of society had put 
 
 128
 
 THE DUKE OF S AXE-WEIMAR 
 
 on the new costume, and made a party by themselves. 
 After the lecture the band played; each gentleman took a 
 lady and marched with her around the room. Lastly, a 
 cotillion was danced; the ladies were then escorted home, 
 and each retired to his own quarters. 
 
 "I went early on the following morning (Sunday) to 
 the assembly-room. The meeting was opened by music. 
 After this, Mr. Owen stated a proposition, in the discussion 
 of which he spoke of the advance made by the society; of 
 the location of another community at Valley Forge, in 
 Pennsylvania, and another in the State of New York. A 
 classification of the members was spoken of afterward. 
 They were to be separated into three classes: first, of such 
 as undertook to be security for the sums due Mr. Owen 
 and Mr. Maclure (that is for the amount paid to Eapp and 
 so expended as a pledge to be redeemed by the society), 
 and who, if desirous to leave the society, must give six 
 months' previous notice ; secondly, such as, after a notice of 
 fourteen days, can depart; lastly, those who are received 
 only on trial. 
 
 " Afterward I visited Mr. Maclure, and received from 
 him the French papers. Mr. Maclure is old and childless, 
 was never married, and intends, it is reported, to leave his 
 property to the society. Afterward I went with Mr. Owen 
 and some of the ladies of the society for a walk to the cut- 
 off, as it is called, of the Wabash, where this river has 
 formed a new channel and an island, which contains about 
 thirty-five hundred acres of the best land, at present, how- 
 ever, inundated. There is here a substantial grist-mill 
 erected by Mr. Eapp, which is said to contain a very good 
 set of machinery, but we could not reach it on account of the 
 water. ... In the evening I paid visits to some ladies, 
 and saw the philosophy of a life of equality put to a severe 
 test with one of them. She is named Virginia, from Phila- 
 delphia; is very young and pretty; was delicately brought 
 up, and appears to have taken refuge here on account of 
 
 10 129
 
 TEE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 an unhappy attachment. A\Tiile she was singing, and play- 
 ing very well on the piano, she was told that the milking 
 of the cows was her duty, and that they were waiting. 
 Almost in tears, she betook herself to this servile employ- 
 ment, execrating the social system and its so-much-prized 
 equality. After the cows were milked, in doing which the 
 young girl was trod on by one and kicked by another, I 
 joined an aquatic party with the young ladies and some 
 young philosophers in a very good boat upon the inundated 
 meadows along the Wabash. The evening was beautiful, 
 it was moonlight, and the air was very mild; the beautiful 
 Miss Virginia forgot her stable experiences and regaled us 
 with her sweet voice. Somewhat later we collected at 
 house Number 2, appointed for the schoolhouse, where all 
 the young ladies and gentlemen of quality assembled. 
 "We amused ourselves during the whole remainder of the 
 evening dancing cotillions and waltzes, and with such ani- 
 mation as rendered it quite lively. New figures had been 
 introduced among the cotillions, among which was one 
 called the New Social System. Several of the ladies made 
 objections to dancing on Sunday; we thought, however, that 
 in this sanctuary of philosophy such prejudice should be 
 entirely discarded, and our arguments, as well as the in- 
 clinations of the ladies, gained the victory. . . . 
 
 " I was invited to dinner in house Number 4. Some 
 gentlemen had been out hunting and brought home a wild 
 turkey, which must be consumed. The turkey formed the 
 whole dinner. Upon the whole, I can not complain either 
 of an overloaded stomach, or a headache from the wine. 
 The living was frugal in the strictest sense. In the eve- 
 ning I visited Mr. Maclure and Madame Fretageot, living 
 in the same house. She is a Frenchwoman, and formerly 
 kept a boarding-school in Philadelphia, and is called 
 ' Mother ' by all the young girls here. The handsomest 
 and most polished of the female world here. Miss Lucy Sis- 
 tare and Miss Virginia, were under her care. The cows 
 
 130
 
 THE DUKE OF SAXE-WEIMAR 
 
 were milked this evening when I came in, and therefore 
 we could hear their performance on the pianoforte, and 
 their charming voices, in peace and quiet. Later in the 
 evening we went to the kitchen of Number 3, where there 
 was a ball. The young ladies of the better class kept them- 
 selves in a corner under Madame Fretageot's protection, 
 and formed a little aristocratic clique. To prevent all pos- 
 sible partialities, the gentlemen, as well as the ladies, drew 
 numbers for the cotillions, and thus apportioned them 
 equitably. Our young ladies turned up their noses at the 
 democratic dancers who often in this way fell to their lot. 
 Although every one was pleased upon the whole, they sepa- 
 rated at ten o'clock, as it is necessary to arise early here. 
 Madame Fretageot and her two pupils I accompanied home, 
 and spent some time in conversation with Mr. Maclure on 
 his travels in Europe, which w^ere taken with mineralogical 
 views. The architect, Mr. Whitwell, showed me the plan 
 of this establishment. I admired the judicious and eco- 
 nomical arrangement for warming and ventilating the 
 buildings, as well as the kitchens and laundries. 
 
 " On the following day I received a visit from one of 
 the German patriots of the name of Schmidt, who had 
 entered the society. He had been a first lieutenant in the 
 Prussian artillery at Erfurt. He appeared to have engaged 
 in one of the political conspiracies there, and to have de- 
 serted. ^Ir. Owen brought him from England last autumn 
 as a servant. He was now a member of the society, and had 
 charge of the cattle. His fine visions of freedom seemed 
 to be very much lower, for he presented himself to me, and 
 his father to Mr. Huygens, as servants. Toward evening 
 Mr. Applegarth arrived. He had presided over the school 
 in New Lanark, and was to organize one here when prac- 
 ticable. ... In the evening there was a ball in the 
 large assembly-room. . . . There was a particular 
 place marked off for the children to dance in, in the center 
 of the hall, where they could gambol about without run- 
 
 131
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 ning between the legs of the grown persons. . . . We 
 took a walk to community Number 3. The work on the 
 houses had made little progress; we found but one work- 
 man there, and he was sleeping quite at his ease. . . . 
 
 " After we returned to Madame Fretageot^s, Mr. Owen 
 showed me some interesting objects of his invention. One 
 of them consisted of cubes of different sizes, representing 
 the different classes of the British population in the year 
 1811, and showed what a powerful burden rested on the 
 laboring classes, and how desirable an equal division of 
 property would be in that kingdom. The other was a 
 plate, according to which, as Mr. Owen asserted, each child 
 could be shown his own capabilities, and upon which, after 
 a mature self-examination, he can discover what progress 
 he had made. The plate has this superscription: '^ Scale 
 of Human Faculties and Qualities at Birth.' It has ten 
 scales with the following titles, from the left to the right: 
 Self-attachment; Affections; Judgment; Imagination; 
 Memory; Eefiection; Perception; Excitability; Courage; 
 Strength. Each scale is divided into one hundred parts, 
 which are marked from five to five. A slide that can be 
 moved up and down shows the measure of the qualities, 
 therein specified, which each one possesses, or believes him- 
 self to possess. 
 
 " Mr. Owen considers it an absurdity to promise never- 
 ending love on marriage. For this reason he has intro- 
 duced the civil contract of marriage, after the manner of 
 the Quakers, and declares that the bond of matrimony is in 
 no way indissoluble. The children, indeed, cause no im- 
 pediment in case of a separation, for they belong to the 
 community from their second year, and are all brought up 
 together. . . . 
 
 " I passed the evening with the amiable Mr. Maclure 
 and Madame Fretageot, and became acquainted through 
 them with a French artist, Mr. Lesueur, who calls him- 
 self an uncle of Miss Virginia; also a Dutch physician 
 
 132
 
 THE DUKE OF SAXE-WEIMAR 
 
 from Herzogenbusch, Dr. Troost, a naturalist. Both are 
 members of the community, and had just arrived from a 
 pedestrian tour to Illinois and the southern part of Mis- 
 souri, where they have examined the iron and particularly 
 the lead mine works. Mr. Lesueur has besides discovered 
 several species of fish, as yet undescribed. Mr. Lesueur 
 accompanied the naturalist Perouse as draftsman in his 
 tour to New South Wales under Captain Baudin, and pos- 
 sessed all the illuminated designs of the animals which were 
 discovered for the first time upon this voyage, upon vellum. 
 I count myself fortunate to have seen them. He showed 
 me also the sketches he made while on his last pedestrian 
 tour, as well as those during the voyage of several of the 
 members to Mount Vernon, down the Ohio from Pittsburg. 
 On this voyage the members of the society had many diffi- 
 culties to contend with, and were often compelled to cut a 
 path for the boat through the ice. He had come to Phila- 
 delphia from France in 1815, and had since devoted him- 
 self to the arts and sciences." 
 
 133
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 TWO VIEWS OF NEW HARM0:N'Y 
 
 No American autobiography surpasses in literary 
 charm Eobert Dale Owen's Threading My Way — a collec- 
 tion of reminiscent sketches written in Mr. Owen's char- 
 acteristically clear, strong style. As Mr. John Holliday 
 remarks: " In their frankness of statement and fulness of 
 detail about personal matters, they remind one of Rous- 
 seau's Confessions, though lacking the apparent vanity of 
 the Frenchman." The younger Owen's account of life at 
 'New Harmony during the community period is interesting, 
 though disappointingly brief, for the subject was always 
 distasteful to him. " When I reached Harmony early in 
 1826," he says, *^ these general ideas (of the possibility of 
 the amelioration of the condition of mankind) prevailed in 
 my mind uninterrupted by the sober second-thought which 
 an after-life brought with it. I looked at everything with 
 eyes of enthusiasm; and, for a time, the life there was won- 
 derfully pleasant and hopeful to me. This, I think, is the 
 common experience of intelligent and well-disposed persons 
 who have joined the Brook Farm or other reputable com- 
 munity. There is a great charm in the good fellowship, 
 and in the absence of conventionalism which characterizes 
 such association. 
 
 " There was something especially taking, to me, at least, 
 in the absolute freedom from all trammels, alike in the 
 expression of opinion, in dress, and in social intercourse, 
 which I found there. The evening gatherings, too, de- 
 
 134
 
 TWO VIEWS OF NEW HARMONY 
 
 lighted me; the weekly meetings for the discussion of our 
 principles, in which I took part at once. The weekly con- 
 cert, with an excellent leader, Josiah Warren, and a per- 
 formance of music, instrumental and vocal, much beyond 
 what I had expected in the backwoods; last, but not least, 
 the weekly ball, where I found crowds of young people, 
 bright and genial, if not especially cultivated, and as pas- 
 sionately fond of dancing as in those days I myself was. 
 
 "The accommodations seemed to me indeed of the 
 rudest, and the fare of the simplest; but I cared no more 
 for that than young folks usually care who desert pleasant 
 homes to spend a summer month or two under canvas — 
 their tents on the beach, perhaps, with boats and fishing- 
 tackle at command, or pitched in some sylvan retreat, where 
 youth and maiden roam the forest all day, returning at 
 nightfall to merry talk, improvised music, or an im- 
 promptu dance on the greensward. 
 
 " I shrank from no work that was assigned to me, and 
 sometimes, to the surprise of my associates, volunteered 
 when a hard or disagreeable job came up, as the pulling 
 down of the dilapidated cabins throughout the village. 
 But after a time, finding that others could manage as much 
 at common labor in one day as I could in two or three, 
 and being invited to take general charge of the school and 
 to aid in editing the weekly paper, I settled down to what 
 I confess were more congenial pursuits than wielding the 
 ax or holding the plow-handles. 
 
 " I had previously tried one day sowing wheat by hand, 
 and held out until evening, but my right arm was com- 
 paratively useless for forty-eight hours thereafter. An- 
 other day, when certain of the young girls, who were ba- 
 king bread for one of the large boarding-houses, lacked an 
 additional hand, I offered to help them; and when the re- 
 sults of my labors came to the table, it was suggested that 
 one of the loaves be voted to me as a gift for my diligence, 
 the rather as by a little manipulation, such as apothecaries 
 
 135
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 use in making pills, it might save me the trouble of making 
 bullets the next time I went out rifle-shooting. . . . 
 
 " On the whole, my life at Harmony for many months 
 was happy and satisfying. To this the simple relation ex- 
 isting between youth and maiden there much contributed. 
 We called each other by our Christian names only; spoke 
 and acted as brothers and sisters might; often strolled out 
 by moonlight in groups, sometimes in pairs ; yet withal, no 
 scandal or other harm came of it, either then or later, 
 unless we are to reckon as such a few unsuited and im- 
 provident matches that turned out poorly, as hasty love- 
 matches will. What might have happened to myself amid 
 such favorable surroundings, if my heart had not been pre- 
 occupied, I can not tell. I met almost daily, handsome, 
 interesting, and warm-hearted girls; bright, merry, and 
 unsophisticated; charming partners at ball or picnic; one 
 especially, who afterward married a son of Oliver Evans, 
 the celebrated inventor and machinist, to whom, I believe, 
 we owe the high-pressure engine. 
 
 " Naturally enough, under the circumstances, I was not 
 haunted by doubts as to the success of the social experi- 
 ment in which we were engaged. The inhabitants seemed 
 to me friendly and well disposed. There was much origi- 
 nality of character. 
 
 " One example occurs to me — an old man named Green- 
 wood, father of Miles Greenwood, known afterward to the 
 citizens of Cincinnati as chief of their fire department, and 
 still later as proprietor of the largest foundry and machine- 
 shops then in the West. We had, during the summer of 
 1826, several terrific thunder-storms, such as I had never 
 before witnessed. The steeple of our hall was shattered, 
 and it was during one of these storms, when the whole 
 heavens seemed illuminated and the rain was falling in tor- 
 rents, that I saw old Greenwood, thoroughly drenched and 
 carrying straight upright, as a soldier carries a musket, a 
 slender iron rod, ten or twelve feet long. He was walking 
 
 136
 
 TWO VIEWS OF NEW HARMONY 
 
 in the middle of the street, passing with slow step the house 
 in which I was, and, as I afterward learned, paraded every 
 street in the village in the same deliberate manner. Next 
 day I met him and asked him for an explanation. * Ah ! 
 well, my young friend,^ said he, ^ I am very old; I am not 
 well; I suffer much, and I thought it might be a good 
 chance to slip off, and be laid quietly away in the corner 
 of the orchard.' 
 
 " ^ You hoped to be struck by lightning ? ' 
 
 " ' You see, I don't like to kill myself ; it seems like ta- 
 king matters out of God's hands; but I thought He might 
 send me a spare bolt when I put myself in the way. If He 
 had only seen fit to do it, I'd have been at rest this very 
 minute, all my pains gone, no more trouble to any one, and 
 no more burden to myself.' " 
 
 Early in the spring of 1826, there came to New Har- 
 mony a curious character named Paul Brown. In 1827 he 
 published a pamphlet entitled Twelve Months in New Har- 
 mony, in which he recounted his experiences as a mem- 
 ber of the community. Brown states that when he came 
 from his home in one of the Eastern States to visit relatives 
 in Tennessee, he found the New Harmony experiment a 
 common topic of conversation among people there, and he 
 determined to visit the place at once. Paving the way by 
 forwarding a huge letter to Mr. Owen, he proceeded to the 
 settlement, arriving there on April 2d. He learned on his 
 journey, he says, that the original constitution had been 
 set aside, and that the people were being compelled to sign 
 contracts to pay for property at an appraised valuation. 
 
 " It was anything but a tranquil neighborhood," writes 
 Brown. " The impression I took from what I could gather 
 was that this stipulation about appraisal not having been 
 made to the people until after they had signed the con- 
 stitution, the disturbance first arose from some of them 
 being backward about taking such a yoke upon themselves, 
 which generally had not been expected; whereupon an ad- 
 
 137
 
 THE ^'E^Y HAB2I0NY IIOVEMENT 
 
 vantage was immediately taken thereof by some aspiring, 
 aristocratical spirits to make a division of the town into 
 several societies, as, one of the school, one of the tavern, 
 etc., another of the mechanics, and another of the farmers; 
 the school and tavern societies offering to take upon them- 
 selves the greater part of the debt; exchanges to exist 
 between these different bodies politic by what they called 
 ' labor for labor/ This was overruled by Mr. Owen, who 
 refused to contract with them upon such a plan, and de- 
 clared he knew no parties in New Harmony and would 
 countenance but one homogeneous union in that place. 
 He afterward shifted his ground, and said that in one j 
 society they could not exist, and suggested the formation | 
 of three. In this he could not prevail.'^ i 
 
 " Owen," Paul Brown declares, " then selected a nucleus i 
 of twenty-five men as the beginning of a new association. ^ 
 All agreed to sign contracts with Owen and Maclure for i 
 the real and personal property ^ as appraised by somebody.' ! 
 Three grades of membership were established: conditional, ] 
 probationary, and members on trial. All the affairs of the I 
 society were submitted to the direction of Owen, unless ! 
 within twelve months two-thirds of the members should ! 
 decide to rule themselves. By this very act of requiring ] 
 money for the estate purchased by the community, Owen 
 proved himself to be a trading man, and not a philanthro- 
 pist ; proved himself incapacitated to found a real common- 1 
 wealth; proved that it could not have been the sole object i 
 and pursuit of his life to bring such a thing into existence; i 
 proved himself to be lacking of integrity, magnanimity, and i 
 all those sublime principles essentially requisite to form a I 
 character competent to introduce into life an example of | 
 the state of society in the true order of human perfection, ] 
 of a sort which he had recommended." | 
 
 This carping critic grants that freedom of speech and 
 of the press were accorded by the New Harmony admin- ; 
 istration, but he took great offense at "the keeping of i 
 
 138 !
 
 TWO VIEWS OF NEW HARMONY 
 
 books." " The dancing and the instrumental music," he 
 added, " engrossed more of energy than the more impor- 
 tant considerations of community welfare. There must be 
 a regular ball and a regular concert once a week." He 
 says that there were restless spirits constantly urging some 
 new experiment. Owen, he states, recommended a motion, 
 to be made before all the people, to decide whether they 
 should be divided into four societies, each signing its own 
 contract for such a part of the property as it should pur- 
 chase, trading to be carried on among them by means of 
 representative paper money. Eobert Owen submitted two 
 propositions, one to have one community divided into oc- 
 cupations, and one to institute four distinct communities. 
 The last proposition was adopted. 
 
 Linked with Brown's cynical atheism was a puritanical 
 spirit which railed against the social diversions of which 
 the Harmonists were so fond. " The instituting of such 
 amusements as public balls, promenades, and music," he 
 says, " seemed to be propitious to interest the young and 
 enamor them of the place. But the constant succession 
 of this sort of thing clearly induced volatility and aversion 
 to serious duties." Brown also objected to the industrial 
 school founded by William Maclure, on the ground that 
 young persons thus taught trades or parts of trades 
 " became dependent on others for their support thereby." 
 He also claimed that Mr. Owen, according to the new plan 
 of contract with four societies, would receive for half of 
 the estate twenty thousand dollars more than he paid for 
 the whole, a statement that had no foundation in fact, as 
 Mr. Owen gave exceedingly favorable terms to the societies 
 proposing settlement on the estate. 
 
 "Mr. Owen," says Brown, "seems to have constantly 
 inculcated upon these people, from the beginning, lessons 
 of thrift and knacks of gaining and saving money; yet pro- 
 fusions of musical instruments were provided, and great 
 quantities of candles burned at their balls." A great part 
 
 139
 
 TEE NE^Y HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 of the time, he declared, the people were stinted in their 
 allowances of tea, butter, milk, etc. " Mr. Owen con- 
 stantly boarded at the tavern, where luxurious regale was 
 copiously provided to sell to traveling men of the world 
 and loungers. Here he drank coffee and tea while a mul- 
 titude of laboring people who were quartered in the large 
 boarding-houses, being circumscribed in their rations, were 
 very much in the habit of drinking rye coffee, or rye mixed 
 with store coffee." Other visitors to the community during 
 this period agree that Mr. Owen was content with the 
 simplest fare, and Mr. Owen, in a lecture at Philadelphia, 
 stated that he lived on an expenditure of six cents a day 
 while the experiment was in progress — eating but two meals 
 each day, one at 7 a. m. and one at 5 p. m. 
 
 Brown speaks of the neglect and confusion which char- 
 acterized the conduct of community enterprises. " The 
 gardens were neglected, and though several skilled gar- 
 deners lived in the community, much ground lay fallow 
 which might have made handsome gardens. The people, 
 instead of employing their thoughts to execute their work 
 well, were musing on plans of new arrangements in the 
 system of government of the society." The reporting of 
 the number of hours of labor, " and the keeping of debit 
 and credit, was a constant weight upon those who would 
 work from principle. Some of the ground was called 
 private ground. Everything was at sixes and sevens. The 
 place was full of clamor, disaffection, and calumny. Com- 
 plaints were often made that some houses got a greater 
 supply of provisions than others." 
 
 So Brown continues with his catalogue of grievances. 
 He was not the only member of the community who was 
 ready to discredit the motives of the unselfish Kobert 
 Owen, and to contribute to the growth of " clamor, disaffec- 
 tion, and calumny.^ 
 
 140 
 
 yy
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 COMMUNITY PEOGRESS 
 
 Ah, soon will come the glorious day, 
 
 Inscribed on Mercy's brow, 
 AVhen truth shall rend the veil away 
 
 That blinds the nations now. 
 
 When earth no more in anxious fear 
 
 And misery shall sigh; 
 And pain shall cease, and every tear 
 
 Be wiped from every eye. 
 
 The race of man shall wisdom learn. 
 
 And error cease to reign : 
 The charms of innocence return. 
 
 And all be new again. 
 
 "^ The fount of life shall then be quaffed 
 
 In peace by all that come ; 
 And every wind that blows shall waft 
 Some wandering mortal home. 
 
 — Owenite Poem, 1826. 
 
 Robert Owen's retrospect of the first year's proceed- 
 ings of the "permanent community," delivered at New 
 Harmony Hall on May 9, 1826, is another evidence of 
 hopefulness which continued in him after doubt and 
 despair had seized many of his followers. The happiest 
 side of everything was turned to the world. His expecta- 
 tions, he declared, had been far surpassed. He had not 
 hoped that the town would be full in less than two or three 
 years, but it had been crowded in half that time. " Leav- 
 ing home in the fall of 1824, I made arrangements to re- 
 turn in the spring of 1825. After completing the purchase 
 
 141
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 of this property in April, and founding the Preliminary 
 Society in May, I was compelled to set out on my journey 
 to Europe in June. I left the new settlement in the 
 charge of a committee chosen by a majority of the adult 
 population, and I did not suppose that during my ab- 
 sence they could do more than receive the people as they 
 came in. 
 
 " As soon, however, as the formation of the Preliminary 
 Society was announced, people came flocking from all 
 quarters into the colony to offer themselves for member- 
 ship in such numbers that the dwelling-houses were filled 
 in two months, and the press for admission was such that 
 it became necessary to insert advertisements in the news- 
 papers of the surrounding States to prevent others coming 
 who could not be accepted for want of accommodations. 
 On my arrival in January last, I found every room 
 occupied.^' 
 
 The affairs of the society, he declared, had been man- 
 aged much better than he had expected they would be. 
 " About a thousand individuals of all characters and dis- 
 positions had come together from far and near. Their 
 manners and tastes were as various as the varying circum- 
 stances under which their character had been formed. 
 Many of the children were extremely wild, rude, and un- 
 cultivated, and strangers who came to see what was going 
 forward could perceive only a babel-like confusion. They 
 came and wondered and went away disappointed." 
 
 " In one short year," Mr. Owen stated, " this mass of 
 confusion, and in many cases of bad and irregular habits, 
 has been formed into a community of mutual cooperation 
 and equality, now proceeding rapidly toward a state of 
 regular organization. Out of it two commimities have 
 been formed and located in this neighborhood." The 
 members of the first community, Macluria, "have built 
 themselves temporary comfortable cabins, and they have 
 cultivated more land than will be necessary to supply their 
 
 142
 
 COMMUNITY PROGUESS 
 
 wants, and the young persons are spinning and weaving 
 more cloth than will be necessary to clothe them. With 
 the exception of two refractory members, the community 
 seems to comprehend the new principles." These refrac- 
 tory members, Mr. Owen declared, would probably with- 
 draw. 
 
 Feiba Peveli had a large and well-cultivated garden, 
 said Mr. Owen, and an extensive and well-kept farm. This 
 community had good prospects of paying off a part of the 
 debt on their property this year. Macluria had about 
 one hundred and twenty members; Feiba Peveli sixty or 
 seventy. Applications had been made for the formation 
 of other communities, and as soon as houses could be located 
 for them, they would be admitted. 
 
 There was hardly a State in the Union, Mr. Owen de- 
 clared, where this subject did not attract considerable 
 attention, "and in many of them we have communities 
 proceeding under these principles, notably in New York, 
 Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. 
 Some, we know, are in operation in each of those States. 
 In England and Scotland also, the cause has made great 
 progress, the Orbiston community having had notable 
 success." 
 
 " Perhaps," said the hopeful philosopher in closing, 
 " no system of equal magnitude, involving such extensive 
 changes in the conduct of human affairs, ever made prog- 
 ress in any degree approaching to it in so short a time. 
 Hereafter, no one who comes and visits Macluria or Feiba 
 Peveli will doubt the practicability of this scheme." 
 " But," said Mr. Owen, " the great experiment in New 
 Harmony is still going on to ascertain whether a large, 
 heterogeneous mass of persons, collected by chance, can be 
 amalgamated into one community and induced to acquire 
 the genuine feelings of kindness and benevolence which 
 belong solely to the principles on which the new social sys- 
 tem is founded, and which no other principles can produce. 
 
 143
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 The friends of the new social system may rejoice and be 
 exceeding glad, for they may be assured that deliverance 
 from poverty, ignorance, and the oppression of riches is 
 at hand." 
 
 The conditions under which Feiba Peveli and Macluria 
 secured their land, conditions which were later accepted 
 by other communities, comprehended the following pro- 
 visions : 
 
 1. That they should always remain communities - of 
 equality and cooperation in rights and property, and should 
 not be divided into individiial shares or separate interests. 
 
 2. That any surplus property their industry might 
 acquire must not be divided, but used to found similar 
 communities. 
 
 3. That there should be no whisky, or other distilled 
 liquors, made in the communities. 
 
 This was advanced ground on the liquor question, at a 
 time when it was not so seriously considered as at present, 
 and Eobert Owen was already enforcing strict prohibition 
 at New Harmony. Mr. Owen, about this time, suggested 
 the formation of occupational communities, that is, asso- 
 ciations of mechanics engaged in similar trades, farmers, 
 etc. There was evidently some friction between those who 
 labored in the fields and factories, and those who desired to 
 derive a living from their professional training or knowl- 
 edge of trade. 
 
 On May 17th, the Gazette said that there were already 
 ten communities and several societies in operation on the 
 New Harmony plan. In this issue of the community organ 
 is also found an account of the formation of a cooperative 
 association on the Owen plan at Wainborough, Illinois, 
 and of the " Franklin community," located on the Hudson, 
 sixty miles above New York Cit}^, this society adopting 
 in toto one of the numerous New Harmony constitutions. 
 In the latter part of May, advertisements of mercantile busi- 
 ness in the town began to appear in the Gazette. We also 
 
 lU
 
 COMMUNITY PROGRESS 
 
 learn from the Gazette that on May 26th, Paul Brown 
 delivered a lecture in opposition to the management of the 
 community. He spoke vehemently against card-playing, 
 and also complained of the " horse-laughing '' of the chil- 
 dren, which disturbed his thoughts and " rendered life 
 unendurable." 
 
 The dissenters at New Harmony were by this time be- 
 coming bold enough to attack Mr. Owen's philosophy. A 
 complainant deluged the Gazette with questions which 
 called for an answer from Mr. Owen. He wished to know 
 what is to be the stimulus to superior industry ? how money 
 is to be rendered useless in The Xew Moral World? why 
 the people of the community can not see the model of the 
 proposed community building, as shown at Washington? 
 in Mr. Owen's plan for such a building what is the supe- 
 riority of the hollow square over parallel sides at a con- 
 venient distance apart, or over a hollow triangle, pentagon, 
 or hexagon ? how, in the erection of the new building, will 
 the unevenness of the ground be avoided? etc., etc. Such 
 questions dealt rather roughly with Mr. Owen's fanciful 
 details, and his answer was that these minor arrangements 
 were not an essential part of the great plan. On May 28th, 
 Mr. Owen reminded the people that a community can not 
 exist without a true community spirit. Two weeks later, 
 a member of the society complained through the Gazette 
 that the thousand members of the society had come to New 
 Harmony at an expense of twenty thousand dollars to find 
 that communism was not being practised. Emulation, 
 declared another correspondent, must be admitted into the 
 community in order to make it a success, and lawyers and 
 capitalists ought not be spoken of as outlaws, but their 
 friendship should be cultivated. Members w-ho steal or 
 destroy the property of others, this correspondent insisted, 
 ought to be expelled, as w^ell as those who drink intoxicating 
 liquors. " This, of course, has never happened at New 
 Harmony/' declared the cautious contributor. The Gazette 
 
 11 145
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 had declared on May 24tli, that " the system of prevention 
 destroys drunkenness in New Harmony/' 
 
 On July 4:, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the sign- 
 ing of the Declaration of Independence, Robert Owen made 
 the effort which he seemed to consider the chief event in 
 history since the signing of the American Declaration, in 
 delivering what he called " The Declaration of Mental 
 Independence." " I now declare to you and to the world," 
 he began, " that man up to this hour has been in all parts 
 of the earth a slave to a trinity of the most monstrous 
 evils that could be combined to inflict mental and physical 
 evil upon the whole race. I refer to private or individual 
 property, absurd and irrational systems of religion, and 
 marriage founded upon individual property, combined 
 with some of these irrational systems of religion." Then 
 followed a reiteration of principles as set forth in The 
 New Moral World. With undaunted optimism he declared, 
 in closing : " Our principles will spread from community 
 to community, from State to State, from continent to con- 
 tinent, until this system and these principles shall over- 
 shadow the whole earth, shedding fragrance and abun- 
 dance, intelligence and happiness upon all the sons of 
 men." This declaration, Mr. Owen said upon this occa- 
 sion, he considered the most important event in his life. 
 The Gazette was thereafter dated in the " first " and " sec- 
 ond " years of " mental independence." 
 
 Early in July, Sunday meetings for instruction in the 
 new principles were instituted. At these sessions Robert 
 Owen presided, and led in the discussions. Accounts of 
 these meetings are given in the community paper, and 
 we learn that Mr. Owen's addresses were often followed 
 by spirited debates among the members. Although many 
 of the members, Mr. Owen declared on July 30th, had 
 not seen their way clear and had fainted by the way, 
 still he had witnessed a uniform progress from the old 
 system to the new. " From present appearances, in twelve 
 
 146
 
 COMMUNITY PROGRESS 
 
 months we will be able to contend against the world." 
 Six months ago he would not have imagined that the prog- 
 ress since made could have been effected in years. 
 
 " Suppose," said an interrogator at one meeting, " one- 
 third of the population should pledge themselves to go 
 the whole way with you (into communistic association), 
 would you be willing to go the whole way? Would you 
 be willing to make common stock of your property ? " 
 *^ Yes," Mr. Owen answered, " I am ready and will join you 
 whenever there shall be a sufficient number who follow 
 and understand the principles, and who will honestly carry 
 them into effect." 
 
 On July 30, 1826, the New Harmony Agricultural 
 and Pastoral Society adopted a constitution modeled after 
 those previously adopted by New Harmony communistic 
 associations. The membership, limited to thirty families, 
 was less exclusive than that of former societies, a two- 
 thirds vote being sufficient to admit an applicant. Mem- 
 bers leaving the society previous to the payment of the 
 debt to Eobert Owen must relinquish all share in 
 the property. The last clause of the constitution pledged 
 the society to " furnish its quota of soldiers, statesmen, and 
 politicians." 
 
 The fact that the administration organ gave few par- 
 ticulars of the progress of the communities during the 
 summer of 1826 is evidence that there was little to report 
 that was favorable to the prospects of the New Harmony 
 experiment. We only know that numerous expedients were 
 tried to better the condition of the communities, and that 
 all ultimately failed. The summer was full of projects, 
 auspiciously begun and disastrously ended. 
 
 For lack of a better authority, we must fall back on 
 Paul Brown. The mechanics, he states, entered into in- 
 denture with Owen for lands and houses aggregating in 
 value twenty-three thousand dollars, agreeing to pay five 
 per cent interest on this amount, and the property not 
 
 147
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 to be deeded to tliem until the last instalment on the prin- 
 cipal had been paid. The " School Society " made a con- 
 tract for nine hundred acres of land, and the best of the 
 buildings, leasing these for ten thousand years, and agree- 
 ing to pay forty-nine thousand dollars therefor. The 
 " Pastoral Society '' had a similar contract for a large tract 
 of land. There was great jealousy against the educational 
 society, the commoners deeming it an aristocracy. There 
 were many changes from society to society, and the com- 
 munities devoted much time and energy to wrangling with 
 one another. Brown says : " The claim to some crops being 
 unsettled between two societies, a large patch of cabbages 
 went to ruin from neglect. . . . Everything was at 
 sixes and sevens at the very time when everything ought 
 to have been in complete order and the people tending 
 busily to saving the products." 
 
 Brown found no attraction even in the social diversions 
 which enlivened the place. '^ The people of the town," 
 he says, " continued strangers to each other, in spite of all 
 their meetings, their balls, their frequent occasions of con- 
 gregating in the hall, and all their pretense of cooperation. 
 From the first time I set my foot within this little town 
 of one-half mile square, I think there is not one, within 
 the range of my observations during my traveling in other 
 towns of the United States, where the same number of 
 persons, living together within such a compass for so many 
 months, and daily and hourly passing and repassing each 
 other, were so perfectly strang^ers, and void of all personal 
 intimacy with each other's feelings, views, situations, and, 
 very generally, names." 
 
 At a meeting held on August 20th, Eobert Owen said : 
 " Believe me, that if you and your children will only regu- 
 larly meet here three evenings in the week, and give your 
 attention to the subject, one year will not have passed before 
 the minds of all will have become generally well informed. 
 We ought to at once lay the foundation of this general 
 
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 COMMUNITY PROGRESS 
 
 knowledge/' On motion it was agreed that Monday, 
 Wednesday, and Friday evenings should be given to this 
 purpose. These meetings were continued, with decreasing 
 attendance, for only a few weeks. On August 27th, Mr. 
 Owen stated "that the last week had been well employed 
 in commencing the education of the children belonging 
 to the manufacturing, mechanical, and pastoral societies." 
 While Mr. Owen was delivering an excellent course of lec- 
 tures on early education, Paul Brown does not think that 
 the children were progressing far in the straight and 
 narrow way. The mechanics became confused in the intri- 
 cate machinery created by their constitution, and relieved 
 themselves by abolishing their numerous offices, and crea- 
 ting in their stead a trinity of dictators, which they blas- 
 phemously called God the Father, God the Son, and God 
 the Holy Ghost. The farmers became offended by some 
 proceeding of the educational society, and decided to re- 
 move their children from school, paying their tuition up 
 to that time. The mechanics, who seemed to be greater 
 revolutionists than the farmers, became involved in another 
 quarrel, and also withdrew their children, but refused to 
 pay anything for the instruction they had already received. 
 Brown says that gardens and fields were almost entirely 
 neglected. Large holes were made in the fences "by 
 brutes and boys.'' These openings into cultivated en- 
 closures grew wider and wider, until " swine ranged at 
 pleasure throughout, then cows, and next horses." A pil- 
 fering spirit, he says, pervaded the place. " Two dames 
 of House Number 4, where abode the pastorals and shep- 
 herds, had a battle with their fists." The children. Brown 
 declares, ran morally mad. To crown it all, the Gazette 
 refused to publish some essays written by Paul Brown 
 himself. The Gazette does not agree with Brown in its 
 accounts of community conditions, but stated about this 
 time that, " from a neglect of the principles of the system, 
 some very well-meaning individuals are committing mis- 
 
 149
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 takes which deprive them of the enjoyment of a happy 
 state of mind. They blame individuals upon conjecture; 
 they become angry at these individuals, and do and say 
 things which they afterward deeply regret." 
 
 At length the refractory farmers and mechanics agreed 
 to allow Mr. Owen to have charge of the schooling of their 
 children, and a school was set up in the shoe-factory, with 
 Mr. Owen as principal. Following this there seems to have 
 ensued a period of temporary hopefulness and community 
 convalescence. 
 
 At the Sunday meeting for instruction on August 
 23d, Robert Owen quoted from a book entitled The Three 
 Wise Men of Gotham, which held the Owenites up to ridi- 
 cule. He stated that the book was embellished with a pic- 
 ture of three wise men sailing in a bowl, with the motto 
 accompanying it: 
 
 *' Three wise men of Gotham put out to sea in a bowl : 
 If the bowl had been stronger, my tale had been longer." 
 
 The book, Mr. Owen stated, was divided into three 
 parts, the first intended to give a ludicrous history of a 
 pupil of the new system; the second to show the absurdi- 
 ties, uncertainties, and consequent evils of law under the 
 individual system ; the third was a satire on frivolity. The 
 first chapter treated of a man machine who was supposed to 
 tell his own story. Mr. Owen read some pages which 
 treated of the employment of young children in the fac- 
 tories of Great Britain, and accused Mr. Owen of cupidity 
 and a desire to make money by the labor of his followers. 
 
 On September 17, 1826, a general meeting of the 
 societies and the population of New Harmony was held 
 at the hall. A message from Eobert Owen was submitted^ 
 proposing a plan for " the amelioration of the society, to 
 improve the condition of the people, and make them more 
 contented." Mr. Owen offered to join any number of per- 
 
 150
 
 COMMUNITY PROGRESS 
 
 sons, the present existing communities being abolished, m 
 the formation of a new general community, to be called 
 " The New Harmony Community Number 1." The agree- 
 ment stipulated that the real and personal property held 
 by members, and located in the United States, should be 
 made common stock, except what might be sufficient to pay 
 the just debts of members, and their wearing apparel, 
 household furniture, and whatever they might feel disposed 
 to set apart for the support of absent relatives who were 
 not members of the community. The government of this 
 new community, Mr. Owen proposed, should be invested in 
 himself and four directors to be appointed by him. This 
 administration should continue for five years, at the end 
 of which time the majority might decide as to the future 
 government of the community. The members were to obli- 
 gate themselves to " use their best endeavors by temperate, 
 economical, and prudent habits to contribute to the interest 
 of all and the happiness of each.^' 
 
 The existing communities did not at once concur in this 
 plan. The members of the educational society denounced 
 it as a despotism. On October 24th, Macluria had removed 
 three of its directors and its agent. Soon after it split in 
 two, on account, it is said, of a religious controversy, and 
 returned the community property to Mr. Owen, who merged 
 it into the estate of the new community Number 1. 
 Ninety-six members were secured for this association in 
 a few' days. The educational society opposed the plan 
 so vigorously that, according to Paul Brown, its supplies 
 were cut off for a few days. 
 
 The formation of the new community seems to have 
 created a better state of affairs for a time, while Mr. 
 Owen's instruction of the children was accomplishing 
 much good. The Gazette of October 11th declared : " For 
 several weeks past, the steady progress in good habits and 
 substantial improvement among the younger part of the 
 population has been obvious to every one. They have com- 
 
 151
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 menced a system of instruction which at once fixed their 
 attention, and changed their whole conduct. They are 
 most punctual in their attendance upon the lectures, and 
 take an extraordinary interest in them; and in the same 
 proportion that these good feelings and higher views 
 have arisen, they have abandoned their wild and irrational 
 mode of conduct; they are now seldom heard to swear or 
 seen engaged in quarrels, as was their common conduct 
 at their first coming. Their industry keeps pace with their 
 other improvements, and their parents generally express 
 the greatest satisfaction in the change effected in their 
 children. The parents also have made a considerable ad- 
 vance in temperance and industry. There are but two or 
 three among the whole population who are seen occasionally 
 to trespass against the former virtue, and such is the gen- 
 eral feeling of disapprobation in consequence that it is 
 evident to every one that they must speedily change this 
 deplorable habit, or leave the society. 
 
 " The most eccentric and violent characters, who were 
 unprepared to give up their eccentricities, having left the 
 society, all have agreed to commence the social system 
 upon its true foundation of common property, good feeling, 
 and true conduct. The community unanimously agreed 
 that Mr. Owen should take the direction of its formation 
 until it was so far advanced that the members should be 
 instructed in the practise of the whole as well as in the 
 principles. The declaration of mental independence hav- 
 ing cleared away the greater part of the errors which pre- 
 viously prevailed in the minds of many, and removed all 
 doubts from the strong minded in regard to Mr. Owen's 
 real views and ultimate objects, mutual confidence has been 
 established. The town is so full that several await the 
 completion of some houses which are yet in progress. The 
 applications for membership have also largely increased 
 lately. There can be little doubt, therefore, that as soon as 
 the public mind shall be calmed after the first surprise 
 
 152
 
 COMMUNITY PROGRESS 
 
 of such an attack as was the Declaration of Mental Inde- 
 pendence, as soon as the productive classes shall have time 
 and opportunity to discover how grievously they are injured 
 by the old system in every part of the world, and more 
 especially when they reflect upon the fate of the producers 
 of all wealth in Great Britain, they will bestir themselves 
 everywhere, and adopt principles and arrangements by 
 which they will securely enjoy the full benefit of their 
 mental and physical exertions." 
 
 On November 8th, the Gazette declared that at the 
 beginning of the experiment some intemperate, thievish, 
 aristocratic, violent, eccentric, ill-tempered, vain, and 
 scheming persons came to the community. " Some of the 
 most defective characters have left the community, how- 
 ever, as well as some who would have made good members 
 had they persevered. It would be an act of very great 
 injustice to the community and the public, to say that the 
 community character has yet been attained by us ; all par- 
 ties as yet have scarcely become known to each other, and 
 we are but partially acquainted with the materials around 
 us. Some progress has, however, been made. Drunkenness 
 has been diminished until it is now scarcely known. In- 
 dustry has become steady and regular among all classes, 
 with a few exceptions. The children are gradually losing 
 the wild and thoughtless habits which they once possessed, 
 and are beginning to acquire those of attention and refine- 
 ment. 
 
 " The principal thing to be contended with is the char- 
 acter formed by a new country. Families have been here 
 collected without any relation to each others' views and 
 peculiarities. Many of these persons, after their arrival, 
 have been deprived of more or less of their property, and 
 a general system of trading speculation exists among them, 
 each one trying to get the best of the other. Confidence 
 can not, therefore, exist among them, and there is an un- 
 reasonable spirit of suspicion prevalent. Inexperience in 
 
 153
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 community enterprises is another great obstacle, and edu- 
 cation alone can overcome these difficulties." 
 
 On November 29th, the Gazette announced that arrange- 
 ments had been perfected for educating all the children 
 of the community in one family. It says, further : " Some 
 of the population entertain the opinion that a few of the 
 members are not so careful and industrious as they ought 
 to be, and it is probable that there may be some truth in 
 these surmises. Nothing, however, is so damaging as a 
 suspicious spirit. 
 
 " Another cause of dissatisfaction among the members 
 of the educational society arose from a misconception 
 among them as to the best line of separation between their 
 lands and those of the other societies. They thought some 
 other line, giving them more land in a particular direction 
 inconvenient to their neighbors, was necessary for them; 
 a little reflection, however, will convince them of their 
 error, there being more land than is requisite for ten other 
 communities, and whenever they are prepared to require 
 more for cultivation, it can be obtained without difficulty. 
 It deserves not a moment's reflection whether one society 
 has a little more or a little less for the present, providing 
 a line shall be adopted which will prevent them from inter- 
 fering with each other's principles, objects, and arrange- 
 ments. Shortly each member of all these societies will 
 discover that they have but one and the same interest. 
 These little matters, creating some temporary difference 
 of feeling, being once adjusted, the rapidity of our progress 
 will be much accelerated.'' 
 
 At a meeting of the society on November 11, 1826, 
 Robert Owen said : " We meet particularly for the purpose 
 of taking a survey of the last half-year's proceedings, and 
 the progress the community has made toward the attain- 
 ment of the great object which has brought me across the 
 Atlantic, and which has induced you to collect yourselves 
 together at this place. Many are ridiculing the project, 
 
 154
 
 COMMUNITY PROGRESS 
 
 but the members should not heed in the slightest what the 
 world has said or may say relative to our discussions here. 
 It knows no more of this subject, which is new in the annals 
 of the human race, than a man born blind knows of colors," 
 Mr. Owen proceeded to state, after reading the first chap- 
 ter of a new work on the " social system/^ which had been 
 done preparatory to the introduction of the new state of 
 society. He commenced with the purchase of the estate, and 
 the collection of persons desirous of trying the experiment. 
 He mentioned the establishment of the Gazette " for the 
 promulgation of true principles.-'^ These results, he said, 
 were accomplished during the first year. During the suc- 
 ceeding six months, the Declaration of Mental Independ- 
 ence had been mad^, the publication of which he regarded 
 as laying the foundations of the new social system " on a 
 rock immovable through future ages.^^ Then the asso- 
 ciation was formed into a community of common prop- 
 erty. " In the next place, an experiment has been made 
 which proves how easily the whole community may be 
 reeducated into one family, or true community. The 
 community has discovered by experience the utility of 
 delegating the direction of this organization to some of 
 the members until the majority of them acquire the 
 knowledge of the best mode of acting in general meas- 
 ures, or upon an extensive combination. It had further 
 ascertained the qualities, character, or virtues which are 
 necessary to be acquired by all members of a community 
 of common property, equality and justice, and without 
 which no community can be successful. ... A long 
 discussion followed," states the Gazette. 
 
 155
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 COMMUNITY DISINTEGKATION 
 
 *' In my own behalf I rejoice that I could once think better of the 
 world probably than it deserved. It is a mistake into which men seldom 
 fall twice in a lifetime, or, if so, the rarer and higher the nature that 
 can thus magnanimously press onward. , . . Whatever else I may 
 repent of, therefore, let it be reckoned neither among my sins nor follies 
 that I once had faith and force enough to form generous hopes of the 
 world's destiny." — Nathaniel Hawthorne in The Blithedale Romance. 
 
 " Besides those who came to New Harmony with good 
 intentions/^ said the late Colonel Eichard Owen, in a letter 
 to John H. Holliday, " there were a good many who came 
 thinking to make money by getting lands and houses into 
 their hands on pretense of being strong advocates of so- 
 cialism. Some of them were very unscrupulous in the 
 means employed, notably William Taylor, who afterward 
 was in the Ohio penitentiary, I think, for forgery; Amos 
 Clark, who moved to Texas, and some others whose rela- 
 tives are still living — hence I do not mention their names." 
 
 Chief among these dishonest speculators was the Will- 
 iam Taylor referred to in this letter. Gaining the confi- 
 dence of Mr. Owen, he induced him to sell him fifteen 
 hundred acres of land. It is said that the contract read 
 " with all thereon," and that Taylor moved all the agricul- 
 tural implements and live stock he could find on other 
 parts of the estate upon his tract the night before the 
 day upon which the contract went into effect. Taylor 
 established a distillery, contrary to the wishes of Mr. Owen, 
 and in every way possible made trouble for the manage- 
 ment of the community enterprise. 
 
 156
 
 COMMUNITY DISINTEGRATION 
 
 N'ear the close of the year 1826, many of the members 
 of the community were being expelled for incapacity. 
 Paul Brown says of the sale of land ta Taylor : " This 
 maneuver swept away the last cobweb of fairy dreams of 
 a common stock and community." A funeral of the social 
 system was projected by some of the N'ew Harmonites. A 
 coflBn was procured and properly labeled, and arrange- 
 ments were made for an imposing procession; but the 
 night before the day set for the funeral the building in 
 which the coffin was concealed was broken into and all 
 the paraphernalia destroyed, so that the project was aban- 
 doned, and the svstem was allowed to die in its own 
 way. " Owen^s practises about this time," says Brown, 
 " tended to inspire cupidit}^ and his preaching tended to 
 inspire apathy and licentiousness." Without doubt Mr. 
 Owen was now attempting to extricate himself from the 
 financial embarrassment which overhung the experiment, 
 for he doubtless realized that the end of the scheme was 
 near. 
 
 " Moreover," complains Brown, " the individual suf- 
 ferings from the privations and embarrassments arising 
 out of the continual shifting of arrangements, as well as by 
 the circumscription of subsistence, deadened the wonted 
 sympathy of many ingenuous souls. Money was in higher 
 repute than in any other town, and became almost an 
 object of worship. The sexes fought like cats and dogs 
 about individual marriages; there was no politeness be- 
 tween the single persons of the two sexes, but a dark, sul- 
 len, cold, suspicious temper, and a most intolerable, 
 miserly allusion to individual property as the standard of 
 worth. The single men of the town were generally obliged 
 to make their own beds, carry their clothes to wash and 
 recover them when they could, as much as if they had be- 
 longed to an army. Everv one was for himself, as the 
 saying is." 
 
 The pretense of communism was kept up by the admin- 
 
 157
 
 TEE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 istration, perhaps with the hope that something would turn 
 up to change the trend of affairs. The Sunday meetings 
 for instruction, which had for some time been discon- 
 tinued on account of a lack of heating accommodations at 
 the hall, were resumed. About this time two more com- 
 munities were formed on the New Harmony estate — 
 Number 3, within a half mile of New Harmony, and 
 Number 4. Delegates arrived during the latter part of 
 January, bringing tidings of the Blue Springs community, 
 near Bloomington, Indiana. They reported it to be in a 
 prosperous condition. 
 
 About this time the Gazette declared in an editorial: 
 " We have not ourselves for some weeks expressed an opin- 
 ion as to the progress of the community, both on account 
 of the difficulty of getting a correct statement, and then 
 again because the state of the public mind in a young and 
 heterogeneous society like this varies easily and rapidly, 
 producing a corresponding impulse and revulsion. If a 
 community is to grow together and harmoniously, its mem- 
 bers must meet frequently, a thing that has not been done 
 here lately on account of the heating of the hall. Nine- 
 tenths of the advantages of community life are lost in the 
 absence of meetings for social intercourse.^^ 
 
 " In March,^^ Brown says, " a plan was made by some 
 to ascend the Ohio Eiver, and form a community near Cin- 
 cinnati." The granary, public eating-house, cook-house, 
 meeting-house, and sitting-rooms were deserted and the 
 remaining members of the society took their meals at the 
 boarding-school. On March 21st, eighty persons left 
 New Harmony by boat. A greater part of the town was 
 now resolved into town lots, and signboards began to go 
 up everywhere. " A sort of wax figure and puppet show 
 was opened up at one end of the boarding-house, and every- 
 thing was getting into the old style." 
 
 The New Harmony Gazette of March 28, 1827, in 
 an editorial written by Robert Dale Owen and William 
 
 158
 
 COMMUNITY DISINTEGRATION 
 
 Owen, acknowledged the defeat of the experiment in 
 the .town itself, although faith was still affirmed in the 
 principles involved in the general plan, and confidence in 
 the future success of other communities located on the 
 estate. " Eobert Owen, in his first address, did not desig- 
 nate New Harmonv even as the site of the future com- 
 munity, but only as a half-way house. We think that this 
 was the wisest plan, and it was well that the Preliminary 
 Society should have continued two years. 
 
 " Eobert Owen, after his return from England, nine 
 months after the formation of the Preliminary Society, 
 thought that further delay would be inadvisable, and, 
 unfitted as the town was by its variety of people and 
 unique occupations for the purposes of community life, 
 heterogeneous as was the character of its numerous inhabi- 
 tants, and little as they knew of each other, he thought 
 they might be formed, with a few exceptions, into a self- 
 governing community. A vote of the society determined 
 that no exceptions should be made, and the members of the 
 Preliminary Society resolved themselves into a community. 
 
 '*' We have yet to learn that the character of a person 
 educated among the surroundings of the old world, can 
 be entirely changed. The experiment, to ascertain at once 
 whether a mixed and unassorted population could success- 
 fully govern their own affairs as a community, was a bold 
 and hazardous attempt, and, we think, a premature one. 
 
 " Our own opinion is that Eobert Owen ascribed too 
 little influence to the early antisocial circumstances that 
 had surrounded many of the quickly collected inhabitants 
 of New Harmony before their arrival here, and too much to 
 the circumstances which experience might enable them to 
 create around themselves in future. He sought to abridge 
 the period of human suffering by an immediate and de- 
 cisive step, and the plan was boldly conceived; the failure 
 would only afford proof that the conception in this par- 
 ticular case was not as practical as it was benevolent, inas- 
 
 159
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 much as the mass of the individuals at New Harmony 
 were not prepared for so advanced a measure. 
 
 " Whether the project was executed in the best and 
 most prudent manner, it is not for us to judge. We are too 
 inexperienced in its practise to hazard a judgment on the 
 prudence of the various individuals who directed its exe- 
 cution, and the one opinion we can express with confidence 
 is of the perseverance with which Eobert Owen prosecuted 
 it at great pecuniary loss to himself. One form of govern- 
 ment was first adopted, and when that appeared unsuited 
 to the actual state of the members another was tried in its 
 place, until it appeared that the whole population, numer- 
 ous as they were, were too various in their feelings, too 
 dissimilar in their habits, to unite and govern themselves 
 harmoniously as one community, and they separated, 
 therefore, into three, each remaining perfectly independent 
 of Robert Owen. But these societies were again incautious 
 in their admission of members, and it soon became evident 
 that their size was too unwieldy for their practical knowl- 
 edge. Two of them abandoned their separate independ- 
 ence, and requested Eobert Owen, with the assistance of 
 four trustees, to take the general superintendence of affairs, 
 which were getting into some confusion. Only the third 
 society, called the educational, continued, under the aus- 
 pices of William Maclure, and still continues its original 
 and separate form. 
 
 " Thus was another attempt made to unite into a com- 
 munity of common property and equal rights, but it soon 
 became too apparent to the trustees in whom the manage- 
 ment was vested that the establishment did not pay its 
 own expenses. Therefore some decisive changes became 
 necessary to arrest this continued loss of property, thus, 
 by rendering the society successful in a pecuniary way, 
 to secure its independence of foreign assistance. 
 
 " The deficiency in production appeared immediately 
 attributable in part to carelessness of many members as 
 
 160
 
 COMMUNITY DISINTEGRATION 
 
 regarded the community property; in part to their want 
 of interest in the experiment itself — the only true incite- 
 ment to community industry — and the discordant variety 
 of habits among them. The circle was so large, and the 
 operations it embraced so various and extensive, that the 
 confidence of minds untrained in the correct principles, 
 and able to see but a small part of the whole, who had 
 witnessed, too, the various previous changes, was shaken. 
 Their care and their exertions diminished with their con- 
 fidence in themselves, and the natural consequences ensued. 
 
 "A remedy presented itself in the voluntary associa- 
 tion, out of the population of New Harmony, of those 
 individuals together who had confidence in one another's 
 intentions, and mutual enjoyment in one another's society. 
 Land and assistance for the first year were offered to those 
 who chose to unite in this plan, and the consequence was 
 the formation of another community on the New Har- 
 mony lands. 
 
 " And we regret that for those who remained in town 
 the only effectual and immediate remedy appeared to be 
 in circumscribing each other's interests and responsibility. 
 As the circle was too large for their present habits and 
 experiences, smaller circles were described within it. The 
 community was subdivided into occupations, each of which 
 became responsible for its operations alone. 
 
 " And this is the present situation in New Harmony. 
 Each occupation supports itself, paying weekly a small 
 percentage toward the general expenses of the town. Each 
 regulates its own affairs, determining its own internal 
 regulations and distributing its produce. 
 
 " New Harmony, therefore, is not now a community ; 
 but, as was originally intended, a central village, out of 
 and around which communities have formed, and may 
 continue to form themselves, and with the inhabitants of 
 which these communities may exchange their products 
 thus obtained for those manufactured articles which the 
 13 161
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 limited operations incidental to the incipient colonies do 
 not enable them to produce themselves. 
 
 " Let us not, then, be misunderstood, for it is important 
 that our friends should know the exact position on which 
 we stand, more particularly those who may wish to Join us 
 here. It is not in the town itself, but on the lands of 
 Harmony, that the community system is in progressive 
 operation. 
 
 " About a year ago, and soon after the formation of the 
 community in this town, a number of families, separating 
 from the principal body, located themselves on the lands 
 at about a mile eastward from the town and founded the 
 community of Feiba Peveli, or Number 3. It has pro- 
 gressed successfully, and we believe that its members are 
 now convinced by present experience of the benefits of 
 the social system. 
 
 " In addition to community Number 4, whose lands lie 
 south of the town, we have now to notice the commence- 
 ment of another community, whose formation preceded the 
 separation into occupations. The land of this community 
 is situated about two miles distant from the town, on both 
 sides of the Princeton road. 
 
 " The communities commenced on a small scale, in- 
 tending to increase their membership gradually. They 
 will afford an example of how easy it is to begin a co- 
 operative community in a simple manner, with little capi- 
 tal, provided industry and good feeling exist among the 
 members. Their progress will not probably be sudden 
 and astonishing, but it will be constant. 
 
 " Another society, Macluria, or Number 2, which sep- 
 arated from the principal community about the same time 
 that Number 3 was formed, and continued its operations 
 for about a year, succeeded perfectly from an economical 
 point of view. Their original motive for secession was, in 
 part, we believe, a religious one, and we have been told 
 that their subsequent dissolution was attributable to a 
 
 162
 
 COMMUNITY DISINTEGRATION 
 
 similar cause. Their lands have been taken by a party of 
 German settlers, to the number of about fifteen families, 
 who have already disposed of their property and will arrive 
 here probably next month to commence a community of 
 mutual labor and common property/ 
 
 j> 
 
 While Eobert Owen was making his preparations to 
 depart for Europe, the trouble which had long been brew- 
 ing between him and Mr. Maclure — a natural result of the 
 association of two leaders of such marked individuality — 
 developed into an open quarrel, and the closing year of the 
 communistic experiments witnessed a dispute over indi- 
 vidual property between the joint projectors of the new 
 social and educational system. Under date of April 
 30th the following was posted in public places : 
 
 NOTICE. 
 
 Notice is hereby given to all whom it may concern, fore- 
 warning them not to trust Robert Owen on my account, as I 
 am determined not to pay any debts of his, or in any way be 
 responsible for any transaction he may have done or may at- 
 tempt to do in my name. 
 
 WUiLIAM MACIiURE. 
 
 Within a few hours the town store contained the follow- 
 ing retaliatory 
 
 NOTICE. 
 
 Having just now seen the very extraordinary advertisement 
 put upon some of the houses in this place, and signed by 
 William Maclure, it becomes necessary in my own defense to 
 inform the public that the partnership between William 
 Maclure and myself is in full force, and that I shall pay any 
 contract made either by William Maclure or myself on the 
 partnership account. 
 
 Robert Owen. 
 163
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 Next da}^, Paul Brown declares, Maclure prosecuted 
 Owen for the recovery of forty thousand dollars, with a 
 view of making him give a deed in fee simple for the 
 property Maclure had bought, or refunding such amount of 
 money. Owen retaliated by getting out a writ against 
 Maclure for ninety thousand dollars. A compromise. 
 Brown says, was finally effected, and Owen gave to Maclure 
 a deed in fee simple for his share of the property. 
 
 Eobert Owen made the following statement in regard to 
 the trouble: The friends of Mr. Maclure proposed that 
 Mr. Owen and Mr. Maclure each put one hundred and 
 fifty thousand dollars into the experiment just to be tried 
 at New Harmony, and Mr. Owen consented. Mr. Ma- 
 clure's liability, at his request, was limited to ten thousand 
 dollars. Mr. Maclure went on to New Harmony to estab- 
 lish the Pestalozzian system. He failed to do it with any 
 degree of swiftness, and Mr. Owen and the population 
 itself became impatient. Mr. Maclure thought he could 
 do better with part of the property under his control, and 
 requested that a portion be set apart for him. Mr. Owen 
 did not want such a division, not wishing the town hall 
 to be separated from the community population, and so 
 would not consent. Eapp had been paid one hundred 
 thousand dollars by Owen, and notes had been made for 
 forty thousand more. Eapp came after twenty thousand 
 dollars when it was due, and wanted twenty thousand 
 dollars that was due a year later. Owen paid the first 
 twenty thousand dollars. Maclure refused to pay a cent 
 toward this unless Owen would give him an unrestricted 
 deed to the property which he had sold under restrictions. 
 Maclure finally paid Eapp, and after getting the bonds in 
 his possession he had Owen arrested and posted a notice 
 disclaiming any intention to pay any of Owen's obliga- 
 tion. A board of arbitration decided Maclure to be five 
 thousand dollars in Owen's debt. Mr. Owen had, he sup- 
 posed, irritated Mr. Maclure, for he had inaugurated a 
 
 164
 
 COMMUNITY DISINTEGRATION 
 
 separate S5^stem of education in New Harmony, inde- 
 pendent of Mr. Maclure's. 
 
 A. J. Macdonald, who spent some time at Xew Har- 
 mony, long enough after the trouble had subsided to make 
 possible an impartial judgment of the controversy, says 
 that the trouble " was most likely attributable to the fact 
 that Owen commenced a system of education under the 
 direction of Mr. Dorsey, differing from that of Maclure. 
 Mr. Maclure had advanced only a small portion of the pur- 
 chase money for the Eappite property, and after the 
 formation of Macluria refused to pay any more without 
 receiving from Mr. Owen a deed for the property he held. 
 This Mr. Owen refused, unless the restriction relative to 
 the property being used forever for community purposes 
 was allowed to remain. The difficulty was, however, made 
 up, and Mr. Maclure afterward paid forty thousand dol- 
 lars and a balance of five thousand." 
 
 165
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 ROBERT Owen's farewell addresses 
 
 **Mr. Owen*s generosity and sincerity will survive all the sneers 
 which have been cast upon them. His reward for his losses has been 
 the consciousness of spending his time and means in doing good ! 
 Those who have shared his bounties or caught some of the sympathy 
 elicited through his influence and diffused among those who desired to 
 practise his benevolence, will look back as long as they live to the 
 brief space when, amidst surrounding conflictions, they tasted a par- 
 ticle of true happiness on earth ! " — Macdonald. 
 
 On Sunday, May 26, 1827, Robert Owen delivered at 
 New Harmony Hall a "farewell address to the citizens 
 of New Harmony and the members of the neighboring 
 communities." 
 
 " A second year/' he said, " has just expired since the 
 experiment was commenced in this place to supersede the 
 individual by the cooperative system of union and equality, 
 under the form of a Preliminary Society. 
 
 "It is known to you that the persons who composed 
 this society were entire strangers to each other ; that some 
 had come from every State in the Union, and some from 
 almost every kingdom in Europe; that the society was 
 instituted to enable these persons to become acquainted 
 with each other, so that those who were capable of acting 
 faithfully and cordially together might afterward form a 
 community upon the social system; that after the Pre- 
 liminary Society was constituted and the members had 
 elected a committee to govern themselves, I went to Europe 
 and returned again in about nine months; that soon after 
 
 166
 
 ROBERT OWEN'S FAREWELL ADDRESSES 
 
 my return it was proposed that a community of common 
 property and equality should be formed from among the 
 members of the Preliminary Society^ and many of you 
 know that it was my intention that the society should 
 at first consist of those only who had acquired confidence 
 in each other's qualifi^sations for such a state of society, 
 and it is also known to many who are present that this 
 intention was frustrated by a motion being made at one of 
 the public meetings that all the members of the Pre- 
 liminary Society should be admitted members of the com- 
 munity. This motion was too popular to be resisted by 
 those who did not otherwise expect to become members. 
 From that period the most intelligent among the popula- 
 tion foresaw that this measure would retard the formation 
 of one large, united community in this town of Harmony ; 
 there were too many opposing habits and feelings to permit 
 such a mass, without more instruction in the system, to act 
 as one cordially together. 
 
 " This .singularly constituted mass, however, contained 
 materials out of which, by patience and perseverance, 
 several communities might be ultimately formed; and all 
 my subsequent measures were directed to accomplish this 
 object. 
 
 " Although many here at that time were unprepared to 
 be members of the community of common property and 
 equality, yet there was much good feeling among the 
 population generally. And if the schools had been in 
 operation upon the very superior plan upon which I had 
 been led to expect they would be, so as to convince parents, 
 by ocular demonstration, of the benefits which their chil- 
 dren would immediately derive from the system, it would 
 have been, I think, practicable, even with such materials, 
 with the patience and perseverance which would have been 
 applied to the subject, to have succeeded in amalgamating 
 the whole into a community. 
 
 " As these difficulties regarding the education of our 
 
 167
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 children were to be overcome, as well as many others to 
 which this gave rise, I waited patiently for such change 
 of circumstances as would enable me to make progress 
 toward my object. With deep interest I attended to the 
 various changes which the different parties desired to make, 
 and I always met their wishes as far as circumstances 
 would permit. I did so because I had not yet attained 
 sufficient knowledge of the persons or of the country to 
 act with my customary decision. 
 
 " These changes gave me a more speedy insight into the 
 character of the population, and enabled me to obtain a 
 better knowledge of those who were in some degree pre- 
 pared for the social system. They also elicited knowledge 
 of the means by which future communities might be most 
 easily and safely formed; and to me this was invaluable 
 experience, to be hereafter applied for the benefit of the 
 inhabitants of this country and of Great Britain. 
 
 " Among those who first came here were many with 
 whom none could be found to unite in communities. These 
 persons became a great obstacle in the progress of our 
 proceedings. It was necessary for the safety, comfort, and 
 happiness of those who remained, and for the success of 
 the system itself, that they should remove. Difficulty arose 
 from the expense of their removal, and from the necessity 
 of informing them that they were not such members as 
 would be admitted into the communities. If I paid for 
 the removal of one family, all would expect to be assisted 
 in a like manner, an expenditure my funds would not 
 admit of, after the large sums which had been previously 
 expended in the experiment; and no one would like to be 
 informed that none could be found who would admit them 
 to become members of their community. This, however, 
 was a difficulty which it was absolutely necessary, for the 
 sake of all, should be overcome. 
 
 " That every one might have a fair and equal chance, 
 I proposed to supply land in proportion to numbers, on 
 
 168
 
 ROBERT OWEN'S FAREWELL ADDRESSES 
 
 the estate of Harmony, to all who would associate, even 
 in small numbers, to commence a community, and that 
 they should be aided in food and implements of hus- 
 bandry to the extent that our means would afford, and this 
 was a public offer, made equally to all, and those who came 
 here with a view of forming communities accepted it, and 
 are now industriously occupied in preparing crops for this 
 season. 
 
 " Those persons who would not, or could not, so connect 
 themselves, were informed that they must leave Harmony 
 or support themselves by their own industry, or until they 
 could find persons of good character who would join them 
 in forming a community. 
 
 " This measure, unpleasant as it was to my feelings, 
 became unavoidable to prevent the entire loss of the prop- 
 erty which had been appropriated to carry on the experi- 
 ment ; and by this course of proceedings, those persons who 
 were in a condition to promote the social system, were 
 relieved from the permanent support of those individuals 
 who were daily diminishing the fund which had been de- 
 voted for the more general beneficial purposes. 
 
 " Under these circumstances, many families, as you 
 know, left New Harmony, with their feelings more or less 
 hurt, and, in proportion to the knowledge and love of the 
 principles really possessed by each of them, are no doubt 
 active in their statements for or against my proceedings 
 and for or against the social system. 
 
 " This period, the most unpleasant and trying of any 
 which I have had to pass through — for my object in com- 
 ing here was to benefit all, and, if possible, to injure none — - 
 has, happily, passed. The social system is now firmly 
 established; the natural and easy means of forming com- 
 munities have been developed by your past experience. 
 Already eight independent communities have been formed 
 upon the New Harmony estate, exclusive of Mr. Maclure's 
 educational society and of the town of New Harmony, 
 
 169
 
 TEE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 which has naturally become the place for the reception of 
 strangers who have the desire to join some of the existing 
 communities, or of forming others. 
 
 " New Harmony is now, therefore, literally surrounded 
 by independent communities, and applications are made 
 almost daily by persons, who come from far and near, to be 
 permitted to establish themselves in a similar manner. 
 The essential difference between our first and the present 
 proceedings is this : at the commencement, strangers to 
 each others' characters, principles, habits, views, and senti- 
 ments were associated together to acquire a knowledge of 
 each other and to learn the practise of the social system; 
 now, those only associate in communities who were pre- 
 viously well acquainted with each other, and possess simi- 
 lar habits, sentiments, and feelings, and who have made 
 some advance in obtaining a knowledge of the principles 
 and practises prerequisite to be known by those who become 
 members of communities of equality and common prop- 
 erty. Experience has proved that between these two modes 
 of proceeding the difference is great indeed. 
 
 " Since those persons have removed from New Har- 
 mony who from one cause or another were disposed to 
 leave us, the remainder of the population are, you perceive, 
 gradually taking those situations best suited to their in- 
 clinations and former habits, and in some instances the 
 occupations have formed among themselves a kind of 
 preparatory society and are doing well. The lands of the 
 communities around us have been put into a good state 
 of cultivation, and are well fenced; there is, as you see, 
 at this time, every appearance of abundance of fruit, all 
 kinds of food and materials for clothing, and no want of 
 industry to preserve the former and to manufacture the 
 latter. Upward of thirty cabins have lately been erected 
 upon the lands of communities Numbers 2, 3, and 4, and 
 yet not a spare room can be obtained for any who come 
 to us. 
 
 170
 
 ROBERT OWEN'S FAREWELL ADDRESSES 
 
 " The town and immediate vicinity of New Harmony 
 have been, as you perceive, greatly improved lately, and 
 other important improvements are in progress. No site 
 for a number of communities in close union together can 
 be found finer than that which surrounds us; its natural 
 situation and the variety of its productions exceeds any- 
 thing I have ever seen in Europe or America; the rich 
 land, intermixed with islands, woods, rivers, and hills in a 
 beautiful proportion to each other, presents, from our high 
 ground, a prospect which highly gratifies every intelligent 
 stranger. It is true, misconceptions of our proceedings 
 and of our present state have gone forth to the great grief 
 of those who were looking forward with an intense interest 
 to an amelioration of the classes from the measures which 
 were to commence here ; but these reports have been bene- 
 ficial. They have prevented us from being overwhelmed 
 with numbers. 
 
 " These operations have been going on so successfully 
 that perhaps no pleasure has been more pure than that 
 which I have enjoyed for some time past in my daily visits 
 to some of these establishments, where, by the industry of 
 the persons engaged, I see the sure foundations laid of 
 independence for themselves and for their children's chil- 
 dren through many generations. From the new order of 
 influences arising around them they must become a su- 
 perior race — intelligent, virtuous, and happy ; beings whose 
 chief occupation, after a few years of temperance and in- 
 dustry, will be to distribute to others the means of becom- 
 ing as independent, prudent, happy, and useful as them- 
 selves. 
 
 " I had also made my arrangements to settle, before my 
 departure from Europe, every outstanding account against 
 myself and those concerned with me in this establishment 
 and experiment, that no obstacle should remain after my 
 departure to impede the progress and success of the young 
 colonies ; and, looking back through the two years just ex- 
 
 171
 
 TEE NE^Y HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 pired, I could not but feel an almost inexpressible delight 
 and inward satisfaction from reflecting upon the obstacles 
 which had been overcome, and from viewing in the mind^s 
 eye the cheering prospects which are before us. 
 
 " While preparing for my journey to Europe, and just 
 as I was going to set out, an event occurred which arose, 
 as I must believe, from some extraordinary misconception 
 in the minds of our well-meaning friends, which, fortu- 
 nately, has delayed me some days among you. These mis- 
 conceptions are, I believe, now completely removed, and I 
 have had, by this delay, the pleasure of receiving and of 
 becoming acquainted with some highly respectable families 
 from the South, who have traveled several hundred miles 
 on purpose to live some time among you, and to make 
 themselves familiar with the new system." 
 
 On May 27th Mr. Owen delivered an address, full 
 of parting counsel, to " the ten social colonies of equality 
 and common property on the New Harmony estate," — 
 the two additional communities being colonies of Ger- 
 mans, one from Pennsylvania, and one from Germany, 
 as we learn from the Gazette of May 23d. " With the 
 right understanding of the principles upon which your 
 change from the old to the new has been made," he said in 
 part, " you will attain your object. Without that under- 
 standing you can not succeed. You should have honesty 
 of purpose; devotion to the success of each and all com- 
 munities; confidence in one another and submission to 
 majority rule; well-regulated industry and wise econom}''; 
 to make provision for the schools should be an object of 
 first importance. . . . Industry, economy, beauty, 
 order, and good feeling are silently and gradually growing 
 up around you, and the right spirit of the great system, 
 not derived from enthusiasm or imagination, but from a 
 real knowledge of your own nature and of your true in- 
 terest, is gaining ground among you, and can not fail soon 
 to become general. . . . New Harmony can not be 
 
 172
 
 ROBERT OWEN'S FAREWELL ADDRESSES 
 
 numbered among the colonies of the social system, but there 
 is progress, and the day is not far distant when it will 
 join the ranks of the faithful. . . . 
 
 " With regard to the schools, it is my desire that all 
 your children should be educated in the best manner and 
 at the least expense to you. I should like to add, without 
 any expense to you; this would be the proceeding most 
 gratifying to my feelings that could now occur ; but having 
 expended a large capital in putting you into your present 
 independent condition; having paid for the whole of the 
 real and personal property that I purchased since I came 
 to this country, and having discharged every other debt, I 
 do not yet know whether my remaining income will en- 
 able me, with the prudence that is necessary in my situa- 
 tion, to undertake to clothe, feed, and educate all your 
 children without cost, or with such aid from your surplus 
 produce as you can spare without inconvenience. Eelying, 
 however, upon the faithful stewardship of the parties in 
 whose hands the remaining property which I possess here 
 has been entrusted, I shall appropriate three thousand 
 dollars this year toward defraying the expenses of this 
 all-important subject, the general direction of which I 
 leave to Mr. Dorsey, late treasurer of Miami University, 
 in whose steadfastness, integrity, ability, and disinterested 
 devotion to the cause I have full confidence. 
 
 "When I return I hope to find you progressing in 
 harmony together.^^ 
 
 On June 1, 1827, Mr. Owen left New Harmony for 
 England, stopping en route to New York in several cities 
 to deliver lectures on the social system, and to paint hope- 
 ful pictures of conditions at New Harmony. 
 
 173
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 THE TEN LOST TRIBES OF COMMUNISM 
 
 . Robert Owen had met the Waterloo of his communis- 
 tic schemes, but he retired from a field of hopeless defeat as 
 if he had been the Wellington, rather than the Napoleon, 
 of the contest. It soon became evident that the enthusias- 
 tic spirit of Robert Owen, with the funds at his command, 
 had alone kept the population so long together in the 
 semblance of communistic association. With the com- 
 mander-in-chief gone the little army broke into disastrous 
 retreat before the self-assertive forces of individualism. 
 The last evidence of the existence of anv of the commu- 
 nistic societies is a report of a Harvest Home celebration 
 by Feiba Peveli on July 26, 1827, when " fifty persons 
 sat down to an excellent supper laid out on the lawn near 
 their village; the utmost order prevailed, and appro- 
 priate songs and toasts added to the hilarity of the eve- 
 ning." One by one these societies became disorganized 
 by dissension, and when Robert Owen returned to New 
 Harmony, on April 1, 1828, his optimism failed in the 
 face of a complete collapse of the " social system," though 
 his confession of defeat was a grudging one. 
 
 " I had hoped," he said, in an address delivered at 
 New Harmony Hall on April 13, 1828, " that fifty years 
 of political liberty had prepared the American people 
 to govern themselves advantageously. I supplied land, 
 houses, and the use of capital, «nd I tried, each in their 
 own way, the different parties who collected here; and 
 experience proved that the attempt was premature, to unite 
 
 174
 
 THE TEN LOST TRIBES OF COMMUNISM 
 
 a number of strangers not previously educated for the 
 purpose. I afterward tried what could be done by those 
 who associated through their own choice and in small 
 numbers; to those I gave leases of large tracts of good 
 land for ten thousand years for a nominal rent, and upon 
 moral conditions only ; and these I did expect would have 
 made progress during my absence; and now upon my re- 
 turn I find that the habits of the individual system were so 
 powerful that these leases have been, with a few excep- 
 tions, applied for individual purposes and individual gain, 
 and in consequence they must return again into my hands. 
 
 " This proves that families, trained in the individual 
 system, have not acquired those moral characteristics of 
 forbearance and charity necessary for confidence and har- 
 mony; and communities, to be successful, must consist of 
 persons devoid of prejudice, and possessed of moral feel- 
 ings in unison with the laws of human nature. 
 
 " Monopolies have been established in certain depart- 
 ments without my indorsement; it was not my intention 
 to have a petty store and whisky shop here. 
 
 "I can only feel regret, instead of anger," said Mr. 
 Owen, in closing. " My intention now is to form such 
 arrangements on the estate as will enable those who desire 
 to promote the practise of the social system, to live in 
 separate families on the individual system and yet to unite 
 their general labor; or to exchange labor for labor on the 
 most beneficial terms for all; all to do both or neither as 
 their feelings or apparent interest may influence them; 
 while the children shall be educated with a view to the 
 establishment of the social system in the future. . 
 I will not be discouraged by any obstacle, but will per- 
 severe to the end." 
 
 Some of the leases offered by Eobert Owen to small 
 communistic societies in 1827, were taken by sincere and 
 industrious workers; others were obtained by speculators, 
 who cared nothing for Owen or his schemes. To those 
 
 175
 
 TEE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 who had acted in good faith, Mr. Owen finally sold, at a 
 low figure, the lands they occupied. Through the specu- 
 lators he lost a large amount of personal property. His 
 expenditures in the purchase and maintenance of the prop- 
 ert}^, with his losses by adventurers, aggregated two hun- 
 dred thousand dollars — his entire fortune at the beginning 
 of the experiment amounting to but fifty thousand dollars 
 more. Had the community system proved practicable, his 
 intention was to deed this land in trust to the associations 
 without exacting any payment whatever. What was left 
 of his fortune he soon expended in the furtherance of 
 similar social schemes. As some one has said : " He seems 
 to have felt it a point of honor, so long as he had means 
 left, to avert reproach from the cause of cooperation by 
 paying debts left standing at the close of unsuccessful 
 experiments, whenever these had been conducted in good 
 faith." In later years he conveyed the residue of the New 
 Harmony estate to his four sons, only requiring of them 
 that they execute a deed of trust for thirty thousand dol- 
 lars' worth of land, which yielded an annuity of fifteen 
 hundred dollars. This was his sole source of support for 
 many years. 
 
 It is impossible to trace the processes by which the 
 property of the various communities passed into individual 
 hands. Dr. Schnack says that Messrs. John Cooper, James 
 Elliot, James Maidlow, Jonathan Stocker, and others con- 
 tinued community Number 3 under the original lease for 
 several years, but that at the dissolution of the organiza- 
 tion the property was bought and divided by Messrs. 
 Cooper, Maidlow, and Elliot. The lease of community 
 Number 2 finally came into the hands of Jacob Schnee, the 
 postmaster at New Harmony during community days, and 
 later was merged in a purchase by W. C. Pelham. Other 
 individuals undertook the management of the several fac- 
 tories, but with little success, so that the buildings were 
 finally diverted to other purposes than that of manufactur- 
 
 176
 
 THE TEN LOST TUlBES OF COMMUNISM 
 
 ing. So many of the communists remained in New Har- 
 mony and its immediate vicinity^ that Dr. Schnack, with 
 the assistance of several old residents, compiled in 1890 
 the following list of New Harmony family names which 
 still survive the community period: Beal, Birkbeck (de- 
 scendants of Morris Birkbeck, of the English colony in 
 Edwards County, who was drowned in Fox Eiver while re- 
 turning to Albion, Illinois, from a visit to the commu- 
 nity), Bolton, Brown, Cooper, Cox, Dransfield, Duclos, 
 Evans, Fauntleroy, Fretageot, Gex, Grant, Hugo, Johnson, 
 Lichtenberger, Bennett, West, Lyons, Mumford, Murphy, 
 Neef, Owen, Parvin, Pelham, Eobson, Sampson, Schnee, 
 Snelling, Soper, Twigg, Warren, and Wheatcroft. 
 
 A. J. Macdonald, in his unpublished manuscript on 
 American Communities, gives the data contained in the 
 following table concerning the communistic societies, ex- 
 clusive of those located on the New Harmony estate, which 
 had their origin in the Owenite movement: 
 
 Name. 
 
 Place. 
 
 Capital. 
 
 Debt. 
 
 DUBATION. 
 
 Blue Spring . . . 
 
 Monroe Co., Ind". 
 
 
 
 One year. 
 
 Cooperative 
 
 
 
 
 
 Society 
 
 Valley Forge, Pa. 
 
 
 
 
 Coxsackie 
 
 New York. 
 
 Small. 
 
 Large. 
 
 Between 1 
 
 * 
 
 
 
 
 and 2 vrs. 
 
 Forrestville 
 
 Indiana. 
 
 325 acres 
 of land. 
 
 
 1 year. 
 
 Franklin 
 
 New York. 
 
 
 
 
 Harerstraw (80 
 
 
 
 
 
 members) 
 
 New York. 
 
 120 acres 
 of land. 
 
 $12,000. 
 
 5 months. 
 
 Kendal (200 
 
 
 
 
 
 members) 
 
 Ohio. 
 
 200 acres 
 of land. 
 
 
 2 years. 
 
 Nashoba 
 
 Tennessee. 
 
 2,000 acres 
 of land. 
 
 
 3 years. 
 
 Yellow Springs 
 
 
 
 
 
 (100 families). 
 
 Ohio. 
 
 
 
 
 13 
 
 177
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 The total number of communities was nineteen; of 
 which twelve were situated in Indiana, three in New York, 
 two in Ohio, one in Pennsylvania, and one in Tennessee. 
 It is certain that this list is not complete. In southwestern 
 Indiana, especially, the communistic fever was prevalent 
 during the years through which the New Harmony ex- 
 periment continued and many neighborhoods were affected 
 by it. In some cases branches of families united in com- 
 munistic association for brief periods. By 1830 not an 
 association was left to continue the movement so auspi- 
 ciously inaugurated by Eobert Owen five years before. 
 
 Explanations of the failure of the Owenite communi- 
 ties have been as numerous as commentarians upon them. 
 The most comprehensive estimate of the causes leading to 
 failure is that of Macdonald, who spent eighteen months 
 at New Harmony in 1853-54, twent3^-five years after the 
 last vestige of communistic association disappeared from 
 the estate. His remarks are interesting. " I was cau- 
 tioned," he said, " not to speak on socialism, as the subject 
 was unpopular. The advice was good — socialism was un- 
 popular, and with good reason. The people had been 
 wearied and disappointed, had been filled full of theories 
 until they were nauseated, and had made such miserable 
 attempts at practise that they seemed ashamed of what 
 they had been doing. An enthusiastic socialist would soon 
 be ' cooled down,^ because the people would see his ig- 
 norance. 
 
 " During a residence of nearly eighteen months in New 
 Harmony, I endeavored to ascertain some particulars re- 
 garding the failure of the community. It was a difficult 
 endeavor, for as Mr. Warren truly said : ' If you ask a 
 dozen individuals, you will get a dozen different causes.^ 
 The cause Mr. W assigned was ' error in the princi- 
 ples,^ and for many years he has endeavored to prove the 
 error by introducing his plan of ' equitable commerce.' 
 
 " From Mr. C I heard the story, as he ended it, by 
 
 178
 
 THE TEN LOST TRIBES OF COMMUNISM 
 
 saying, that with all the troubles and vexations of that 
 important period it was the happiest time of his life. Mr. 
 
 A said that many persons came there and lived as long 
 
 as they could get supplies for nothing. Many things were 
 obtained from the public store which were lost or wasted. 
 
 Mr. B said that there were some noble characters there, 
 
 with names that have since stood high in the localities to 
 which they belonged, who set examples of industry and 
 self-denial worthy of a great cause. I could mention some 
 
 of them that I have known in my travels. Mr. C said 
 
 that Mr. Owen forbade the use of spirituous liquors in 
 the town; yet it was obtained from the distillery in a 
 variety of cunning ways. Persons went at night and 
 deposited bottles, mugs, and cans, and returned at certain 
 periods and found them filled. 
 
 " I was one day at the tan-yard, and Squire B and 
 
 some others were standing talking around the store. Dur- 
 ing the conversation Squire B asked if he had ever told 
 
 them how he had served ' old Owen ' in ^ community time.' 
 He then informed us that he came from Illinois to !N"ew 
 Harmony, and that a man in Illinois was '^ owing him,' and 
 asked him to take a barrel of whisky for the debt. As he 
 could not well get the money, he took the whisky. When 
 he came to New Harmony he did not know where to put 
 it, but finally hid it in his cellar. Not long after this Mr. 
 Owen found that the people still got whisky from some 
 quarter, he could not tell where, though he did his best 
 to find out. At last he suspected Squire B , and ac- 
 cordingly came right into his shop and accused him of it; 
 
 on which Squire B had to ' own up ' that it was he who 
 
 had retailed the whisky, saying he had to take it for a 
 debt, and what was he to do to get rid of it. Mr. Owen 
 turned 'round and in his simple manner said, ' Ah ! I 
 see you do not understand the principles.' This story was 
 finished with a good hearty laugh at ^ old Owen.' I could 
 
 not laugh, but felt that such men as Squire B did not 
 
 179
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 understand the principles, and no wonder there are failures, 
 when such men as he frustrate benevolent designs. 
 
 " Mr. Owen has often said that the New Harmony ex- 
 periment failed because the members did not understand 
 the principles. It may be so — facts speak for themselves, 
 and every individual must be free, as he is, to find out, 
 each his different cause. All agree that a battle was fought, 
 that there was some gain, and some loss, but though many 
 years have now passed away it still remains for time 
 to prove whether the battle was for the good or evil of 
 mankind. 
 
 " The reader will no doubt, think with me, that the 
 history of the New Harmony community, so far as I have 
 been able to collect it, is but a mass of confusion; so 
 many theories were tried, and so many failures took place, 
 that, like a ball of entangled thread, it is difficult to un- 
 ravel. If he glances at Mr. Owen's principles, he will see 
 what Mr. Owen wished to practise, and if he understands 
 the materials with which this practise was to be made, he 
 will see how impossible it was to produce the desired re- 
 sults. 
 
 " Mr. Owen said he wanted ^ honesty of purpose,^ but he 
 got dishonesty ; he wanted temperance, and, instead, he was 
 continually troubled with intemperance; indeed, this ap- 
 pears to have been one of the greatest troubles with which 
 he had to contend in those times. . . . He wanted in- 
 dustry, but he found idleness ; he wanted carefulness, and 
 found waste; he wanted cleanliness, and found dirt; he 
 wanted ' desire for knowledge,' but he found apathy. He 
 wanted the principles of the formation of character un- 
 derstood, but he found them misunderstood. He wanted 
 these good qualities combined in one and all the indi- 
 viduals of the community, but he could not find them 
 self-sacrificing and enduring enough to prepare and edu- 
 cate their children to possess these qualities. Thus it was 
 proved that his principles were either entirely erroneous 
 
 180
 
 THE TEN LOST TRIBES OF COMMUNISM 
 
 in practise or mucli in advance of the age in which he 
 promulgated them. 
 
 " He seems to have forgotten that if one and all the 
 thousand persons assembled there possessed all the quali- 
 ties which he wished them to possess, there would be no 
 necessity for his vain exertions to form a communit}^, 
 because there would of necessity be ' brotherly love/ char- 
 ity, industry, and plenty, and all their actions would be 
 governed by nature and reason. We want no more than 
 this, and if this is the material to form communities of, 
 and we can not find it, we can not form communities. 
 And if we can not find parents who are ready and willing 
 to educate their children to give them qualities for a 
 ' community lif e,^ then when shall we have ' communities 
 of united effort ' ? 
 
 " There is no doubt in my mind that the absence of 
 Eobert Owen was one of the great causes of the failure of 
 the community, for he was naturally looked up to as the 
 head, and his influence might have kept people together, 
 at any rate to effect something similar to what had been 
 effected at New Lanark. But with a people free as these 
 were from a set religious creed, and consisting as they did 
 of all nations and opinions, it is doubtful if, even Mr. 
 Owen had continued there all the time, he could have 
 kept them together. No comparison can be made between 
 that population and the Shakers or Eappites, who are each 
 of one religious faith. . . . 
 
 " Wm. Sampson, of Cincinnati, was at New Harmony 
 from the beginning to the end of the community. He 
 went there on the boat which took the last of the Eappites 
 away. He says the cause of failure was a rogue named 
 Taylor, who insinuated himself into Mr. Owen's favor, and 
 afterward swindled and deceived him in a variety of ways ; 
 among other things establishing a distillery contrary to 
 Mr. Owen's wishes or principles, and injurious to the com- 
 munity. Owen thought it would be ten or twelve years 
 
 181
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 before the community would fill up, but no sooner had the 
 Eappites left than the place was taken possession of by 
 strangers from all parts, when Owen was absent in Europe 
 and the place was under the management of a committee. 
 When Owen returned and found the condition of things, 
 he deemed it necessary to make an alteration, and notices 
 were published in all parts telling people not to come 
 there, as there was no accommodation for them, yet still 
 they came, until Owen was compelled to have all the log 
 cabins razed. 
 
 *• " Taylor and Fauntleroy were Owen's associates. When 
 Owen found out Ta3dor's rascality he resolved to abandon 
 the partnership with him, which Taylor would only agree 
 to do upon Owen's giving him a large tract of land upon 
 which he proposed to form a community of his own. 
 . Instead of forming a community, he built a dis- 
 tillery, and set up a tan-yard in opposition to Mr. Owen's. 
 
 " In the Free Enquirer, of June 10, 1829, there is an 
 article by Eobert Dale Owen on New Lanark and New 
 Harmony, in which, after comparing the two places and 
 showing the difference between them, he makes the follow- 
 ing remarks relative to the experiment at New Harmony : 
 ^ There was not disinterested industry ; there was not 
 mutual confidence; there was not practical experience; 
 there was not unison of action because there was not 
 unanimity of counsel. These were the points of difference 
 and dissension — the rocks on which the social hulk struck 
 and was wrecked.' 
 
 "In The New Moral World of October 13, 1839, 
 there is an article on New Harmony in which it is asserted 
 that Mr. Owen was induced to purchase that place on the 
 understanding that the population then resident there, 
 the Eappites, would remain until he had gradually intro- 
 duced other persons to acquire from them the systematic 
 and orderly habits, as well as practical knowledge which 
 they had gained by many years of practise. But through 
 
 182
 
 TEE TEN LOST TRIBES OF COMMUNISM 
 
 the removal of Eapp and his followers Mr. Owen was left 
 with all the property on his hands, and he was compelled 
 of necessity to get persons to come there to prevent things 
 from going to ruin. It shows the unsuitableness of the 
 persons who went there, and how they failed in their at- 
 tempts, and proves the sincerity of Mr. Owen in the terms 
 upon which he granted them land, viz. — the perpetual lease 
 of the lands so long as the principles of the new system 
 were carried into practise. They failed to do this, and the 
 estate reverted to Mr. Owen." 
 
 Josiah Warren in his Practical Details of Equitable 
 Commerce, says : " Let us bear in mind that during the 
 great experiments in New Harmony everything went on 
 delightfully except pecuniary affairs. We should no doubt 
 have succeeded, but for property considerations. But then 
 the experiment would never have been commenced except 
 for property considerations. It was to annihilate social 
 antagonisms by a system of common property that we 
 undertook the experiment at all." 
 
 John Pratt, a Positivist, as quoted by Noyes, said: 
 "Like most men of the last generation Eobert Owen 
 looked upon society as a manufactured product, not an 
 organism endowed with imperishable vitality and growth. 
 The internal afi&nities of Owen's Commune were 
 too weak to resist the attractions of the outer world." 
 
 Horace Greeley and Charles A. Dana attributed the 
 failure principally to the lack of a religious basis upon 
 which all successful communities had been founded — 
 Owen having been the first to attempt the establishment of 
 a non-religious community. Greeley said that a great ob- 
 stacle encountered in such experiments was " the class 
 of people attracted — the conceited, the crotchety, and the 
 selfish " ; while Dana concluded : " Destrov selfhood, and 
 you destroy all motive to exertion." 
 
 Sargent, one of Owen's biographers, thinks there 
 should have been some religious bond among the members 
 
 183
 
 TEE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 to insure success. Paul Brown, in his Twelve Months at 
 New Harmony, questioned the sincerity of Robert Owen 
 himself, while E. H. Hamilton, as quoted by Noyes, says 
 that Owen " required other people to be what he was not 
 himself ; he himself was unreceptive as a thinker." Noyes 
 thinks that drink had much to do with the failure, in spite 
 of prohibitory enactments. Noyes quotes some of his as- 
 sociates as saying : 
 
 L. R. Leonard : " He found democrats harder to 
 manage than the servile workmen of Scotland." 
 
 G. W. Hamilton : " The Owenites were too independ- 
 ent." 
 
 F. W. Smith : " He did not have enough deputies." 
 
 C. W. Burt : " Communism must be ruled either by 
 law or grace. He abolished law and did not employ grace." 
 
 George Jacob Holyoke, in his History of Coopera- 
 tion, says that " the cranks killed the colony," which was 
 composed, " for the most part, of the selfish, the head- 
 strong, the pugnacious, the unappreciated, the played-out, 
 the idle, and the good-for-nothing generally, who, discov- 
 ering themselves out of place, and at a discount in the 
 world as it is, rashly conclude that they are exactly fitted 
 for the world as it ought to be. . . . Nevertheless, the 
 men of good sense reigned at first, and prevailed inter- 
 mittently throughout. . . . The absence of Mr. Owen 
 during the years when personal inspiration and training 
 were most important were causes quite sufficient to account 
 for the fluctuations and the final effacement of New Har- 
 mony." 
 
 Noyes gives us the explanation offered by the mem- 
 bers of four of the branch communities, as follows: 
 
 Yellow Springs : " Self-love was a spirit that could 
 not be exorcised." 
 
 Nashoba : " The projectors acknowledge that such a 
 system can not succeed unless the members composing it 
 are superior beings." 
 
 184
 
 TEE TEN LOST TRIBES OF COMMUNISM 
 
 Haverstraw community : " There was a lack of men 
 and women of skilful industry, sober and honest, with a 
 knowledge of themselves and a disposition to command and 
 to be commanded." 
 
 Coxsackie community : " Too many persons engaged in 
 law-making and talking, who did not work at any useful 
 employment." 
 
 Eobert Dale Owen, writing many years after the con- 
 clusion of the New Harmony venture, says, in speaking 
 of the Gazette editorial before quoted as an obituary of 
 the New Harmony and Macluria communities : " In enu- 
 merating the causes leading to the failure of the experi- 
 ment, the Gazette . . . omits the one most potent 
 factor. All cooperative schemes which provide equal remu- 
 neration to the skilled and industrious and the ignorant 
 and idle, must work their own downfall, for by this unjust 
 plan of remuneration they must of necessity eliminate the 
 valuable members — who find their services reaped by 
 the indigent — and retain only the improvident, unskilled, 
 and vicious members. . . . Eobert Owen distinguished 
 the great principle, but, like so many other devisers, missed 
 the working details of his scheme. If these, when stated, 
 seem to be so near the surface that common sagacity ought 
 to have detected them, let us bear in mind how wise men 
 stumbled over the simple puzzle of Columbus; failing to 
 balance the egg on one end till a touch from the great 
 navigator's hand solved the petty mystery." 
 
 185
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 WOMAN AT NEW HAKMONY 
 
 " Woman : May the experiment being tried in New Harmony of 
 the same intellectual cultivation of the sexes, prove that woman's 
 capabilities are equal to those of men." — Toast responded to at the 
 Semi- Centennial celebration at Marietta^ Ohio^ July 4^ 1826. 
 
 The last century was a great iconoclast. Errors over- 
 thrown, fallacies exploded, superstitions vanquished, and 
 broken idols lie strewn along its pathway. In its humanity 
 the century shamed its predecessors. There was no social 
 condition which it did not ameliorate and no social class 
 which it did not lift and better. The nineteenth century 
 did more for womankind than for any other social group. 
 To woman it threw wide open the doors of its schools and 
 universities. For her it wrote welcome above the threshold 
 of every vocation for which she has shown herself to be 
 adapted and in which she has made herself proficient. It 
 broke down the idolatry by which men had perpetuated the 
 errors of the Common Law and relieved woman of its 
 cruelties by legislative enactment. It protected her from 
 the drunkenness and brutality of unworthy husbands and 
 bestowed upon her every right, save that of suffrage, for- 
 merly enjoyed by the sterner sex alone. The twentieth 
 century found woman a legal slave and sent her into the 
 twentieth century man's legal as well as his social equal. 
 
 Much of the battle for equal rights of women centered 
 around the demand for equal political rights. The group 
 of agitators in the forefront of the woman-suffrage move- 
 
 186
 
 WOMAN AT NEW HARMONY 
 
 ment attacked every abuse and every injustice from which 
 their sisterhood suffered. Public sentiment yielded to 
 every demand save the one for which they labored most 
 zealously, but bequeathed its solution to posterity. In the 
 history of woman suffrage published by those three able 
 leaders in the movement, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan 
 B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage^, the following are 
 given as the chief of the immediate causes that led to the 
 demand for the equal political rights of women in this 
 country : 
 
 ( 1 ) " The able lectures of Frances Wright on political, 
 religious, and social questions. Ernestine L. Eose, follow- 
 ing in her wake, equally liberal in her religious opinions 
 and equally well informed on the science of government, 
 helped to deepen and perpetuate the impression Frances 
 Wright had made on the minds of unprejudiced hearers." 
 Frances Wright was a member of The New Moral World, 
 a devotee of its communistic theories and the coadjutor 
 of the Owens. She saw practised there a many-phased 
 emancipation of woman ere she contended for it before 
 the lyceum of the nation, Ernestine Eose, who came from 
 England to settle in the State of New York after the fail- 
 ure of the great experiment on the Wabash, was a follower 
 of Eobert Owen. 
 
 (2) "The discussion in several of the State legisla- 
 tures on the property rights of married women. These 
 were heralded by the press with comments grave and gay, 
 became the topic of general interest around many fashion- 
 able dinner- tables and at many humble firesides. In this 
 way all phases of the question were touched upon, involving 
 the relations of the sexes, and gradually widening to all 
 human interests — political, religious, civil, and social. The 
 press and pulpit became suddenly vigilant in making out 
 woman's sphere while woman herself seemed equally vigi- 
 lant in her efforts to step outside the prescribed limits." 
 Eobert Dale Owen stood foremost among legislators in 
 
 187
 
 THE NE^Y HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 championing the rights of woman. At N'ew Harmony 
 had been advocated and practised most if not all the in- 
 novations in the legal status of women which he in later 
 vears wrote into the laws of his own State. The advanced 
 notions concerning the equality of the sexes which The Xew 
 Moral World proclaimed attracted the attention of the en- 
 tire country at the time, led to much vigorous discussion 
 of woman's true sphere and rights, and doubtless paved the 
 way for the reforms of later years. 
 
 (3) "Above all other causes of the woman-suffrage 
 movement was the antislavery struggle in this country. 
 The early abolitionists numbered in their ranks some of 
 the most splendid specimens of womanhood in physical ap- 
 pearance, in culture, refinement, and knowledge of polite 
 life." Their eloquence thrilled the country. The question 
 of their right to speak, vote, and serve on committees in 
 antislavery organizations precipitated to the fullest a 
 fierce discussion of woman's political rights. In abolition- 
 ist conventions women learned to debate and transact busi- 
 ness affairs. Broad discussions of justice, liberty, and 
 equality taught them the lesson of freedom for themselves. 
 Equality before the law for the negro suggested the justice 
 of a similar equality for them. Suffrage bestowed upon 
 the liberated bondsman afforded an unanswerable argu- 
 ment in favor of political rights for the gentler sex. 
 
 The New Moral World opposed slavery with bitterness. 
 Frances Wright denounced it from the rostrum and sought 
 to abolish it by colonization. Eobert Dale Owen fought it 
 vigorously for almost forty years, became one of the most 
 conspicuous of the antislavery orators and played no small 
 part in the overthrow of the institution. 
 
 The New Moral World revolutionized the condition of 
 woman within its boundaries and hoped through the ex- 
 ample which it set to effect a similar revolution everywhere. 
 The philosophy of Eobert Owen contemplated equal privi- 
 leges for the sexes. The educational institutions at New 
 
 188
 
 FRANCES WRIGHT.
 
 WOMAN AT NEW HARMONY 
 
 Harmony were coeducational from the beginning — a pio- 
 neer venture which attracted wide attention and comment. 
 In the original communit}^, women were given an equal 
 voice with men in legislation. In several of the later 
 communities women were given a vote 'in legislative as- 
 semblages and in others the right to participate in debate. 
 In all cases the widows of deceased members of The New 
 Moral World succeeded to the rights and privileges which 
 their husbands had enjoyed. The Common Law wrested 
 all property from the hands of a married woman and 
 bestowed its management and enjoyment upon her hus- 
 band. By abolishing the institution of private property, 
 Owen^s system annulled so far as the Commune was con- 
 cerned the greatest injustice which that law had for cen- 
 turies inflicted upon womankind. 
 
 The broad philanthropy of Owen and Maclure knew no 
 distinctions of color or sex. They sought in the enterprise 
 on the Wabash " the happiness and well-being of every 
 man, woman, and child, without regard to their sect, class, 
 party, or color." The principle of human equality was a 
 cardinal one with them. But they were more consistent 
 in its application than the government which wrote the 
 Declaration and tolerated slavery. There was no escaping 
 the logic of their reasoning. If woman was man's equal, 
 then there was not a social, a property or a political right 
 which he enjoyed, to which she was not justly and equally 
 entitled. 
 
 Perhaps the chief cause for the advanced position of 
 the Commune upon woman's rights lay in the chivalric 
 regard for women that characterized the Owens, both 
 father and son. In his day, the charge was widely made 
 and believed that the elder Owen stood sponsor for free 
 love. It still lingers as a popular impression which never 
 had foundation in fact. The private character of Eobert 
 Owen was exceptionally pure and his family life was happy. 
 Eobert Dale Owen relates that his mother declared to him 
 
 189
 
 TEE NEW liARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 upon a number of occasions that his father was all that 
 her heart could desire him to be. 
 
 Like father, like son, was never more truthfully illus- 
 trated than by the elder and younger Owen. Seldom have 
 parent and offspring held as many common interests or 
 stood for as many common principles. There are few finer 
 tributes to woman in the language than the one offered by 
 Eobert Dale Owen during the progress of the debates con- 
 cerning the property rights of married women in the last 
 Indiana Constitutional Convention. 
 
 " I owe to woman, as wife, as friend, all the best, the 
 happiest, — yes, and the purest hours of my life. Sir, no 
 man of sense or modesty unnecessarily obtrudes upon the 
 public personalities that regard himself and his private 
 thoughts and actions. But yet grossly assailed as my con- 
 duct and principles have been upon this floor, it may not be 
 unfitting that I should say here, that to a good father, to 
 an excellent mother, I owe it that my youth was preserved 
 from habits of excess, from associations of profligacy. 
 . I have no associations connected with the name 
 of woman save those of esteem and respectful affection. 
 I owe to her sex a debt of gratitude that can never be 
 paid though my days were extended to the term of life 
 assigned to the ancient patriarchs and though all those 
 days were spent in her service and were devoted to the 
 vindication of her rights." 
 
 Eobert Owen^s desire to ameliorate the condition of 
 woman led him into a radical and much discussed attitude 
 on the institution of marriage. But it is certain that he 
 looked upon his attack on the existing form of marriage as 
 a step in the direction of a higher morality and a wider 
 justice. One of the severest indictments that he urges 
 against the existing state of society was that in it a 
 natural marriage was almost impossible. He hastened to 
 explain that he meant by natural marriage " a marriage 
 where a union is formed under those institutions which 
 
 190
 
 WOMAN AT NEW HARMONY 
 
 provide for all parties an equal education, under which 
 they are enabled to acquire an accurate knowledge of them- 
 selves and of human nature ; wherein no other motive shall 
 influence the affections but intimate sympathy and unaf- 
 fected congeniality, founded on a real knowledge of each 
 other by both parties ; where the imagination has been care- 
 fully excluded and where the judgment has been guide and 
 director/' 
 
 The charge that Eobert Owen stood sponsor for free 
 love is preposterous. To him, both in practise and precept, 
 the marriage of one man and one woman was one of the 
 most sacred institutions that has blessed the race. No 
 communit}^ practised a higher morality than did New 
 Harmony under his regime and nowhere was the mar- 
 riage relation held in greater esteem or more happily 
 and faithfully observed than at New Harmony during 
 community days. Owen did object to the form of mar- 
 riage then observed, because, he declared, " It obligates the 
 contracting parties to do what they may not be able to 
 perform and because it marks a disposition to enslave one- 
 half of our fellow creatures." While he devised a new 
 ceremony by which the people of the community regarded 
 themselves as equally bound, yet in compliance with cus- 
 tom and the laws of the State the new ceremony was ob- 
 served not as a substitute for but an addition to the old. 
 
 The New Harmony Gazette gives an interesting account 
 of a double marriage ceremony performed under the 
 auspices of the community on the first Sunday in April, 
 1826. At a regular meeting of the society in New Har- 
 mony Hall, Eev. John Burkitt joined in marriage " Philip 
 M. Price, late of Philadelphia, to Matilda Greenbree, late 
 of Washington City, and Eobert Eobson, late of Washing- 
 ton City, to Eliza E. Parvin, late of Princeton, Indiana.'' 
 
 " In compliance with a resolution passed at a previous 
 meeting of the community," says the Gazette, " the four 
 parties, previous to the performance of the marriage cere- 
 
 191
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 mony, entered a protest against the usual form of mar- 
 riage in the following manner : Each couple standing up 
 in the meeting, and taking each other by the hand, severally 
 repeated: 'I, A. B., do agree to take this man (woman) to 
 be my husband (wife), and I declare that I submit to any 
 other ceremony upon this occasion only in conformity with 
 the laws of the State/ They then went through with the 
 marriage ceremony in usual form/' 
 
 The elder Owen's solicitude for the welfare of the 
 women of the community was characteristic. When at one 
 of the Sunday meetings during the summer of 1826 it was 
 agreed that the society should meet on three evenings each 
 week for instruction, the point was raised that " the fe- 
 males would hardly have time to get done with supper to 
 meet there so early and so often." " Mr. Owen said," an 
 account of the meeting states, "that he had been en- 
 deavoring to ascertain the cause why so much difficulty is 
 experienced by the females of this community in the per- 
 formance of their domestic duties." Female labor, he de- 
 clared, ought to be lighter under the community than 
 under the individual system. Perhaps the women spent 
 too much time talking, he suggested. " By coming to these 
 meetings for instruction they might perhaps get rid of 
 the desire and the occasion for so much useless talk." 
 
 The further suggestion was made at this meeting that 
 " there existed great jealousy among the females of this 
 place; that some were afraid of doing more than their 
 share of the work, and some were afraid of doing anything 
 at all." Mr. Owen responded that " education begun at 
 the age of three years would eradicate these evil passions 
 from the coming generation." 
 
 In the New Harmony library is still to be seen the desk 
 over which Frances Wright delivered lectures in which 
 woman suffrage was first advocated, and some of the 
 first arguments in favor of the abolition of slavery and 
 the granting of suffrage to the negroes were advanced. 
 
 192
 
 WOMAN AT NEW HARMONY 
 
 Frances Wright was one of the most interesting figures in 
 the brilliant coterie of eccentric reformers which gathered 
 about Kobert Owen at the announcement of his New Har- 
 mony plans. With her sister Camilla she was left an 
 orphan at an early age, and these girls of large fortune and 
 gentle birth were confided to the care of Jeremy Bentham, 
 who at one time was associated in business with Kobert 
 Owen. 
 
 " He had them educated according to his own peculiar 
 crotchets/^ says one writer, " and very eccentric women he 
 made of them ; they fitted into no social map, no domestic 
 form. Frances had a strong masculine mind and charac- 
 ter, and took to the manly rearing Bentham gave her." 
 *' She was thoroughly versed in the literature of the day," 
 says Robert Dale Owen, " was well informed on general 
 topics, and spoke French and Italian fluently. She had 
 traveled and resided for years in Europe, was an intimate 
 friend of General Lafayette, had made the acquaintance of 
 many leading reformers, Hungarian, Polish, and others, 
 and was a thorough republican ; indeed, an advocate of uni- 
 versal suffrage without regard to color or sex. 
 Refined in her manner and language, she was a radical alike 
 in politics, morals, and religion. She had a strong, logical 
 mind, a courageous independence of thought, and a zealous 
 wish to benefit her fellow creatures ; but the mind had not 
 been submitted to early discipline, the courage was not 
 tempered with prudence, the philanthropy had too little 
 of common sense to give it practical form and eflBciency. 
 Her enthusiasm, eager but fitful, lacked the guiding check 
 of sound judgment. Her abilities as an author and lec- 
 turer were of a high order, but an inordinate estimate of 
 her own mental powers, and obstinate adherence to opin- 
 ions once adopted, detracted seriously from the influence 
 which her talents and eloquence might have exerted. A 
 redeeming point was, that to carry out her convictions she 
 was ready to make great sacrifices, personal and pecuniary. 
 14 193
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT \ 
 
 She and a young sister, a lady alike amiable and estimable, \ 
 had always lived and journeyed together, were independent ^ 
 in their circumstances, and were devotedly attached toi 
 each other. i 
 
 " She had various personal advantages — a tall, com- 
 manding figure, somewhat slender and graceful, though' 
 the shoulders were a little bit too high ; a face the outline i 
 of which in profile, though delicately chiseled, was mas- 
 culine rather than feminine, like that of an Antinous, or 
 perhaps more nearly typifying a Mercury; the forehead 
 broad, but not high; the short chestnut hair curling natu-i 
 rally all over a classic head; the large blue eyes not soft,! 
 but clear and earnest. When I first met her, at Harmony, i 
 in the summer of 1826, some of the peculiarities of char-> 
 acter above set forth had not developed themselves. She; 
 was then known in England and here only as the author of; 
 a small book entitled, A Few Days in Athens, published] 
 and favorably received in London, and of a volume of I 
 travels in the United States, in which she spoke in lauda-i 
 tory tone of our institutions and of our people.^' 
 
 Frances Wright first appeared at New Harmony after i 
 the purchase of the estate by Mr. Owen, but before the: 
 removal of the Eappites, whom she accompanied to Penn-j 
 sylvania, and there studied their methods of settlement.! 
 She spent some time at New Harmony after the founding; 
 of the Preliminary Society, and in the summer of 1825! 
 issued a prospectus announcing plans for founding a coni- \ 
 munity in which not only the industrial problem but the; 
 slave question was to be solved. j 
 
 She purchased two thousand acres of woodland situ-j 
 ated on both sides of Wolf River thirteen miles above Mem- ; 
 phis. With fifteen negroes purchased of neighboring slave- , 
 holders, she began her experiment in the autumn of 1825, ] 
 giving the name " Nashoba " to her colony. Her idea was , 
 to elevate the negro by education, and to found a com-j 
 munity system which, by spreading, would eventually re-i 
 
 194 i 
 
 ]
 
 WOMAN AT NEW HARMONY 
 
 suit in the abolition of slavery ; but there was to be in each 
 community a coterie of " good and great men and women 
 of all countries," as Noyes says, " who might there sym- 
 pathize with each other in their love and labor for hu- 
 manity. She invited congenial minds from every quarter 
 of the globe to unite with her in the search for truth and 
 the pursuit of rational happiness." Half of the earnings 
 of each negro was to be set apart to purchase his emancipa- 
 tion, if necessary. Each community was to be managed 
 by the whites. 
 
 " The theory was benevolent," says Noyes, " but prac- 
 tically the institution must have been a two-story com- 
 monwealth, something like the old Grecian states which 
 founded liberty on Helotism. It might be defined as a 
 Brook Farm plus a negro basis, thus obviating the diffi- 
 culty encountered in that experiment, which Hawthorne 
 designates, namely, that the amateurs who took part in 
 that picnic, * did not like to serve as chambermaids to 
 the cows.' " 
 
 Early in the history of this experiment, failing health 
 compelled Frances Wright to make a trip to Europe. Dur- 
 ing her absence matters became sadly tangled, and on her 
 return in December she made over the estate to a board 
 of trustees composed of General Lafayette, William Ma- 
 clure, Eobert Owen, Cadwallader Golden, Richeson Whit- 
 by, Eobert Jennings, Eobert Dale Owen, George Flower, 
 Camilla Wright, and James Eichardson, " to be held by 
 them, their associates, and their successors in perpetual 
 trust for the benefit of the negro race." By two other 
 deeds she gave to these trustees the negro slaves on the 
 estate, and all her personal property. 
 
 In an appeal to the public issued at this time she de- 
 clared that no difference in education or other advantages 
 would be made between white and colored children. Con- 
 ditions did not greatly improve under the management of 
 the trustees, and in March, 1828, they published a com- 
 
 195
 
 TEE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 1 
 
 munication in the Nashoba Gazette in whieh the failure of i 
 the cooperative feature of the scheme was practically ad- i 
 mitted, and it was proposed that each white member of | 
 the community pay into the treasury one hundred dollars ; 
 annually for board ; " each one must also build himself a i 
 small brick house with a piazza, according to a regular plan, : 
 and upon a spot of ground selected for the purpose near \ 
 the center of the lands." Frances Wright, Kicheson Whit- ! 
 by, Camilla Wright Whitby, and Eobert Dale Owen signed j 
 this communication as resident trustees. i 
 
 Soon after this the community was abandoned, and in | 
 the following June Frances Wright moved to New Har- ' 
 mony, where, in conjunction with William Owen, she i 
 edited the New Harmony Gazette, which became the New ; 
 Harmony and Nashoba Gazette, or Free Enquirer. 
 
 During community days Frances Wright gathered | 
 about her at New Harmony a coterie of kindred spirits and i 
 founded an organization of women for study and discus- : 
 sion. This organization succeeded what was known as the , 
 Woman^s Social Society, established during the continuance ' 
 of the Preliminary Society in 1826. In turn the society ' 
 founded by Frances Wright, after it had lapsed for over ; 
 twenty-five years, was succeeded on September 30, 1859, I 
 by the Minerva Society, a woman's literary club, founded ! 
 by Mrs. Constance Fauntleroy Euncie, a granddaughter I 
 of Robert Owen. This club was the first woman's club in j 
 the United States, in the present sense of that term. The j 
 Minerva Society antedated the Boston Women's Club and | 
 Sorosis of New York by nine years. "It was," Mrs. 
 Runcie writes, " a complete, fully officered club. The club 
 procedure adopted by this organization has since been fol- 
 lowed by all clubs as to the main idea." 
 
 Shortly after the downfall of Owen's social order, the 
 New Harmony Gazette, with the title of Free Enquirer, 
 was removed to New York and for several years ably edited 
 by Frances Wright and Robert Dale Owen. These gifted 
 
 196
 
 WOMAN AT NEW HARMONY 
 
 iconoclasts attacked every social and political abuse, but 
 none more vigorously than the unjust provisions of the 
 Conunon Law respecting the rights of married women. 
 From the metropolis, Frances Wright soon began a whirl- 
 wind lecturing tour of the country. One of her favorite 
 themes was the equality of the sexes. Her brilliancy and 
 radicalism attracted wide-spread attention. Her eloquent 
 plea for equal rights for the gentler sex and her fierce 
 denunciation of the existing legal status of woman sowed 
 the seeds of a later agitation that wrested from the reluc- 
 tant hands of the dominant sex every legal right for which 
 she had contended save that of suffrage. 
 
 Misunderstood and vilified by her contemporaries, 
 Frances Wright has come into a tardy recognition of the 
 valuable pioneer service which she rendered in behalf of the 
 legal emancipation of womankind. 
 
 John Humphrey Noyes, in his History of American 
 Socialisms, says : " This woman, little known to the pres- 
 ent generation, was really the spiritual helpmate and 
 better half of the Owens, in the socialistic revival of 1826. 
 Our impression is, not only that she was the leading woman 
 in the communistic movement of that period, but that she 
 had a very important agency in starting two other move- 
 ments that had far greater success and are at this mo- 
 ment in popular favor, viz.: antislavery and woman's 
 rights. If justice were done, we are confident her name 
 would figure high with those of Lundy, Garrison, and John 
 Brown on the one hand, and those of Abby Kelly, Lucy 
 Stone, and Anna Dickinson on the other. She was indeed 
 the pioneer of strong-minded women.'' 
 
 In the tenth National Woman's Eights Convention, 
 Ernestine L. Rose, herself a pioneer in the advocacy of 
 woman's rights, paid this just tribute to the founder of 
 the agitation :• 
 
 " Frances Wright was the first woman in this country 
 who spoke on the equality of the sexes. She had indeed a 
 
 197
 
 TEE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 hard task before her. The elements were entirely unpre- ! 
 pared. She had to break up the time-hardened soil of 
 conservatism, and her reward was sure — the same reward | 
 that is always bestowed upon those who are in the van- [ 
 guard of any great movement. She was subjected to pub- | 
 lie odium, slander, and persecution. But these were not i 
 the only things that she received. Oh, she had her reward ! i 
 — ^that reward of which no enemies could deprive her, j 
 which no slanders could make less precious — the eternal i 
 reward of knowing that she had done her duty ; the reward , 
 springing from the consciousness of right, of endeavoring , 
 to benefit unborn generations. How delightful to see the \ 
 molding of the minds around you, the infusing of your ■ 
 thoughts and aspirations into others, until one by one they J 
 stand by your side, without knowing how they came there ! j 
 That reward she had. It has been her glory, it is the i 
 glory of her memory ; and the time will come when j 
 society will have outgrown its old prejudices, and stepped I 
 with one foot, at least, upon the elevated platform on which ' 
 she took her position. But owing to the fact that the j 
 elements were unprepared, she naturally could not sue- ; 
 ceed to any great extent." ! 
 
 At a celebration of the twentieth anniversary of the i 
 National Woman Suffrage Association, held in Apollo Hall ! 
 in New York City on the 19th day of October, 1870, ; 
 Paulina W. Davis, who had called the first National Con- ! 
 vention twenty years before, was unanimously chosen to 
 preside. On taking the chair, Mrs, Davis gave a resume ' 
 of the Woman's Eights Movement, in the course of which i 
 she gave this testimony to the purity of life and the un- j 
 selfishness of the labors of Frances Wright in behalf of a i 
 world-wide sisterhood: i 
 
 " To this heroic woman, who left ease, elegance, a high j 
 social circle of rich culture, and with true self-abnegation j 
 gave her life, in the country of her adoption, to the teach- : 
 ing of her highest idea of truth, it is fitting that we pay 
 
 198 ■
 
 WOMAN AT NEW HARMONY. 
 
 a tribute of just, though late, respect. Her writings are 
 of the purest and noblest character, and whatever there 
 is of error in them is easily thrown aside. The spider 
 sucks poison from the same flower from which the bee 
 gathers honey; let us therefore ask if the evil be not in 
 ourselves before we condemn others. Pharisaism, then as 
 now, was ready to stone the prophet of freedom. She bore 
 the calumny, reproach, and persecution to which she was 
 subjected for the truth, as calmly as Socrates. Looking 
 down from the serene heights of her philosophy she pitied 
 and endured the scoffs and jeers of the multitude, and 
 fearlessly continued to utter her rebukes against oppres- 
 sion, ignorance, and bigotry. Women joined in the hue 
 and cry against her, little thinking that men were building 
 the gallows and making them the executioners. Women 
 have crucified in all ages the redeemers of their own sex, 
 and men mock them with the fact. It is time now that 
 we trample beneath our feet this ignoble public sentiment 
 which men have made for us; and if others are to be 
 crucified before we can be redeemed, let men do the cruel, 
 cowardly work ; but let us learn to hedge womanhood round 
 with generous, protecting love and care. Then men will 
 learn, as they should, that this system of traducing 
 women is no longer to be used as a means for their sub- 
 jugation. Let us learn to demand that all men who come 
 into our presence be as pure as they claim that women 
 should be. Let the test be applied which Christ gave, that 
 if any is without sin in word, or deed, or thought, he shall 
 ^ cast the first stone.' '' 
 
 Eobert Owen's advanced views regarding the equality 
 of the sexes did not receive immediate acceptance, but in 
 after years they deeply influenced American legislation 
 through the labors of his distinguished son, Eobert Dale 
 Owen. Both the elder and the younger Owen were pre- 
 eminently reformers and humanitarians. While still a 
 young man Eobert Dale Owen visited Lafayette at his 
 
 199
 
 TEE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 home in Lagrange, France. In one of their conversations, 
 Lafayette said : " My young friend, you will probably 
 some day be one of the lawmakers in your adopted 
 country. If you ever become a member of a legislative 
 body, bear this in mind : That utter seclusion from one's 
 fellow creatures for years is a refinement of cruelty which 
 no human being has a right to inflict on another, no mat- 
 ter what the provocation. Vote against all attempts to 
 introduce into the criminal code of your State, as penalty 
 for any offense, solitary confinement, at all events for more 
 than a few months. Prolonged beyond that time, it is tor- 
 ture, and not reformatory punishment ! " " I told him,'' 
 says Owen, " I should surely conform to his advice, and 
 when, seven or eight years later, I served in the Indiana 
 legislature, I kept my promise." 
 
 Out of all the service which in his illustrious career as 
 editor and legislator he rendered to the cause of humanity, 
 none was more efficient and certainly none attracted more 
 attention than the determined battle which for over a 
 quarter of a century he waged in behalf of woman's rights. 
 Though he believed in woman suffrage, yet, feeling in- 
 tuitively that the time was not ripe for its attainment, he 
 devoted his efforts to the legal emancipation of married 
 women from other and more crying injustice. 
 
 Till the late '40s the Common Law provisions re- 
 specting the property rights of married women obtained in 
 every State save Louisiana. These provisions wrested from 
 married women all property rights. If an unmarried 
 woman through gift or inheritance came into possession of 
 property, real or personal, she forfeited all claim to it and 
 all right to its management and control when she married. 
 It then at once became the property of her husband, and 
 if he died leaving no children it passed to his nearest kin, 
 leaving the widow with but a dower in real estate and sl 
 small share in the personal property. 
 
 Bitter was the indictment which in the columns of 
 
 200
 
 WOMAN AT NEW HARMONY 
 
 the Free Enquirer, Owen, out of a deep-seated love of 
 justice and fair play, brought against the oppression which 
 the Common Law inflicted upon woman. 
 
 " How, but from the monopoly of legal authority and 
 the consequent partiality of legal rights, shall we account 
 for the fact that at this day of comparative civilization 
 the person and the property of a married woman belong to 
 her matrimonial master, as in the case of any other slave ? 
 She can inherit nothing, receive nothing, earn nothing, 
 which her husband can not, at any time, legally wrest f roin 
 her. All her rights are swallowed up in his. She loses, as 
 it were, her individual existence. She may be — ^thanks to 
 occasional and gratuitous generosity she sometimes is — 
 kindly and even rationally treated; but she has no right 
 to demand — I will not say kindness — ^but even the most 
 common justice or humanity. A man may not beat his 
 wife too unmercifully, nor is he allowed to kill her. Short 
 of this he can scarcely transgress the law, so far as she is 
 concerned. When we find justice and affection among 
 those who are commanded by law to love each other — 
 and whatever the satirist may say, these are now and then 
 to be found, if we are but patient and persevering enough 
 in our search after them — when, I say, we find such senti- 
 ments as these among married persons, let us recollect that 
 they exist in despite of the unjust and partial laws that 
 tend to exclude and destroy them." 
 
 Eobert Dale Owen both practised and advocated the 
 inviolate sacredness of the marriage relation. Like his 
 distinguished father, however, he objected to the usual 
 form of marriage ceremony. A romantic courtship termi- 
 nated in the marriage of the younger Owen and Mary 
 Eobinson in the city of New York on the 12th day of 
 April, 1832. The ceremony was simple and unique. The 
 contracting parties signed a written document, witnessed 
 by the attending justice of the peace and the immediate 
 family, concluding as follows: 
 
 201
 
 TEE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 cc 
 
 Of the unjust rights which in virtue of this ceremony 
 an iniquitous law tacitly gives me over the person and 
 property of another, I can not legally, but I can morally 
 divest myself. And I hereby distinctly and emphatically 
 declare that I consider myself, and earnestly desire to be 
 considered by others, as utterly divested, now and during 
 the rest of my life, of any such rights, the barbarous relics 
 of a feudal, despotic system, soon destined, in the onward 
 course of improvement, to be wholly swept away; and the 
 existence of which is a tacit insult to the good sense and 
 good feeling of this comparatively civilized age/^ 
 
 To make the parallel complete between his own and his 
 father's position with reference to the relation that should 
 exist between the sexes, Robert Dale Owen did not escape 
 tbe same charge of being an advocate of free love that had 
 been urged against the unblemished public and private life 
 of the elder Owen. Its best refutation is the description 
 which his talented daughter gives of the happiness and 
 purity of the family life that grew out of the younger 
 Owen's strange compact. In the History of Woman 
 Suffrage (vol. i, pages 293-306), Rosamond Dale Owen 
 writes : 
 
 " After a wedding tour in Europe, the young couple, 
 returning to America, settled in New Harmony, Indiana, 
 a small Western village, where their father, Robert Owen, 
 had been making experiments in community life. 
 
 " It was a strange, new world into which these two 
 young creatures were entering. The husband had passed 
 his youth in a well-ordered, wealthy English household ; the 
 wife had passed the greater part of her girlhood in Vir- 
 ginia, among slaves. They were now thrown upon the 
 crudities of Western life, and encountered those daily 
 wearing trials which strain the marriage tie to the utmost, 
 even though it be based upon principles of justice. But 
 there was a reserve of energy and endurance in this deli- 
 cately reared pair; they felt themselves to be pioneers in 
 
 202
 
 WOMAN AT NEW HARMONY 
 
 every sense of the word, and the animus which sustains 
 many a struggling soul seeking to turn a principle into a 
 living reality, sustained these two. 
 
 "... While my father was exerting his energies for 
 the welfare of the nation, my mother was giving her life 
 to her children. Sons and daughters were welcomed into 
 the Owen homestead, and the wide halls and great rooms of 
 the rambling country house rang with the voices of chil- 
 dren. Three of these little ones slipped back to Heaven 
 before the portals had closed. The stricken parents, with 
 blinded eyes, met only the rayless emptiness of unbelief. 
 May God help the mother, fainting beneath a bereavement 
 greater than she can bear, who cries for help and finds 
 none; who stretches her empty arms upward in an agony 
 of appeal and is answered by the hollow echo of her own 
 cry ; may God help her, for she is beyond the help of man. 
 Other children came to fill the vacant places, other voices 
 filled the air, but the hearts of father and mother were not 
 filled until years later, when a sweet faith thrilled the 
 hopeless blank. . . . Well do I remember the cheer 
 of this our home. Simple were its duties, simple indeed 
 its pleasures. Well do I remember the busy troop of boys 
 and girls, with the busy mother at their head, directing 
 their exuberant energy with a rare administrative ability. 
 Besides her own children, four of whom reached maturity, 
 she took during her life seven other young people under 
 her protection, so that the great old-fashioned house was 
 always filled to overflowing with fresh young life. . . . 
 
 " When her children were grown, and the task she had 
 undertaken years before had been well done, our mother 
 turned her attention for a time to public work. She gave 
 much thought to the Woman Question, especially that 
 portion of it pertaining to woman^s work, and addressed 
 one or two meetings in New York on this subject. Miss 
 Anthony recently said to me : ^ Miss Owen, you do not 
 know how great an impression your mother made upon 
 
 203
 
 TEE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 us — ^a woman who had lived nearly her whole life in a small 
 Western village, absorbed in petty cares, and yet who could 
 stand before us with a calm dignity, telling us searching 
 truths in simple and strong words/ The only lecture I 
 heard my mother deliver was in the church of our village. 
 Her subject was the rearing of children. A calm light 
 rested on her silver hair and broad brow ; her manner was 
 the earnest manner of a woman who has looked into the 
 heart of life. Blessed is the daughter to whom it is given 
 to reverence a mother as I reverenced mine that night. 
 A quiet, but deep attention was given to her words, for 
 the fathers and mothers who were listening to her knew 
 that she was speaking on a subject to which she had 
 given long years of careful thought and faithful en- 
 deavor. . . . 
 
 " The name of Mary Owen was not written upon the 
 brains of men, but it is graven upon the hearts of these 
 her children; so long as they live, the blessed memory of 
 that home shall abide with them, a home wherein all that 
 was sweet, and strong, and true was nurtured by a wise 
 hand, was sunned into blossoming by a loving heart. 
 
 " A benediction rests upon the brow of him who has 
 given his best work to help this world onward, even though 
 it be but a hair's breadth ; but the mother who has given 
 herself to her children through long years of an unwritten 
 self-abnegation, who has thrilled every fiber of their beings 
 with faith in God and hope in man, a faith and a hope 
 which no canker-worm of worldly experience can ever eat 
 away, she shall be crowned with a sainted halo." 
 
 The election in 1836 of the younger Owen as a mem- 
 ber of the Indiana legislature, in which he served two 
 consecutive terms, gave that earnest champion of woman's 
 rights a long cherished opportunity to write some of his 
 advanced theories, concerning the legal relation of the 
 sexes, into statutes. In the twenty-second session (1837-'38) 
 he sought to have a bill passed giving married women sepa- 
 
 204
 
 WOMAN AT NEW HARMONY 
 
 rate property rights. His effort met with overwhelming 
 defeat. In the same year. Judge Hertell, the pioneer 
 champion of woman's rights in New York, endeavored to 
 have the legislature of that commonwealth take the same 
 action. His attempt suffered the same fate as that of his 
 Western contemporary. Owen renewed the battle in the 
 twenty-third session but without avail. In the twenty- 
 second session he did succeed in abolishing the Common- 
 Law dower by which the widow received only a tenancy or 
 life interest in one-third of her deceased husband's real 
 estate. His statute conferred upon her the absolute owner- 
 ship of one-third of all of her husband's property. 
 
 Elected a member of the second Constitutional Con- 
 vention of 1850, Mr. Owen renewed the battle for the 
 overthrow of the barbarities of the Common Law with 
 respect to married women, that he had inaugurated in the 
 earlier years. Early in the convention, as chairman of 
 the committee on rights and privileges, he proposed that 
 this provision be incorporated into the bill of rights of 
 the New Constitution : 
 
 " Women hereafter married in this State shall have the 
 right to acquire and possess property to their sole use and 
 disposal ; and laws shall be passed securing to them under 
 equitable conditions all property, real and personal, 
 whether owned by them before marriage or acquired by 
 them afterward by purchase, gift, devise, or descent; and 
 also providing for the wife's separate property." 
 
 This proposition was fiercely opposed on the floor of 
 the convention. With the earnestness and bitterness 
 usually born of sane convictions, these ultraconservative 
 members of the dominant sex resisted Owen's manly at- 
 tempt to render a simple and tardy justice to woman, with 
 declarations of this type : 
 
 " I am of opinion that to adopt the proposition of the 
 gentleman from Posey (Mr. Owen) will not ameliorate 
 the condition of married women." 
 
 205
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 '^ I can not see the propriety of establishing for women 
 a distinct and separate interest, the consideration of which 
 would, of necessity, withdraw their attention from that 
 sacred duty which nature has, in its wisdom, assigned to 
 their peculiar care. I think the law which unites in one 
 common bond the pecuniary interests of husband and wife 
 should remain. The sacred ordinance of marriage, and the 
 relations growing out of it, should not be disturbed. The 
 Common Law does seem to me to afford sufficient protec- 
 tion." 
 
 " If the law is changed, I believe that a most essential 
 injury would result to the endearing relations of married 
 life. Controversies would arise, husbands and wives would 
 become armed against each other, to the utter destruction 
 of true felicity in married life." 
 
 " To adopt it would be to throw a whole population 
 morally and politically into confusion. Is it necessary to 
 explode a volcano under the foundation of the family 
 union ? " 
 
 " I object to the gentleman's proposition, because it is 
 in contravention of one of the great fundamental principles 
 of the Christian religion. The Common Law only em- 
 bodies the divine law." 
 
 " Give to the wife a separate interest in law, and all 
 those high motives to restrain the husband from wrong- 
 doing will be, in a great degree, removed." 
 
 " I firmly believe that it would diminish, if it did not 
 totally annihilate, woman's influence." 
 
 " Woman's power comes through a self-sacrificing 
 spirit, ready to offer up all her hopes upon the shrine of 
 her husband's wishes." 
 
 " Sir, we have got along for eighteen hundred years, 
 and shall we change now? Our fathers have for many 
 generations maintained the principle of the Common Law 
 in this regard for some good and weighty reasons." 
 
 *^ The immortal Jefferson, writing in reference to the 
 
 206
 
 WOMAN AT NEW HARMONY. 
 
 then state of society in France, and the debauched condi- 
 tion thereof, attributes the whole to the effects of the civil 
 law, then in force in France, permitting the wife to hold, 
 acquire, and own property separate and distinct from the 
 husband." 
 
 " It is not because I love justice less, but woman more, 
 that I oppose this section." 
 
 " This doctrine of separate estate will stifle all the 
 finer feelings, blast the brightest, fairest, happiest hopes 
 of the human family and go in direct contravention of that 
 law which bears the everlasting impress of the Almighty 
 hand. Sir, I consider such a scheme not only as wild, but 
 as wicked, if not in its intentions, at least in its results." 
 
 Nor did the opponents of the proposed constitutional 
 provision neglect to rain down misrepresentation and 
 abuse upon the devoted head of its author. Every visionary 
 idea for which the Owens had stood, those well-meant, but 
 unhappy experiments on the Wabash, their peculiar views 
 respecting the marriage ceremony, and their avowed lack 
 of orthodoxy were pictured and denounced before the con- 
 vention. These attacks the younger Owen met with a cour- 
 tesy and yet with a courage and skill in debate which dis- 
 armed the assaults of his enemies and won for all time 
 the respect of the country for the foremost legislative 
 champion with whom the American woman has thus far 
 been blessed. 
 
 Though defeated in the Constitutional Convention, Mr. 
 Owen, as a member of the first legislature under the new 
 instrument of government, renewed the fight for the 
 property rights of women. The following is a summary 
 of the features which he contributed to the Indiana law : 
 
 (a) He procured for women the right to own and con- 
 trol their separate property during marriage. 
 
 (b) He procured for married women the right to 
 their own earnings. 
 
 (c) He abolished the simple dower of the Common 
 
 207
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 Law and procured for widows the absolute ownersMp of 
 one-third of the deceased husband's property. Owen ac- 
 complished this in 1838. The session of 1841 overthrew 
 the reform. He reestablished it in 1852. 
 
 (d) He modified the divorce laws of the State so as 
 to enable a married woman to secure relief from habitual 
 drunkenness and cruelty. 
 
 For his persistent and finally successful efforts to re- 
 form unjust laws, the women of Indiana, or a compara- 
 tively small number of them, in 1851, presented him with 
 a handsome silver pitcher, inscribed, " Presented to the 
 Hon. Eobert Dale Owen by the women of Indiana, in ac- 
 knowledgment of his true and noble advocacy of their in- 
 dependent rights to property, in the Constitutional Con- 
 vention of Indiana." The presentation took place before a 
 large audience in the hall of the House on the evening of 
 May 28, 1851. 
 
 The women of this country owe to Robert Dale Owen a 
 debt of gratitude which they can discharge in no better way 
 than by a tardy respect for his memory. And nearly a 
 half century after Robert Dale Owen wrote into the statute 
 law of his adopted State the modern conception of the legal 
 righte of women, we find the women's clubs of Indiana 
 cooperating in a movement to place the bust of their great 
 emancipator in the rotunda of the Indiana State capitol, 
 almost on the site of the structure within which he carried 
 on his victorious battle in their behalf. 
 
 208
 
 j 
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 THE EDUCATIONAL EXPEEIMENT 1 
 
 i 
 *' Awake ! ye sons of light and joy, '. 
 
 And scout the Demon of the schools : i 
 
 The fiend that scowls but to decoy, 
 
 To pamper zealots : frighten fools : 
 
 To blind the judgment : crib the soul. 
 
 "Wake up ! And let your actions tell 
 
 That you with Peace and Virtue dwell. I 
 
 i 
 
 *' Away with studied form and phrase, ^ 
 
 Away with cant, and bigot zeal, | 
 
 Let Truth's unclouded beacon blaze, j 
 
 From Nature's kindness learn to feel : 
 From Nature's kindness learn to give 
 
 Your hands, your hearts, to all that live. ' 
 
 Wake up ! 'Tis deeds alone can tell i 
 
 That you with Peace and Virtue dwell. " \ 
 
 — Poem dedicated to the children of the New Harmony Boarding- , 
 
 School^ New Harmony Gazette.^ October 8^ 1825. i 
 
 " An age of hatred, strife and woe ; 
 
 Has long in terror reigned. , 
 
 Its numerous victims are laid low, . 
 
 The world in blood is stained, : 
 
 But now the time is coming fast , 
 
 When strife shall be forever past ' 
 
 CHORUS ' j 
 
 *' The day of peace begins to dawn, \ 
 
 Huzza ! Huzza ! Huzza ! 
 
 Dark Error's might will soon be gone, r 
 
 Huzza ! Huzza ! Huzza ! ; 
 
 Poor mortals long have been astray, '■ 
 
 But Knowledge now will lead the way, j 
 
 Huzza ! Huzza ! Huzza ! ] 
 
 15 209 I 
 
 i 
 i 
 
 \
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 ** Now Vice and Crime no more shall stalk 
 Unseen in open day, 
 To cross our silent, peaceful walk 
 Through life's enchanting way : 
 Old Ignorance with hoary head 
 Must seek his everlasting bed. 
 
 " Each warrior now may sheath his blade 
 And toil in vain no more, 
 To seek fair Virtue's genial shade, 
 For now all wars are o'er. 
 
 The battle's done, the day is won. 
 The victory's gained by Truth alone," 
 
 — Song written for the children of New ffarmoni/. 
 
 " Man does not form his own character but it is made 
 for him.^^ This is the motto which Eobert Owen caused to 
 be inscribed upon the title-page of every issue of the New 
 Harmony Gazette, a publication which was at once the 
 official organ of the Communities and the medium through 
 which Owen and those associated with him exploited their 
 peculiar social, educational, and religious ideas. By this 
 Owen meant to declare in the language of psychology that, 
 though heredity, will, and environment are the forces 
 which mold the characters of men, the greatest of these is 
 environment. It does not lie within the scope and pur- 
 pose of this chapter to discuss the truth of Owen's belief. 
 To do so would be to reopen an ancient battle of the 
 psychologists in which the victor is yet to be named. But, 
 in order to understand the various schemes which the 
 founder of New Harmony projected for the betterment of 
 society in general and of the working class in particular, 
 it is necessary to remember that he always believed that 
 men were the creatures of their surroundings — that they 
 were in a sense but the clay which the Great Potter presses 
 against the plastic wheel of circumstance. 
 
 There is a sense too in which environment is to-day 
 recognized as a greater factor in the shaping of human 
 
 210
 
 TEE EDUCATIONAL EXPERIMENT 
 
 character than in the days when Owen wrought. We have 
 come to recognize what Owen saw, though his age did not, 
 that the much vaunted human will itself, if not largely the 
 result of the many-sided circumstances which have touched 
 it, can be and is being skilfully trained in the schools, a 
 training which one must of necessity denominate as en- 
 vironment. 
 
 There are two great agencies which the social reformer 
 may invoke in his efforts to regenerate society. These are 
 environment and religion. Acquiring at the very outset of 
 his remarkable efforts for the betterment of his fellows a 
 deep-set hatred for the clergy and the church, Owen de- 
 liberately divorced his social schemes from the aid of the 
 Christian religion and pinned his faith to environment, 
 which to him was the only medium whereby the character 
 of the individual could be bettered and a Golden Age be 
 consummated. 
 
 Out of his belief in the all potency of environment as a 
 reforming agency came his doctrine that it is vitally im- 
 portant that human beings be surrounded with circum- 
 stances favorable to their development. " How may we 
 make men and society better ? " The most unselfish social 
 reformer since the days of Savonarola would answer, " By 
 making their environment better." The story of Eobert 
 Owen^s career as philanthropist and reformer is the story 
 of one man's earnest efforts, some wise and some unwise, 
 to surround human beings with more favorable conditions, 
 within which, if Owen's theory be true at least, they must 
 of necessity become better men and better women. 
 
 To him there were at least four phases of the environ- 
 ment surrounding the subjects of his philanthropy from 
 time to time. These phases were their home environment, 
 their social environment, their industrial environment and 
 their educational environment. 
 
 It was home environment he sought to better when he 
 taught the people of New Lanark cleanly habits and en- 
 
 211
 
 . THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 forced in the houses of the employees of his cotton-mills a 
 rigorous sanitation. It was only in order that the deplor- 
 able industrial conditions under which the English factory- 
 hand labored might be made such as should give him at 
 least a chance to become a man, that Owen began that 
 wonderful sixteen years of agitation of the labor problem 
 which culminated in the quickening of the conscience of 
 the British public, in the enactment of child-labor laws, 
 in increased wages for the productive classes, in parlia- 
 mentary regulations of factory sanitation, in the inaugura- 
 tion and firm establishment of the idea that government 
 has a right, in the interest of common justice and the 
 general welfare, to interfere in internal trade and with 
 industrial relations. 
 
 Swept from his usual safe moorings as a practical busi- 
 ness man by his strong belief that under ideal surround- 
 ings a perfect race might be developed, the hero of New 
 Lanark sought to establish at New Harmony an ideal 
 social environment within which, unhampered by the arti- 
 ficial atmosphere with which our social system has en- 
 veloped us, man, living close to nature, might work out a 
 better character and attain a more perfect manhood. 
 
 So it was when Eobert Owen sought to change the 
 educational surroundings of the children of his benef- 
 icence. So far as his connection with schools was con- 
 cerned, they were only a phase of his struggle to create 
 a better environment for the development of character 
 among the working people who were the object of his care. 
 In his days no schools opened their doors to the children 
 of the poor. Forced into the factory at a tender age, 
 denied even the rudiments of an education and surrounded 
 at home by squalor and vice, these unfortunates grew into 
 a distorted and debased maturity. To Owen, the school 
 was a weapon for social regeneration to be used as a device 
 by which these children of the great Fourth Estate might 
 be surrounded by a refining atmosphere during their tender 
 
 212
 
 TEE EDUCATIONAL EXPERIMENT 
 
 and formative years. He was not an educator in the sense 
 in which we use the term to-day. He was not a teacher 
 and did not attempt to act as one. Unlike the schools 
 which Pestalozzi established, his schools were not experi- 
 ments made for the purpose of testing and proving the 
 efficiency of preconceived educational theories nor attempts 
 to exploit any pet methods and devices of teaching. They 
 were machinery for social and moral regeneration. 
 
 Let it be remembered that primarily, Eobert Owen was 
 a social and a moral rather than an educational reformer. 
 And yet we shall see that his search for social and moral 
 reform through the avenue of the schools led him into 
 educational innovations, which justify us in placing his 
 name high in the list of great educational thinkers. 
 
 THE SCHOOL AT NEW LANAEK 
 
 Sixteen years after assuming charge of the mills at New 
 Lanark, Robert Owen made his first experiment in edu- 
 cation as a means of social reform by founding a school for 
 the benefit of the children of that dreary factory town. 
 From An Outline of the System of Education at New 
 Lanark, written by Eobert Dale Owen during the existence 
 of the school and dedicated to his distinguished father, 
 we learn that the training was given in special quarters 
 erected for that purpose; that these quarters were made 
 much more attractive for the children of the factory- 
 hands than those of many of the most prominent board- 
 ing-schools of Dickens' day; that a large play-room, the 
 first which the history of pedagogy has recorded, was 
 attached to the school; and that the enrolment exceeded 
 seven hundred. 
 
 Of this number, one hundred children between the ages 
 of two and five years were taught in what, for want of a 
 better name, was termed the infants' school; and six hun- 
 dred over five years of age in a higher or advanced school. 
 
 213
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 These six hundred pupils of the higher school were 
 divided into two sections of three hundred each. The 
 first section, consisting of children between the ages of 
 five and ten years, constituted a day-school ; and the second 
 section, consisting of the children over ten years of age, 
 who worked in the factory during the day, constituted a 
 night-school. Both the infant school and the higher 
 school were in session each day of the week save Sunday 
 from 7.30 to 9.30 A. M., from 10 to 12 a. m., and from 3 to 
 5 p. M. ; while the night session of the higher school began 
 at 7 and closed at 9.30 p. m. 
 
 Of the two schools, which were really two departments 
 of a single school held under a common roof, the infant 
 school received the greater portion of Owen^s enthusiasm 
 and attention. It was not only the feature of the educa- 
 tional work projected by him at New Lanark which 
 attracted more attention and drew more distinguished 
 visitors there than did all the other innovations which he 
 introduced into town and factory, but it is also that feature 
 which, perhaps more than any other educational experi- 
 ment he attempted in his long career as a reformer, best 
 entitles him to be classed as a pioneer and thinker in the 
 educational field. 
 
 For the infant schools of that isolated Scottish factory 
 town were the first of their kind, and to Eobert Owen 
 rather than to Froebel must be given the credit for the 
 discovery and practical application of the idea that there 
 is a type of educational training beneficial to both intellect 
 and moral fiber, which can be successfully given by the 
 schools to children under the tender age of five years. 
 Strip from the kindergarten as we know it to-day the gifts 
 and the games, the devices and the educational ideas with 
 which the name of Froebel will ever be associated, and look 
 upon it as a garden for the training of children, and we 
 may say without fear of giving oifense that Eobert Owen 
 was the founder of the first kindergarten. The infant 
 
 ' 214
 
 THE EDUCATIONAL EXPERIMENT 
 
 school at New Lanark was inaugurated in the year 1816. 
 It was not until twenty-one years later (1837) that Froebel 
 opened his first kindergarten, or " Garden of Children," 
 in the village of Blankenburg. 
 
 This little village is not more than fifty miles distant 
 from the town of Hofwyl, where M. De Fellenberg con- 
 ducted a school whose training was based upon the edu- 
 cational ideas of Pestalozzi and to which Eobert Owen 
 sent his sons for an education. Here, in 1819, eighteen 
 years before Froebel established his garden for children at 
 Blankenburg, came Eobert Owen to investigate Pestalozzi's 
 ideas and methods of teaching. For three years previous 
 to this time, Eobert Owen had been carrying on a school 
 at New Lanark. We know but little concerning the in- 
 struction in it during this period, for his educational work 
 at New Lanark had not as yet attracted public attention. 
 We do know that, visiting Hofwyl, with a kindling en- 
 thusiasm for educational reform, he received there both 
 information and added enthusiasm. 
 
 There can be no doubt that Owen was greatly influ- 
 enced in his educational thought by his visit to Hofwyl and 
 his contact with the educational principles laid down by 
 Pestalozzi. Owen and Pestalozzi were kindred spirits. 
 Both, like Abou-ben-Adhem of old, loved their fellow men ; 
 both sought to raise the laboring class out of a degraded 
 state; both had an abiding faith in the potential uplifting 
 of the common people; both believed that education was a 
 necessary means by which that uplifting was to be con- 
 summated. To the question, how may the peasantry be 
 raised out of its degraded state, Pestalozzi had one answer, 
 and only one. This was, hy education. More a man of 
 affairs and a deeper student of the whole sweep of the 
 social problem than Pestalozzi, Owen sought the aid of 
 every phase of man's environment, yet recognized and ap- 
 pealed to education as the most effective of all weapons in 
 the struggle for permanent social betterment. 
 
 215
 
 THE NEW HAEMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 When he returned from Hofwyl, whatever may have 
 been his previous views, Eobert Owen transplanted to Brit- 
 ish soil Pestalozzi's enthusiasm for education and many of 
 his cardinal educational principles, of which he made im- 
 mediate application in his school at New Lanark, then in 
 its third year. If he had done nothing else, Owen would 
 be entitled to notice in pedagogical circles as a carrier of 
 good seed. Though not an educational theorist, he had 
 instinctively applied much of the Pestalozzian creed in his 
 school before his visit to Switzerland. After his return, 
 the school was modeled almost entirely upon the educa- 
 tional principles which he held in common with the great 
 Swiss schoolmaster. We shall see that this is particularly 
 true of the higher school. 
 
 THE INFANT SCHOOL 
 
 The infant school, however, was a distinct departure in 
 educational thought and procedure in many respects. Its 
 one hundred children were given in charge of a simple- 
 hearted, almost illiterate fellow named Buchanan, who, 
 though cursed by a shrewish wife, loved little children, 
 and was when free from her domination tender and 
 skilful in their moral training. Little attempt was made 
 to impart serious knowledge whether in or out of books. 
 The children were gradually and incidentally taught the 
 nature and uses of common things by familiar conversa- 
 tion and little stories, when the children's curiosity either 
 on the playground or in the schoolroom led them to ask 
 questions. 
 
 " Infants above one year attended school under special 
 care.'^ Play and stories were the medium through which 
 the heart and mind of the child were besieged and led ; and 
 games, sometimes within the attractive schoolroom and 
 sometimes, when the weather permitted, out on the green, 
 constituted the major part of the curriculum. Buchanan 
 
 216
 
 TEE EDUCATIONAL EXPERIMENT 
 
 was really the first kindergartner and Owen's school the 
 anticipation of Froebel's later attempt. Aside from the 
 theory and the system which the Prussian pedagogue in- 
 troduced into the infant school there is little if anything 
 of pedagogical value in the modern kindergarten which is 
 not to be found at New Lanark. Let us see if this can not 
 be readily demonstrated. 
 
 (1) Like all the kindergartens or infant schools which 
 follow it, the purpose of Owen's infant school was to in- 
 fluence the character of children at a tender and formative 
 age. This was Froebel's purpose in inaugurating his 
 kindergarten. " In his conference with teachers Froebel 
 found that the schools suffered from the state of raw ma- 
 terial in them. Till the then school age was reached the 
 children were entirely neglected. Froebel's conception of 
 harmonious development naturally led him to attach much 
 importance to the earliest years." 
 
 Twenty-one years earlier we find Eobert Owen founding 
 his infant school to meet the same difficulty. Like Froe- 
 bel's school, it was an afterthought. In his description of 
 the higher school at New Lanark, Eobert Owen complained 
 that the work was handicapped by the habits which the 
 children had formed before the opening of school-life. 
 How keenly every modern school-teacher can sympathize 
 with this complaint ! To meet it the infant school was 
 established by means of which it was hoped that children 
 transplanted at a tender age into an atmosphere of love 
 and refinement might be dominated in their habits by the 
 influence of the schoolroom and not by that of their rude 
 homes. How like this is our modern practise of placing 
 kindergartens in the slums of the large cities ! 
 
 Like Froebel, and many years in advance of Froebel, 
 Robert Owen saw that " each age has a completeness of its 
 own. First the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in 
 the ear. The perfection of the later stage can be attained 
 only through the perfection of the earlier. If the infant 
 
 217
 
 TEE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 is what he should be as an infant and the child as a child, 
 he will become what he should be as a boy just as naturally 
 as new shoots spring from the healthy plant. Every stage 
 then must be cared for and tended in such a way that it 
 may attain its own perfection." 
 
 (2) Like all the true kindergartens which follow it, the 
 aim of the infant school at New Lanark was not to impart 
 serious knowledge whether in or out of books, but to fix 
 habits and shape character. To the master of New Lanark, 
 the formation of character was the chief end of all educa- 
 tional efforts not only in the infant school, but also in the 
 higher school, where the imparting of serious knowledge 
 was made a secondary though important consideration. 
 Almost half a century before Dickens attacked the " cram- 
 ming system " of the English boarding-schools, a system 
 which throttled the development of character as well as 
 intellect, Eobert Owen said : " It must be evident to com- 
 mon observers that children may be taught to read, write, 
 account, and sew and may yet acquire the worst habits and 
 have their minds rendered irrational for life. 
 Eeading and writing are merely instruments by which 
 ideas either true or false may be imparted, and when given 
 to children are of little comparative value unless the chil- 
 dren are also taught how to make a proper use of them." 
 
 Of his infant school it could be said even more truth- 
 fully than of Pestalozzi's school at Stanz, more truthfully 
 than of any other school preceding FroebeFs : " The thing 
 was not that they should know what they did not know, 
 but that they should behave as they did not behave. If 
 they could be made conscious that they were loved and 
 cared for, their hearts would open and give back love and 
 respect in return." 
 
 The elimination of all serious knowledge, the absence of 
 the teaching of all facts as such, is the feature of Owen's 
 school which stamps it as a pioneer in a new field. Over- 
 enthusiastic admirers of Pestalozzi have maintained that 
 
 218
 
 THE EDUCATIONAL EXPERIMENT 
 
 he operated an infant school on the Continent before the 
 New Lanark school came to be. But the records of the 
 schools at Neuhof and at Stanz, which were the only edu- 
 cational experiments in which Pestalozzi preceded Owen, 
 reveal, according to the declarations of Pestalozzi himself, 
 that the children of both schools were of a variety of ages, 
 the oldest being not more than fifteen and the youngest 
 not less than five years old. Neither was, in the sense in 
 which the term was used at New Lanark, an " infants' " 
 school. Nor did Pestalozzi ever conduct a school of any 
 type in which the acquirement of serious knowledge, the 
 teaching of facts as such was not made an important 
 though a subordinate aim of the training bestowed. This 
 more than the difference in the ages of the children is the 
 distinguishing mark between the infant school at New 
 Lanark and all previous educational attempts upon the 
 Continent. 
 
 The difference between Owen's infant school and its 
 contemporaries is the difference between the mission of 
 the modern kindergarten and the mission which this 
 utilitarian age is seeking to thrust upon it. An impatient 
 thirst for the glittering prizes of this industrial epoch has 
 taken hold upon the prospective college student. He is 
 asking that some arrangement be made so that he with his 
 sheepskin may step into the arena of business or profes- 
 sional life at an earlier age. There are not wanting signs 
 to indicate that in the interests of this earlier graduation 
 the domination from the top may next demand that the 
 kindergarten shall serve chiefly as a preparatory school 
 for the primary unit. Then the kindergarten must decide 
 whether, like the other units of the system, it will bow its 
 neck to the yoke or whether, ignoring the call from above, 
 it will continue to solely seek the moral development of all 
 childhood rather than the higher educational interests of 
 the few who are destined for college walls. 
 
 The claim has been made repeatedly and the dictum ac- 
 
 219
 
 TEE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 cepted without controversy that Froebel's kindergarten at 
 Blankenburg was the first infant school that did not at- 
 tempt to teach any serious knowledge, the first to make 
 games a means of training the character of children. This 
 dictum merely overlooks Owen's attempt. It is true that 
 after Pestalozzi's repeated failures as a school manager, 
 numerous " infant schools " arose on the Continent ; that 
 these sought to apply Pestalozzian educational principles; 
 and that, like all of the attempts made by him whose ef- 
 forts they imitated, these infant schools made the teaching 
 of elementary knowledge the nucleus of their training. 
 But these differ as much from the infant school at New 
 Lanark as they do from .the kindergarten at Blankenburg, 
 whose forerunner they were. 
 
 Sargent, in The Social Philosophy of Robert Owen, 
 says, " The Infant School System was an inevitable con- 
 sequence of Owen's doctrine as to the vital importance of 
 surrounding human beings with circumstances favorable 
 to their development. It has been said that the plan was 
 previously carried out on the Continent. That may be true. 
 It has also been said that the experiment was suggested 
 in a conversation between Owen and a lady. Both state- 
 ments may be true, and yet Owen's claim to the invention 
 remains unimpeached. Owen's glory is not that he sent for 
 a Swiss instructor, nor that he went about craving the ad- 
 vice and aid of any one, but that he threw his own energy 
 into the work, and with the feeble instruments at his com- 
 mand commenced and completed his long projected task." 
 
 In a speech delivered at a memorial exercise in Kensal 
 Green Cemetery on the 21st of April, 1871, T. H. Huxley, 
 the great English scientist, said : 
 
 " I think that every one, who is compelled to look as 
 closely into the problem of popular education, must be led 
 to Owen's conclusion that the infant school is, so to speak, 
 the key of that position ; and that Robert Owen discovered 
 this great fact and had the courage and patience to work 
 
 220
 
 THE EDUCATIONAL EXPERIMENT 
 
 out his theory into a practical reality is his claim, if he 
 had no other, to the enduring gratitude of the people." 
 
 (3) Just as in all other infant schools and kindergar- 
 tens worthy the name, love was the dominating factor in 
 Owen's school. In the face of ridicule, Owen retains as 
 the head of his infant school a teacher who is both illiter- 
 ate and without professional training because " he does not 
 know how to teach what is found in books, but he does 
 know Nature and loves children, and by that love will 
 bring Nature and the children together." With Owen as 
 with Pestalozzi and Froebel, " the essential principle of 
 education is not teaching. It is love. The child loves 
 and believes before it thinks and acts." 
 
 (4) In the New Lanark school the " benevolent super- 
 intendence" which Pestalozzi and Froebel practised char- 
 acterized the teaching. This was an educational idea 
 which Owen received at the feet of Pestalozzi. His great 
 faith in the ultimate uplift of the common people made 
 him a steadfast believer in the innate possibilities of 
 childhood — in its large capacity for physical, intellectual, 
 and moral development. Powers are hereditary, but it is 
 the duty of the schoolroom environment to assist to the 
 fullest extent in calling them forth. There is a natural 
 method by which these powers unfold. The natural 
 method is as certain, if we could but discover it, in the de- 
 Yelopment of moral and intellectual powers as in that of 
 physical powers. 
 
 Bacon taught that we command Nature only by obeying 
 her. Nature is in the schoolroom with the teacher eager 
 to assist in the developing process. Let the teacher be- 
 ware lest in his blind following of a system or in his devo- 
 tion to a false educational creed, or in his anxiety to cram 
 childish minds with the letter that killeth, he interfere 
 with that development which Nature at his elbow seeks to 
 bring about. Let him rather practise that benevolent su- 
 perintendence which remembers that "the purpose of 
 
 321
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 teacliing is to bring ever more out of man rather than to 
 put more and more into him"; which perceives that the 
 purpose of instruction is not to teach but to develop ; which 
 follows ISTature and not a system ; which leads the mind of 
 the child and yet follows it with trusting footsteps; and 
 which vaunteth not itself but stands in the presence of 
 Nature, the handmaiden, with uncovered head. 
 
 To the criticism that the teacher of the infant school at 
 New Lanark merely played with the children, let it be 
 urged that though he would not have understood the term 
 " benevolent superintendence," yet with Owen's encourage- 
 ment he practised it almost a quarter of a century before 
 Froebel made it one of the chief features of his kinder- 
 garten. For the simple pedagogue of New Lanark gave his 
 charges, through play, that which Nature asked for them 
 at their stage of growth, and drew out of them through its 
 physical exercise, spontaneity, quickness of thought and 
 action, happiness, and love. 
 
 What part ought benevolent superintendence to play in 
 the schoolroom to-day? In 1889 Charles De Garmo, in 
 his Essentials of Method, after discussing the question, de- 
 clared that the teacher has his activity limited to these two 
 things : " First, the preparation of the child's mind for a 
 rapid and effective assimilation of new knowledge ; second, 
 the presentation of the matter of instruction in such order 
 and manner as will best conduce to the most effective as- 
 similation." Quick, in his Educational Eef ormers, after 
 discussing and approving the above, adds that " besides 
 this he must make his pupils use their knowledge, both 
 new and old, and reproduce it in fresh connections." 
 
 (5) Just as in the kindergarten which followed it, the 
 infant school at New Lanark brought into play the activity 
 of the children. While, like Froebel, Owen limited the 
 function of the educator to " benevolent superintendence " 
 of the natural unfolding of childhood, yet, like Froebel 
 also, he recognized that since the natural development of 
 
 4/4/4/
 
 TEE EDUCATIONAL EXPERIMENT 
 
 childisli powers requires their appropriate exercise, "be- 
 nevolent superintendence " must both originate and direct 
 childish activity. Some of the games which Buchanan and 
 his female assistant gave to the children at New Lanark 
 were Scottish games peculiar to the Lowlands ; some, they 
 devised to teach indirectly important ethical, moral, and 
 physical truths; some, the children themselves invented. 
 All were of a wholesome type and designed, like the 
 games which Froebel bequeathed to the kindergarten, to 
 call forth the spontaneous and untrammeled activity of 
 the children. 
 
 It must of course be admitted that these games lacked 
 the efficiency which the theory, and the plan, and the gifts, 
 and the system which Froebel bestowed have given to the 
 play of the modern kindergarten. But they were based 
 upon the same idea and sought to achieve the same pur- 
 pose. Though Robert Owen did not possess the mysticism 
 which characterizes most of the utterances of Froebel, he 
 showed by his efforts in the infant school at ISTew Lanark 
 that he too believed that " man is primarily a doer " ; that 
 " he learns only through self activity '' ; that " the forma- 
 tive and creative instinct has existed in all children and 
 in all ages '^ ; and that when the activity of the children 
 is properly directed by benevolent superintendence they 
 " render the inner outer," which is the end of all true 
 education. 
 
 HIGHER SCHOOL 
 
 In the higher school at New Lanark the following sub- 
 jects were taught : Reading, writing, arithmetic, natural 
 history, geography, ancient history, modern history, sew- 
 ing, singing, and dancing. No books were used, for " his 
 aim was to train the children to good habits, not to cram 
 their heads with facts." Only amusement in the form of 
 games was offered to those under six years of age. In- 
 struction was made pleasant and agreeable, no lesson being 
 
 223
 
 THE NFAY HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 given more than forty-five minutes in length. Much of 
 the instruction was given by the " object method," for Will- 
 iam Maclure, who visited the school in 1824, says that 
 ^' the children are taught by representations in all cases 
 where they can be obtained, the transparent being used 
 only in part for the explanation of the elements of botany, 
 the shape of the leaves, etc." Much attention, and prop- 
 erly so, for it is the basic study in the acquirement of 
 knowledge, was given to reading. 
 
 Eobert Dale Owen in his description of the school dwells 
 but little upon the course of study, but takes occasion to 
 say, " Children should never be directed to read what they 
 can not understand. Eeading should be preceded between 
 the ages of five and seven years by a regular course in 
 natural history, ancient and modern history, chemistry, 
 and astronomy. All this on the plan prescribed by Nature 
 to give a child such particulars as he can easily be made to 
 understand concerning the nature and properties of the 
 different objects around him, before we teach him the 
 artificial signs which have been adopted to represent these 
 objects." Robert Owen doubted " whether in a rational 
 state of society children under ten years old would be 
 taught to read." 
 
 Absurd as was Owen's plan to prepare children for in- 
 telligent reading, from our point of view, it was made 
 necessary by the exceedingly difficult vocabulary and tech- 
 nical subject-matter in the most elementary readers of that 
 day. In these days when the makers of readers are, in the 
 name of classical literature, filling them with selections 
 that lie beyond the vocabulary, the experience, and the com- 
 prehension of the children for whom they are intended, it 
 would be well to remember again and again the simple 
 declaration : " Children should never be directed to read 
 what they can not understand." 
 
 The higher school, better than the infant school, per- 
 haps, shows the effects of Owen's visit to Stanz. Through 
 
 224 
 
 I
 
 ROBERT DALE OWEN.
 
 THE imm 
 
 OF THE 
 
 1Y OF ILLir
 
 THE EDUCATIONAL EXPERIMENT 
 
 the meager accounts which Robert Owen, his son, and vari- 
 ous visitors to N'ew Lanark have written concerning the 
 methods of instruction in the higher school, we can state 
 with safety that in it, with one notable exception, the main 
 features of Pestalozzianism prevailed. Those features as 
 summed up by Morf in his contribution to Pestalozzi's 
 Biography are: 
 
 (1) "Instruction must be based on the learner's own 
 experience. 
 
 (2) "What the learner experiences must be connected 
 with language. 
 
 (3) " The time for learning is not the time for judg- 
 ing, nor the time for criticism. 
 
 (4) " In every department instruction must begin with 
 the simplest elements and, starting from those, must be 
 carried on step by step according to the development of 
 the child; that is, it must be brought into psychological 
 sequence. 
 
 (5) "At each point, the instructor shall not go for- 
 ward till that part of the subject has become the proper 
 intellectual possession of the learner. 
 
 (6) "Instruction must follow the path of develop- 
 ment, not the path of lecturing, teaching, or telling. 
 
 (7) "To the educator, the individuality of the child 
 must be sacred. 
 
 (8) "Not the acquisition of knowledge or skill is the 
 main object of elementary instruction, but the development 
 and strengthening of the powers of the mind. 
 
 (9) "With knowledge must come power, with infor- 
 mation, skill. 
 
 (10) "Intercourse between educator and pupil, and 
 school discipline especially, must be based on and con- 
 trolled by love. 
 
 (11) " Instruction must be subordinated to the aim of 
 education.^' 
 
 The one tenet of the creed espoused in common by Pes- 
 
 16 225
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 talozzi and by Froebel, which Kobert Owen neither ac- 
 cepted nor practised in his various educational experiments 
 was the one which, if added to the declaration of principles 
 given above, would be numbered twelve and reads as fol- 
 lows : " The ground of moral-religious bringing-up lies in 
 the relation of mother and child." 
 
 Extremely clear and strong is the attitude of Pestalozzi 
 and Froebel with respect to the necessity of religious in- 
 fluence in education. Pestalozzi placed moral and relig- 
 ious training above the intellectual, and with him moral 
 and religious training were one and the same. He re- 
 volted against the prevailing elementary education of his 
 day because " everywhere in it the flesh predominated over 
 the spirit, everywhere the divine element was cast into the 
 shade. Everywhere selfishness and the passions were taken 
 as the motives of action." To him the education which was 
 to lead forth the soul powers as well as the mind powers 
 of the people must be different from this, for " man does 
 not live by bread alone. Every child needs to know how 
 to pray to God in all simplicity, but with faith and love. 
 If the religious element does not run through the whole of 
 education, this element will have little influence on the 
 life; it remains formacl or isolated. The child accustomed 
 from his earliest years to pray, to think, and to work is 
 already more than half educated." 
 
 With Froebel, all true education was founded on re- 
 ligion. He pointed the way to that halcyon day when 
 " education should lead and guide man to clearness con- 
 cerning himself and in himself, to peace with Nature and 
 to unity with God " ; when the training of the schools 
 " should lift him to a knowledge of himself and of man- 
 kind, to a knowledge of God and Nature; and to the pure 
 and holy life to which such knowledge leads." With him 
 always " the object of education is the realization of a 
 faithful, pure, inviolate, and hence holy life." 
 
 With Froebel as with Pestalozzi, moral and religious 
 
 226
 
 THE EDUCATIONAL EXPERIMENT 
 
 training were one and inseparable. Owen divorced the two 
 by ignoring in all of his educational, as in all of his other 
 attempts at social reform, the religious nature of man. At 
 the time of the New Lanark experiment, he had made at 
 least no public declaration of his religious views. It was 
 not until seventeen years later that, on the very verge 
 of sweeping reforms in English factory laws, which his 
 unceasing agitation coupled with the public confidence 
 reposed in him had made possible, Owen, then the largest 
 figure in the public eye, made such a sweeping attack upon 
 all existing religious creeds and displayed such a bitter 
 hatred toward all existing religious institutions that he 
 astounded the British public, alienated the support of 
 Christian people, defeated his proposed reform measures, 
 and handicapped all his after efforts at social reform by 
 the common public belief that they were the outgrowth of 
 atheistic and anarchistic tendencies. Yet we find that even 
 at the New Lanark school, in the language of Eobert Dale 
 Owen, " No religious instruction was permitted, but much 
 moral instruction, some of it direct, but most of it indirect, 
 was given.^^ 
 
 Owen^s attitude on the subject of religious instruction 
 grew, of course, out of his peculiar religious beliefs, so 
 different from the simple trusting faith of his great edu- 
 cational contemporaries. Though in reality not an atheist 
 in the sense in which we use the term to-day, his God was 
 not the God of Pestalozzi and Froebel, but the God of 
 Huxley — ^not a living, regenerating force in human hearts 
 touched by His quickening spirit, but a great creative 
 force, which, having endowed life with potential perfec- 
 tion, has left it to be developed by the tender mercies of 
 a chance environment. 
 
 The question of religious instruction in the public 
 schools has become a much mooted one at the present 
 day, particularly in the United States. In those lands 
 where church and state are one, the question becomes 
 
 2211
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 comparatively easy. There state schools become an arm 
 of the church for the teaching of its creed — a task 
 which, though all other phases of educational training 
 be neglected, must be thoroughly executed. An over- 
 whelming public sentiment approves of the religious in- 
 struction given and the voice of a hopeless minority is 
 ignored. But in this country, where freedom of religious 
 thought and speech is guaranteed by Constitutional pro- 
 vision, and where the twenty million children receiving 
 public instruction come from homes where every phase of 
 religious belief and even of unbelief finds enthusiastic sup- 
 porters, the problem of what to do with religious instruc- 
 tion in the schools becomes exceedingly difficult. 
 
 No clearer statement of this problem which confronts 
 legislatures and courts, as well as educators, can be found 
 than that given by Nicholas Murray Butler in the Mean- 
 ing of Education (McMillan & Co., 1901, pp. 28-31 in- 
 clusive). After tersely setting forth the difficulties sur- 
 rounding religious instruction in our educational system, 
 and showing that the drift in the schools of the United 
 States is away from the simple religious instruction which 
 Pestalozzi and Froebel gave and toward the non-religious 
 instruction of the schools at New Lanark, Butler comments 
 as follows : " Two solutions of the difficulty are proposed. 
 One is that the State shall tolerate all existing forms of re- 
 ligious teaching in its own schools. The other is that the 
 State shall aid by money-grants schools maintained by re- 
 ligious or other corporations. Neither suggestion is likely 
 to be received favorably by the American people at present, 
 because of the bitterness of the war between the denomina- 
 tional theologies. Yet the religious element may not be 
 permitted to pass wholly out of education unless we are to 
 cripple it and render it hopelessly incomplete. It must 
 devolve upon the family and the church, then, to give this 
 instruction to the child and to preserve the religious in- 
 sight from loss. Both family and church must become 
 
 228
 
 TEE EDUCATIONAL EXPERIMENT 
 
 much more efficient, educationally speaking, than they are 
 now, if they are to bear this burden successfully." 
 
 While Eobert Dale Owen wrote but little concerning the 
 methods of instruction and course of study at New Lanark, 
 he has described at length the plan of school government 
 and the moral training attempted there. From this de- 
 scription, the following principles regulating the New 
 Lanark schools may be gathered : 
 
 (1) "All rewards and punishments whatever, except 
 such as Nature herself has provided, are sedulously ex- 
 cluded. By natural punishment, we mean the necessary 
 consequences immediate and remote which result from any 
 action." In his instructions to the teachers Robert Owen 
 declared that, " they were on no account ever to beat any 
 one of the children, nor to threaten them in any manner in 
 word or action, nor to use abusive terms; but were always 
 to speak to them with a pleasant countenance and in a kind 
 manner and tone of voice." 
 
 Eobert Dale Owen but voiced the sentiments of his dis- 
 tinguished father when he declared all rewards and punish- 
 ments other than those which Nature bestows to be im- 
 just — " unjust as on the one hand loading those individuals 
 with supposed advantages and distinctions whom Provi- 
 dence, either in the formation of their talents and dis- 
 positions or in the character of their parents and associates, 
 seems already to have favored; and on the other, as in- 
 flicting further pain on those whom less fortunate circum- 
 stances had already formed into weak, vicious, or ignorant, 
 or, in other words, into unhappy beings. 
 
 -" And prejudicial in rendering a strong, bold character 
 either proud or overbearing, or vindictive and deceitful ; or 
 in instilling into the young mind, if more timid and less 
 decided, either an overweening opinion of its own abilities 
 and endowments or a dispiriting idea of its own incom- 
 petency — such an idea as creates a sullen, hopeless despond- 
 ency and destroys that elasticity of spirit from whence 
 
 229
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 many of our best actions proceed, but which is lost as soon 
 as the individual feels himself sunk, mentally or morally, 
 below his companions, disgraced by punishment, and 
 treated with neglect or contempt by those around him/' 
 
 " Artificial rewards and punishments are introduced ; 
 and the child's notions of right and wrong are so confused 
 by the substitution of these for the natural consequences 
 resulting from his conduct — his mind is in most cases so 
 thoroughly imbued with the uncharitable notion that what- 
 ever he has been taught to consider wrong deserves imme- 
 diate punishment ; and that he himself is treated unjustly 
 unless rewarded for what he believes to be right; that it 
 were next to a miracle if his mind did not become more or 
 less irrational; or if he chose a course which otherwise 
 would have appeared too self-evidently beneficial to be re- 
 jected/' 
 
 (2) ^^ Every action whatever must be followed by its 
 natural reward and punishment/' 
 
 (3) "A clear knowledge and a distinct conviction of 
 the necessary consequences of any particular line of con- 
 duct is all that is necessary, however skeptical some may 
 be on this point, to direct the child in the way he should go, 
 provided common justice be done in regard to the other 
 circumstances which surround him in infancy and in child- 
 hood/' 
 
 (4) " Whatever in its ultimate consequences increases 
 the happiness of the community is right ; and whatever on 
 the other hand tends to diminish that happiness is wrong/' 
 
 ( 5 ) " The happiness of the child is intimately con- 
 nected with that of the community. Experience aids in 
 this. Artificial rewards and punishments confuse this 
 thought. Eightly understood, the child is led to right ac- 
 tion, for he could not deliberately make himself miserable 
 in preference to making himself happy." 
 
 (6) "A child who acts improperly is not an object of 
 blame but of pity. The fact of wrong action simply shows 
 
 230
 
 TEE EDUCATIONAL EXPERIMENT 
 
 that he has not been properly trained." Here Robert Dale 
 Owen draws an analogy between the child who is a wrong- 
 doer and the traveler who, improperly directed, takes the 
 wrong road and fails of his destination. We would not 
 think of chiding or punishing the traveler. Not he, but 
 they who failed to direct him properly are to blame. 
 Eather will we care for his wants, place him upon the right 
 road, and send him upon his way rejoicing. The child who 
 has gone astray is not to blame; but those who have di- 
 rected him wrong. Like the traveler, he is to be pitied, not 
 censured; cared for; and set again in the path of right 
 action. 
 
 Though, as compared with the other schools of the 
 period, the New Lanark school was as successful education- 
 ally as the great cotton-mill which maintained it was 
 financially, some of the same diflBculties were encountered 
 which confront the public-school administration to-day. 
 Eobert Dale Owen recites some of these : 
 
 (1) " The children were only five hours at school and 
 under its influence each day ; the remaining nineteen hours 
 being spent under the influence of parents more or less 
 ignorant, more or less unrefined, more or less brutal and 
 vicious." The problem of the home handicap is still with 
 us, but it becomes less serious as the home grows better 
 from one decade to another. 
 
 (2) "There was great difficulty in securing proper 
 teachers for the work — those possessing the general and 
 particular knowledge, habits, and temper necessary to suc- 
 cessful teaching, without the pedantry to which members 
 of the teaching profession are susceptible." 
 
 (3) "As soon as the children arrived at the age of ten 
 years, they were withdrawn and placed in the cotton-mills." 
 Child-labor laws and truancy regulations have made this 
 impossible under the age of fourteen years in many of the 
 States of the Union. 
 
 (4) Many of the children, because of poor home-train- 
 
 231
 
 TEE NEW ^HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 ing, had formed bad habits which both infant school and 
 higher school found it difficult to eradicate. 
 
 Even in that day, when the public conscience had not 
 been quickened in educational matters, the schools at New 
 Lanark attracted wide-spread attention. The visitors who 
 came to New Lanark for the purpose of seeing the schools 
 in operation were very numerous. They arrived by thou- 
 sands annually. " I have seen,^^ says Eobert Owen, " as 
 many as seventy strangers at once attending the early 
 morning exercises of the children in the school." Among 
 these visitors were many of the first persons of the king- 
 dom as well as numbers of illustrious strangers. The 
 Duke of Holstein (Oldenburg) and his brother stayed 
 several days with Owen at New Lanark that they might 
 thoroughly understand the system of infant instruction 
 in operation there. The Grand Duke Nicholas, after- 
 ward Emperor of Russia, offered Mr. Owen large in- 
 ducements to remove his colony to the Russian Empire. 
 Prince John Maximilian of Austria spent some time at 
 New Lanark. Many foreign ambassadors became guests of 
 Mr. Owen, among them Baron Just of Saxony, whose sov- 
 ereign presented a gold medal to Robert Owen as a mark 
 of approval. An attempt was made by disciples of Owen 
 to establish a similar settlement in London, but unfavor- 
 able conditions caused the failure of the experiment. 
 
 It is interesting to note that on the 30th of July, 1824, 
 William Maclure, a wealthy retired merchant of Philadel- 
 phia, a man destined to play such a leading part in Owen^s 
 later educational experiment at New Harmony, visited the 
 New Lanark schools. From this visit there came a friend- 
 ship between the two men which culminated in their asso- 
 ciation as partners in the New Harmony venture. Maclure 
 says of the New Lanark schools at this time : " It is really 
 astonishing the order, happiness, and comfort that per- 
 vade the whole. His (Owen's) success gives me much 
 pleasure on two accounts : First, for the good it certainly 
 
 232
 
 THE EDUCATIONAL EXPERIMENT 
 
 will produce ; and, second, for the encouragement it infuses 
 into my long-projected plan of forming experimental 
 schools, which, in so superior a field as the United States, 
 can scarce fail while such an extensively profound and 
 beneficial system seems to flourish in spite of all the oppo- 
 sition both in church and state." 
 
 THE SCHOOL AT NEW HAKMONY 
 
 In less than a year after William Maclure wrote in such 
 enthusiastic terms his approval of the school at New Lan- 
 ark, Eobert Owen had determined to abandon his social 
 and educational labors there and found a " New Moral 
 World " somewhere on the American continent. The 
 very Providence whose interference in human affairs 
 both men denied must have brought about the strange 
 association of Robert Owen and William Maclure in the 
 New Harmony venture; for out of it came not only the 
 greatest experiment in social reconstruction which the 
 world has yet witnessed, but also the firm establishment 
 of Pestalozzian principles of education in this country, a 
 great impetus to the American scientific spirit, and a series 
 of movements which largely affected American educational 
 development. 
 
 There was much in common between the two men — 
 more in common between them than there had been be- 
 tween Owen and the hero of Stanz. Both men were wealthy 
 and therefore able to put their schemes for reforming so- 
 ciety to the test. Both were philanthropists, willing to give 
 their all for social betterment. Both eliminated religion 
 from their schemes of reform. Both espoused the cause 
 of the productive classes who, in the language of Maclure, 
 "make their living in the sweat of their brows." Both 
 brought a severe indictment against the existing social 
 order. The means bv which the reformation of that social 
 order should be consummated was the one serious point of 
 
 233
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 ■difference between them. Owen seized upon every phase of 
 man's environment as a weapon in his fight for the uplift- 
 ing of his fellows. Interested as he was in the educational 
 •experiments at New Harmony, the social Utopia he sought 
 to create there claimed the greater part of his enthusiasm 
 and attention. Maclure, on the other hand, believed that 
 ^' free, equal, and universal schools " were the only means 
 by which the rise of the productive classes could be 
 achieved. Interested only in the educational phase of the 
 'New Harmony movement, he manifested little interest 
 and less faith in the dreams which his partner sought to 
 realize. 
 
 Both believed in the educational principles enunciated 
 by Pestalozzi. Maclure in his Opinions on Various Sub- 
 jects, a publication of three volumes, printed and bound 
 in the industrial school at New Harmony, sets forth at 
 length his reasons for approving of the Pestalozzian sys- 
 tem of instruction. After criticizing the evils of the social 
 order, he declares that " to rectify as far as education can 
 the foregoing evils, the system of Pestalozzi through all its 
 manipulations is admirably calculated. Having traveled 
 seven summers in Switzerland, and some months of each 
 residing at Pestalozzi's school at Yverdun, I never saw the 
 pupils in or out of school without one of the teachers pre- 
 siding at their games, etc., all of which were calculated to 
 convey instruction. They were constantly occupied with 
 something useful to themselves or others from 5 a. m. to 
 8 p. M., with the exception of four half hours at meals, at 
 which all the teachers ate with the pupils ; their attention 
 was never fatigued with more than one hour at the same 
 exercise, either moral or physical ; all was bottomed on free 
 will by the total exclusion of every species of correction. 
 Their actions were cheerful, energetic, and rapidly tending 
 toward the end aimed at. 
 
 " I do not recollect ever to have heard a cry or any 
 demonstration of pain or displeasure nor even an angry 
 
 234
 
 THE EDUCATIONAL EXPERIMENT 
 
 word from teacher or pupil all the time I lived among 
 them. One of the most beneficial consequences is the pleas- 
 ure all of Pestalozzi^s pupils take in mental labor and 
 study. Though I often went out of my road fifty leagues to 
 examine young men taught under this system, I do not re- 
 member ever finding one of an ill-natured temper or bad 
 conduct of all I saw either in Europe or in this country, 
 and I usually found them greatly superior in all the useful 
 accomplishments to all those educated by other methods." 
 
 It was in 1805 that Maclure first visited Pestalozzi's 
 school in Switzerland, where, to use the language of Joseph 
 Neef, "he was soon convinced of the solidity, importance, 
 and usefulness of the Pestalozzian system. Indeed, to see 
 Pestalozzi's method displayed before his eyes and to form 
 an unalterable wish of naturalizing it in his own country 
 were operations succeeding each other with such rapidity 
 that Maclure took them for one and the same operation." 
 On being asked by him to recommend a disciple capable of 
 carrying on the work in America successfully, Pestalozzi 
 named Joseph ^N'eef. Maclure supported N"eef for two 
 years while he was learning the English language, after 
 which he established, on the Schuylkill Eiver, five miles 
 from Philadelphia, with Neef as principal, the first Pes- 
 talozzian school on the Western continent. After several 
 years of indifferent success the school was transferred to 
 Delaware County, Pennsylvania, where in 1814 the effort 
 was abandoned because of public prejudice against Neef's 
 boldly proclaimed atheism. Neef moved to Louisville, 
 bought a small farm near the city, and renounced teaching 
 altogether. Erom this retreat he was brought to New Har- 
 mony by Owen and Maclure in 1826. 
 
 When the partcership between Owen and Maclure gave 
 the latter sole charge of the educational efforts at New 
 Harmony, he gathered together some of the members of 
 the teaching force of his former school and the scientists 
 whom his own distinguished achievements had attracted to 
 
 235
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 the venture and set out with his " Boat-load of Knowl- 
 edge" down the turbid Ohio. The party arrived at The 
 New Moral World eight months after Robert Owen had 
 established his colony there. Maclure began at once to 
 organize the school system, which he fondly hoped would 
 become the center of American education through the in- 
 troduction of the Pestalozzian system of instruction. One 
 of his first acts was to publish a prospectus, or " course 
 of study/' for the contemplated schools. 
 
 maclure's outline, or course of study, for the 
 new harmony schools 
 
 In Silliman's Journal, early in 1826, and before the 
 organization of the schools had been much more than be- 
 gun, Maclure outlined the system of instruction to be 
 pursued, stating that Phiquepal d'Arusmont, and Madame 
 Fretageot, with Messrs. Say, Maclure, and other educators, 
 " are now prepared to organize at New Harmony a board- 
 ing-school on those principles which have for some time 
 been in operation at New Lanark, Scotland.' 
 
 jj 
 
 (1) Great or Fundamental Principle of Education 
 
 " The great or fundamental principle is, never to at- 
 tempt to teach children what they can not comprehend,. and 
 to teach them in the exact ratio of their understanding 
 without omitting one line in the chain of ratiocination, 
 proceeding always from the known to the unknown, from 
 the most easy to the most difficult ; practising the most ex- 
 tensive and accurate use of all the senses; exercising, im- 
 proving, and perfecting all the mental and corporal facul- 
 ties by quickening combination; accelerating and carefully 
 arranging comparison ; judiciously and impartially making 
 deductions; summing up the results free from prejudice, 
 and cautiously avoiding the delusions of the imagination, 
 a constant source of ignorance and error." 
 
 236
 
 THOMAS SAY
 
 THE EDUCATIONAL EXPERIMENT 
 
 (2) Mechanism and Mathematics 
 
 <{ 
 
 The children are to learn mechanism by machines or 
 •exact models of them, arithmetic by a machine called the 
 arithmometer, geometry by a machine called the trig- 
 nometer, by which the most useful propositions of Euclid 
 are reduced to the comprehension of a child five or six years 
 old; mathematics by the help of the above-mentioned in- 
 struments/' 
 
 (3) Science 
 
 " Natural history in all its branches is learned by ex- 
 amining the objects in substance or accurate representa- 
 tions of them in designs or prints; anatomy by skeletons 
 and wax figures; geography by globes and maps — most of 
 the last of their own construction; hygiene, or the preser- 
 vation of health, by their own experience and observation 
 of the consequences of all natural functions. They learn 
 natural philosophy by the most improved and simple in- 
 struments." 
 
 (Jf.) Writing and Drawing 
 
 '^ They are taught the elements of writing and design- 
 ing by the freedom of hand acquired by constant practise 
 in forming all kinds of figures with a slate and pencil put 
 into their hands when they first enter the school, on which 
 they draw lines, dividing them into equal parts, thereby 
 obtaining an accuracy of the eye which, joined to the con- 
 stant exercise of judging the distance of objects and their 
 height, gives them a perfect idea of space." 
 
 (( 
 
 (5) Music 
 
 They learn music through the medium of an organ 
 constructed for the purpose, and a sonometer, first learning 
 the sounds and then being taught the notes, or signs of 
 those sounds." 
 
 237
 
 {( 
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 (6) Gymnastics 
 
 Gymnastics, or the exercise of all muscular motions, 
 they acquire by the practise of all kinds of movements al- 
 ways, preferably, those that may lead to utility, such as 
 marching, climbing, the manual exercise, etc. They are 
 taught the greatest part of these branches at the same time, 
 never fatiguing the mind by giving more than an hour's 
 attention to the same thing, changing the subject and 
 rendering it a play by variety. 
 
 >} 
 
 « 
 
 (7) Languages 
 
 The pupils learn as many languages as there are lan- 
 guages spoken by the boys of different nations in the school, 
 each instructing the other in the vocabulary of his lan- 
 guage.'' 
 
 (8) Manual Training 
 
 " Lithographing and engraving as well as printing are 
 to be carried on in the school building, as well as other me- 
 chanic arts, that the children may receive manual training. 
 The boys learn at least one mechanical art — for instance, 
 setting type and printing, and for this purpose there are 
 printing-presses in each school by the aid of which are 
 published all their elementary books. 
 
 y> 
 
 In attempting to carry out the course of study an- 
 nounced in Silliman's Journal and outlined above, Ma- 
 clure patterned the New Harmony educational system 
 closely after the successful system which Owen had aban- 
 doned at New Lanark. He not only adopted the same 
 educational principles, but also the same school units and 
 organization. The infant school at New Harmony, re- 
 ceiving children from two to five years of age, was the 
 exact counterpart of Owen's infant school at New Lanark; 
 the higher school, enrolling those from five to twelve years 
 
 238
 
 THE EDUCATIONAL EXPERIMENT 
 
 of age, was the reproduction of the night-school which. 
 Owen had conducted for the benefit of the operatives of 
 his New Lanark mills. 
 
 The schools, though established primarily for the bene-- 
 fit of the children of the community, were open, on pay- 
 ment of tuition, to children from outside the community,, 
 and pupils came from as far east as Philadelphia and New 
 York. The terms for non-resident children were: for 
 boarding, lodging, washing, clothing, medical attendance, 
 medicine, and instruction in the various branches taught,, 
 one hundred dollars per annum. Girls were received upon 
 the same terms as boys, the course of instruction pre- 
 scribed for them being the same as that laid down for the- 
 other sex. The doctrine of the social system as officially 
 promulgated was : " It is contemplated in Mr. Owen's- 
 system, by giving our female population as good an educa- 
 tion as our males, to qualify them for every situation in 
 life in which, consistently with their organization, they 
 may be placed.'' 
 
 To an age which coeducation has conquered, Owen's, 
 declaration that the females of New Harmony were to re- 
 ceive as good an education as the males seems superfluous,, 
 but in the far-off year of 1826 the declaration attracted 
 additional public attention to the educational experiments- 
 on the Wabash. While it is true that previous to the New 
 Harmony venture a few private and endowed schools were- 
 founded for the express purpose of affording better edu- 
 cational advantages for girls, yet it is also true that the 
 educational system at New Harmony was the first public- 
 school system in the United States which offered the same- 
 opportunities to girls as it did to boys. For though the 
 schools at New Harmony were open to non-resident pupils 
 upon the payment of a tuition fee of one hundred dollars 
 per annum, yet, so far as the children of the community 
 itself were concerned, they were public schools in an even 
 wider sense than that in which we use the term to-day, for 
 
 239 
 
 i
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 in them the children were not only trained but fed, clothed, i 
 
 and sheltered. I 
 
 At the time of Maclure's arrival at New Harmony there ] 
 were no public schools in the United States save the town- j 
 ship schools of New England. In these public schools of ■ 
 the New England colonies some provision had been made 
 for the education of girls before the close of the eighteenth | 
 century, but these provisions were meager and unsatis- I 
 factory. The training which they received was given either i 
 in short summer terms or at the noon hours or at other in- ', 
 tervals of the town or boys' school. Boone, in his History i 
 of Education, says : " But no such opportunity was offered j 
 girls to make the most of themselves as had been forced | 
 upon most boys for a half-dozen generations." Even in ; 
 most of the private schools, where better educational f acili- [ 
 ties were offered to girls, instruction was confined to wri- | 
 ting, reading, spelling, arithmetic, and English grammar. [ 
 In the very year in which the New Harmony schools were , 
 inaugurated, an attempt was made at Boston to establish ' 
 a high school for girls. In a year, however, it failed be- 
 cause the attempt to give an education to both sexes in- i 
 volved too great a drain upon the public purse. It was i 
 not until 1843 that Providence opened its high school for j 
 boys and girls. It was several years before another com- | 
 munity took up the interest. In 1840 the city of Philadel- i 
 phia established a separate high school for females. It was \ 
 not until 1852 that Boston reestablished the girls' high ' 
 school. 
 
 These are the facts in the past history of education in ', 
 
 this country which led Boone to say, " By a kind of tra- j 
 
 ditionary blindness, few among the colonial fathers saw ] 
 
 the contradiction of the most fundamental of their relig- i 
 
 ious and political principles in disregarding or thwarting ' 
 
 the intellectual life of their daughters." The educational j 
 
 experiment at New Harmony then was not only far in ad- : 
 
 vance of the other schools of this country in its methods of I 
 
 240 '
 
 TEE EDUCATIONAL EXPERIMENT 
 
 government and in its Pestalozzian system of instruction, 
 but also in the provisions which it made for the proper 
 education of the gentler sex. 
 
 In Community House No. 2 Madame Neef, assisted by 
 Madame Fretageot, conducted an infant school of over one 
 hundred children. Mrs. Neef was the wife of Joseph Neef 
 and the mother of five of the teachers in the higher school 
 of the community. She was a native of Wiirtemberg. Her 
 brother became a professor in Pestalozzf s Institute, and 
 she was educated under the supervision of Mrs. Pestalozzi. 
 Professor Neef was her French teacher, and just before his 
 departure for America they were married. The laws of 
 the social system provided that children should become the 
 property of the community at the age of two years, and it 
 was in the infant school that they were first received. The 
 chief work of the teacher was to direct the amusements of 
 the children, who were taught various games, some of them 
 instructive, similar to those employed in the present-day 
 kindergarten. The training of the school was copied very 
 largely after that which Buchanan had given in his crude 
 efforts at New Lanark. 
 
 The higher school for pupils between the ages of five 
 and twelve years was taught by Joseph Neef, as principal, 
 assisted by his four daughters and one son, all of whom 
 had been pupils of Pestalozzi and had been brought to the 
 community because of their familiarity with his system of 
 instruction. In the palmy days of the New Harmony ex- 
 periments the enrolment in this school was between one 
 hundred and eighty and two hundred pupils of both sexes. 
 It was, strictly speaking, the Pestalozzian school of the 
 system. The prospectus published by Maclure in Silli- 
 man's Journal constituted its course of study. A portion 
 of the time of the pupils of this school was devoted to 
 some branch of the work of the industrial school, the two 
 schools constituting what we would call to-day a manual 
 training-school. 
 
 17 241
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 The school for pupils over twelve years of age, called by 
 the New Harmony Gazette the " School for Adults/^ had at 
 one time an enrolment of eighty. These received, usually 
 at night, special training in mathematics and the useful 
 arts together with lectures on chemistry by Troost, drawing 
 by Lesueur, natural history by Thomas Say, and experi- 
 >/ mental farming by M. Phiquepal d'Arusmont. 
 
 The industrial school was the one innovation which 
 Maclure grafted upon the educational system. Every 
 other feature, as he himself acknowledged in the prospectus 
 of the school, he copied, not from his own unhappy effort 
 on the Schuylkill, but from Owen's brilliant success in 
 Scotland. Maclure was one of the earliest champions of 
 the idea of industrial education. He founded an agri- 
 cultural school near the city of Alicante, Spain, on an 
 estate of ten thousand acres purchased for this purpose, but 
 an end was put to these plans by a political revolution 
 which resulted in the confiscation of his property. New 
 Harmony afforded another opportunity for an industrial 
 experiment, which he eagerly seized. Though in his eccen- 
 tric career Maclure championed many ideas with all the 
 vigor of his vehement nature, there was none he espoused 
 more vigorously than he did the educational theories upon 
 which he organized the manual labor work in the schools 
 of The New Moral World. These theories were: 
 
 (1) There should be free, equal, and universal schools 
 to which at an early age children should be surrendered 
 and in which they should be clothed, fed, sheltered, and 
 educated at the public expense. 
 
 (2) Every child of the productive classes should be 
 taught a trade in order that he may be self-supporting and 
 independent. 
 
 (3) Properly managed, the labor of the child at his 
 trade in the industrial department should more than pay 
 for his maintenance and entirely relieve the public from 
 the financial burden of supporting the schools. 
 
 242
 
 THE EDUCATIONAL EXPERIMENT 
 
 When the children who were the property of the com- 
 munity had arrived at the age of five years they passed 
 from the infant school into the higher or true Pestalozzian 
 school. While pursuing the work in this school as set 
 forth in Maclure's Prospectus or Course of Study, they, at 
 the same time, were learning some useful occupation or 
 trade in the industrial school. The child was permitted to 
 choose the branch of industry in which he wished to be 
 trained. Where he made no choice, the management sought 
 to assign him to one for which he had special aptitude. 
 At night the children did not return to the homes of their 
 parents, whom they saw but seldom, but slept in an upper 
 room or loft above the workshop in which their daily 
 manual task was performed. Every child was expected to 
 learn at least one occupation or trade well. When this had 
 been done he might receive permission to enter another 
 workshop and learn a second industry. 
 
 It appears certain that at some time or other during the 
 life of the industrial school at New Harmony each of the 
 following 'useful occupations were taught: Taxidermy, 
 printing and engraving, drawing, carpentry, wheel wright- 
 ing, wood-turning, blacksmithing, cabinet-making, hat- 
 making, shoemaking, agriculture, washing, cooking, sew- 
 ing, housekeeping, dressmaking, and millinery. Whatever 
 may have been the character of the training in other de-* 
 partments, there is absolute proof that the work of the 
 printing-shop was thorough. Maclure's Opinions, a pub- 
 lication in three volumes, was printed and bound by the 
 pupils in it. The typographical work of these books is ex- 
 cellent, and after the lapse of eighty years the binding is 
 in good condition. 
 
 We catch a faint glimpse of the industrial system in the 
 diary of the Duke of Saxe- Weimar, who writes of his visit 
 to the community schools in April, 1826 : "I found Pro- 
 fessor Neef in the act of leading the boys of his school out 
 to labor. Military exercise formed a part of the instruc- 
 
 243
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 tion of the children. I saw the boys divided into two ranks 
 and parted into detachments, marching to labor. On the 
 way they performed various wheelings and evolutions. All 
 the boys and girls have a very healthy look, are cheerful 
 and lively, and by no means bashful. The boys labor in the 
 field and garden and were now occupied with new fencing. 
 The girls learned female employments ; they were as little 
 oppressed as the boys with labor and teaching ; these happy 
 and interesting little children were much more employed 
 in making their youth pass as happily as possible. 
 
 " Madame Neef showed me their schoolhouse, in which 
 she dwelt, and in which places for sleeping were arranged 
 for the boys. Each slept upon a cot frame, on a straw 
 bed. ... I went to the quondam church, or work- 
 shop for the boys who are intended for joiners and shoe- 
 makers. These boys sleep upon the floor above the church 
 in cribs, three in a row, and thus have their sleeping-place 
 and place of instruction close together. We saw also the 
 shops of the shoemakers, tailors and saddlers, also the 
 smiths, of which six were under one roof, and the pottery, 
 in which were two rather large furnaces. The greater part 
 of the young girls whom we chanced to meet at home we 
 found employed in plaiting straw hats.^' 
 
 The industrial school at 'New Harmony was the second 
 to be established in the United States. There was at this 
 time but one other manual training-school in this country 
 — ^the Eensselaer Institute, which was founded two years 
 previously (1824). These two pioneer institutions, so 
 closely associated in point of time, differed widely in cur- 
 riculum. " The Eensselaer school had for that day ex- 
 tensive laboratory advantages in chemistry and physics, 
 and taught the analysis of soils, fertilizers, minerals, and 
 animal and vegetable matter, with their applications to 
 agriculture, domestic economy, and the arts, and as early 
 as 1835 had a department for instruction in engineering 
 and technology." This course appealed only to students of 
 
 244
 
 THE EDUCATIONAL EXPERIMENT 
 
 a much greater age than the children who were taught in 
 the workshops of the community. 
 
 The Eensselaer Institute was strictly a technical school, 
 while the New Harmony experiment was purely a trade- 
 school. In the latter a trade is taught, in the former 
 both the trade and the technique of the trade are taught. 
 Though the Rensselaer Institute was the first industrial 
 and the first technical industrial school in the United 
 States, Maclure's attempt afforded the first purely trade- 
 school. After reciting a list of manual labor organizations 
 which followed in the wake of these pioneer ventures, 
 Boone, in his History of Education, says truly : " Though 
 many of these efforts to promote industry in connection 
 with literary institutions failed, and most of the schools 
 were closed or reorganized as academies, they served a 
 double and worthy purpose; the function of intelligent 
 labor was magnified and the seed sown for a more fruitful 
 harvest. For how much of the idea of technical education 
 in agriculture and the mechanic arts the present is in- 
 debted to these institutions can not perhaps be determined. 
 Enough is known to suggest that the obligation must be 
 large." 
 
 But little concerning the workings of the New Har- 
 mony educational experiment can be gleaned from the 
 official records of the community. Though still in a re- 
 markable state of preservation, they are almost entirely 
 occupied with the endless bickerings of the social system. 
 The most reliable and interesting information concerning 
 the community schools is to be derived from the accounts 
 given by those who in the days of The New Moral World 
 in the capacity of teacher or pupil or visitor came in con- 
 tact with them. 
 
 Mrs. Sarah Cox Thrall, who died in New Harmony a 
 few years ago, was a pupil in the community schools. She 
 stated that in summer the girls wore dresses of coarse 
 linen, with a coarse plaid costume for Sunday or for 
 
 245
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 special occasions. In winter they wore heavy woolen 
 dresses. At rising, a detail of the girls was sent out to do 
 the milking, and this milk, with mush cooked in large 
 kettles, constituted the essential part of the morning meal, 
 which the children were expected to finish in fifteen min- 
 utes. " We had bread but once a week — on Saturdays. I 
 thought if I ever got out, I would kill myself eating sugar 
 and cake. We marched in military order, after breakfast, 
 to Community House No. 2. I remember that there were 
 blackboards covering one side of the schoolroom, and that 
 we had wires, with balls on them, by which we learned to 
 count. We also had singing exercises by which we famil- 
 iarized ourselves with lessons in various branches. At din- 
 ner we generally had soup, at supper mush and milk 
 again. 
 
 " We went to bed at sundown in little bunks suspended 
 in rows by cords from the ceiling. Sometimes one of the 
 children at the end of the row would swing back her 
 cradle, and, when it collided on the return bound with the 
 next bunk, it set the whole row bumping together. This 
 was a favorite diversion, and caused the teachers much 
 distress. At regular intervals we used to be marched to the 
 community apothecary shop, where a dose that tasted like 
 sulphur was impartially dealt out to each pupil, just as 
 in Squeers^ Dotheboys school. Children regularly in the 
 boarding-school were not allowed to see their parents, ex- 
 cept at rare intervals. I saw my father and mother twice 
 in two years. We had a little song we used to sing: 
 
 " Number 2 pigs locked up in a pen, 
 When they get out, it's now and then ; 
 When they get out, they sneak about, 
 Por fear old Neef will find them out." 
 
 Eobert Dale Owen also gives us a picture of the New 
 Harmony schools in operation. " In the educational de- 
 
 246
 
 THE EDUCATIONAL EXPERIMENT 
 
 partment/' he writes, " we had considerable talent, mixed 
 with a good deal of eccentricity. We had a Frenchman, 
 patronized by Mr. Maclure, a Phiqnepal d'Arusmont, who 
 became afterward the husband of Frances Wright, a man 
 well informed on many points, but withal a wrong-headed 
 genius, whose extravagance, wilfulness, and inordinate self- 
 conceit destroyed his usefulness. He had a small school, 
 but it was a failure — he gained neither the good- will nor 
 the respect of his pupils. 
 
 " Another, of a very different stamp, was Prof. Joseph 
 Neef, from Pestalozzi^s school in Switzerland. Simple, 
 straightforward, and cordial, a proficient in niodern lan- 
 guages, a good musician, he had brought with him from 
 Pestalozzi's institution at Yverdun an excellent mode of 
 teaching. To his earlier life, as an officer under Napoleon, 
 was due a blunt, offhand manner and an abrupt style of 
 speech, enforced now and then with an oath — an awkward 
 habit for a teacher, which I think he tried ineffectually 
 to get rid of. One day, when I was within hearing, a boy 
 in his class used profane language. ' Youngster,' said Neef 
 to him, ^you mustn't swear. It's silly, and it's vulgar, 
 and it means nothing. Don't let me hear you do so again.' 
 " ' But, Mr. Neef,' said the boy, hesitating and looking 
 half frightened, 'if — if it's vulgar and wrong to swear, 
 
 why ' 
 
 " ' Well, out with it. Never stop when you want to say 
 an}i:h;ng ; that's another bad habit. You wished to know 
 
 why ' 
 
 " ' Why you swear, yourself, Mr. Neef .' 
 " ' Because I'm a fool ! Don't you be one, too ! ' 
 " With all his roughness, the good old man was a gen- 
 eral favorite alike with children and adults. Those whose 
 recollections of Harmony extend back to the '40s pre- 
 serve a genial remembrance of him, walking about in the 
 sun of July or August, in linen trousers and shirt, always 
 bareheaded, with a grandchild in his arms, and humming 
 
 247
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 to his infant charge some martial air in a wonderful bass 
 voice, which, it is said, enabled him in his younger days, 
 when giving command to a body of troops, to be distinctly 
 heard by ten thousand men/' 
 
 Eobert Dale Owen thus relates an experience of his own 
 in teaching one of the community schools : " When I first 
 took charge of the school, finding that the teachers occa- 
 sionally employed corporal punishment, I strictly forbade 
 it. After a time the master of the eldest boys' class said 
 to me one day : ^ I find it impossible to control these un- 
 ruly rascals. They know I am not allowed to flog them, 
 and when I seek to enforce rules of order, they defy me.' 
 
 " I sought to show him how he might manage them 
 without the rod, but he persisted. ' If you'd try it yourself 
 for a few days, Mr. Owen, you'd find out that I'm right.' 
 
 " ' Good,' I said, ' I'll take them in hand for a week 
 or two.' 
 
 " They were a rough, boisterous, lawless set ; bright 
 enough, quick of observation; capable of learning when 
 they applied themselves, but accustomed to a free swing, 
 and impatient of discipline, to which they had never been 
 subjected. I said to them at the start : ' Boys, I want you 
 to learn ; you'll be very sorry when you come to be men if 
 you don't. But you can't learn anything worth knowing 
 without rules to go by. I must have you orderly and 
 obedient. I won't require from you anything unreasonable, 
 and I don't intend to be severe with you. But whatever I 
 tell you to do is what has to be done, and shall be done, 
 sooner or later.' Here I observed on one or two bold faces 
 a smile that looked like incredulity, but all I added was: 
 ' You'll save time if you do it at once.' 
 
 " My lessons, often oral, interested them, and things 
 went on quietly for a few days. I knew the crisis would 
 come. It did, in this wise. It was May, the thermometer 
 was ranging toward ninety degrees, and I resolved to take 
 the class to bathe in the Wabash, much to their delight. I 
 
 248
 
 TEE EDUCATIONAL EXPERIMENT 
 
 told them that by the doctor^s advice they were to remain 
 in the water fifteen minutes only; that was the rule. 
 When I called, * Time's up/ they all came out, somewhat 
 reluctantly, however, except one tall fellow named Ben, a 
 good swimmer, who detained us ten minutes, notwith- 
 standing my order, several times repeated, to come on 
 shore. 
 
 "I said nothing about it until we returned to the 
 schoolroom, then I asked the class : ' Do you remember my 
 saying to you that whatever I told you to do had to be 
 done sooner or later ? ' They looked at Ben and said, * Yes/ 
 Then I went on. ' I am determined that if I take you to 
 bathe again, you shall stay in fifteen minutes only. How 
 do you think I can best manage that ? ' They looked at 
 Ben again, and seemed puzzled, never, very surely, having 
 been asked such a question before. ' Has no one any 
 plan ? ' I asked. 
 
 " At length a youngster suggested : ' I guess you'd bet- 
 ter thrash him, Mr. Owen.' ' I don't wish to do that,' I re- 
 plied. ' I think it does boys harm. Besides, I never was 
 whipped myself, I never whipped anybody, and I know it 
 must be a very unpleasant thing to do. Can't somebody 
 think of a better plan?' 
 
 " One of the class suggested : ' There's a closet in the 
 garret, with a stout bolt to it — ^you might shut him up in 
 there till we got back.' 
 
 " ' That's better than flogging, but is the closet dark ? ' 
 
 " ' Yes.' 
 
 " ' I think Ben would not like to be shut up in the 
 dark for nearly an hour.' 
 
 " * No, but then we don't like to be kept from bathing 
 just for him.' 
 
 " Then one little fellow, with some hesitation, put in his 
 word : ' Please, Mr. Owen, woiddn't it do to leave him in 
 the playground ? ' 
 
 " * If I could be sure that he would stay there, but he 
 
 249
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 might get out and go bathing, and remain in half an hour, 
 perhaps/ 
 
 " At this point Ben, no longer able to restrain himself — 
 he had been getting more and more restless, turning first 
 to one speaker, then to another, as we coolly discussed the 
 case — burst forth : ^ Mr. Owen, if you leave me in the 
 playground, when they go to bathe next time, I'll never 
 stir from it. I won't. You'll see, I won't ! ' 
 
 " ' Well, Ben,' said I, ^ I have never known you to tell a 
 falsehood and I'll take your word for it this time. But 
 remember, if you lie to me once, I shall never be able to 
 trust you again. We couldn't believe known liars if we 
 were to try.' 
 
 " So the next time we went in bathing, I left Ben in the 
 playground. When we returned, he met me, with eager 
 face, at the gate. ' I never left, even for a minute. Ask 
 them if I have,' pointing to some boys at play. 
 
 " ' Your word is enough. I believe you.' 
 
 " Thereafter Ben came out of the water promptly, as 
 soon as time was called; and when any of his comrades 
 lingered he was the first to chide them for disobeying 
 orders. 
 
 " Once or twice afterward I had to take a somewhat 
 similar stand (never against Ben), persisting each time 
 until I was obeyed. Then, bethinking myself of my 
 Hofwyl experience, I called in the aid of military drill, 
 which the boys took to very kindly, and when three weeks 
 had passed I found that my pupils prided themselves in 
 being what, indeed, they were — the .best disciplined and 
 most orderly and law-abiding class in school. 
 
 " So I carried my point against a degrading relic of 
 barbarism, then countenanced in England, alike in army, 
 navy, and some of the most accredited seminaries." 
 
 An account of the formation of the educational society 
 has already been given. With this Mr. Maclure and his 
 associates allied themselves, and the educational interests 
 
 250
 
 THE EDUCATIONAL EXPERIMENT 
 
 of the various communities were under its care. In Decem- 
 ber, 1826, William Maclure forwarded to the State Legis- 
 lature a petition for the incorporation of the New Har- 
 mony Educational Society, and a bill was introduced 
 stating that William Maclure " had bought, in and adjoin- 
 ing ISTew Harmony, one thousand acres of land with suit- 
 able buildings erected thereupon, devoted to the establish- 
 ment of schools, and had furnished a liberal endowment, 
 embracing many thousands of volumes of books, with such 
 mathematical, chemical, and physical apparatus as is nec- 
 essary to facilitate education, and is desirous to obtain 
 an act of incorporation to enable him more fully to carry 
 out his benevolent designs/^ This bill was rejected in the 
 State Senate by a vote of fifteen to four, on account of the 
 popular impression that atheism was promulgated in the 
 New Harmony schools. The Gazette, in commenting on 
 the action of the Legislature, says : " We presume, from 
 their conduct, that they have no confidence in our society 
 or its intentions.^' 
 
 In a discussion following the signing of the articles of 
 partnership between the two men, Maclure assured Owen 
 that not only would he guarantee that instructors and 
 professors of a superior type would be enlisted in the pro- 
 posed educational experiments, but also that by the de- 
 partmental system of instruction all the children of the 
 schools would be brought into contact with the superior 
 qualifications possessed by all these teachers. Contrary to 
 this understanding, when the schools were organized each 
 principal teacher assumed entire charge of the training of 
 a particular group of children. During the larger portion 
 of the life of The New Moral World Maclure was traveling 
 elsewhere, leaving the New Harmony schools without any 
 leadership save that mildly exercised by Thomas Say, 
 whom he had deputized to assume charge during his ab- 
 sence. 
 
 These things, together with the failure of the Pestaloz- 
 
 251
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 zian school to achieve expected results and of the industrial 
 school to be self-supporting, caused Owen, dissatisfied with 
 the educational experiments of his partner, to establish a 
 separate school system, independent of Mr. Maclure's, 
 under the leadership of a Mr. Dorsey, a short-lived venture 
 that achieved no other result than to inaugurate a quarrel 
 between the two proprietors which culminated in legal 
 complications. 
 
 Wlien at last Eobert Owen saw the social temple tum- 
 bling about his head, with the characteristic blindness of 
 the enthusiast who has failed to achieve his golden dream, 
 he cast about for every reason save the right one to explain 
 the downfall of his ideal social order. Though the real 
 cause of the defeat of his plans at Xew Harmony lay in 
 the fact that he had trusted too largely to that imperfect 
 human nature which if perfect would make social reform 
 unnecessary and even our present social system ideal, Owen 
 did not hesitate to charge the defeat of his communistic 
 schemes to Maclure's educational experiment. 
 
 In his farewell address to the people of New Harmony 
 made in 1827, just before the utter collapse of The New 
 Moral World, Owen said : " If the schools had been in 
 operation upon the very superior plan upon which I had 
 been led to expect they would be, so as to convince parents 
 by ocular demonstration of the benefits which their chil- 
 dren would immediately derive from the system, it would 
 have been, I think, practicable, even with such materials, 
 with the patience and perseverance which would have been 
 applied to the subject, to have succeeded in amalgamating 
 the whole into a community. 
 
 " You also know that the chief difiiculty at this time 
 arose from the differences of opinion among the professors 
 and teachers brought here by Mr. Maclure, relative to the 
 education of the children, and to the consequent delay in 
 putting any of their system into operation. 
 
 " Having been led to entertain very high expectations of 
 
 252
 
 TEE EDUCATIONAL EXPERIMENT 
 
 the abilities of these individuals, I looked to them to es- 
 tablish superior arrangements for the instruction of all 
 ages, and I was induced to suppose that the population 
 would be compensated by the unequaled excellence of the 
 system when put into operation ; and in consequence of the 
 unlimited confidence which I placed in these individuals 
 to execute this most important part of my plan, you all 
 know how much I have been disappointed. Instead of 
 forming one well-digested arrangement, in which all the 
 children of the community should have the benefit of 
 the superior qualifications possessed by each professor 
 and instructor, each principal teacher undertook the en- 
 tire instruction of a certain number of pupils, by which 
 arrangement they were prevented from associating with 
 other pupils. 
 
 " By this error in the practise, the object which I had 
 most at heart could not be attained; the children were 
 educated in different habits, dispositions, and feelings, 
 when it was my most earnest desire that all the chil- 
 dren should be educated in similar habits, dispositions, 
 and feelings, and should be brought up truly as mem- 
 bers of one large family, without a single discordant 
 feeling. 
 
 " It is true that each of the professors and principal 
 teachers possessed considerable abilities, and acquirements 
 in particular branches of education, but the union of the 
 best qualities and qualifications of several of even the best 
 modern teachers is required to form the character of the 
 rising generation as it ought to be formed, and enable 
 children when they attain maturity to become sufficiently 
 rational and intelligent to make good, useful members of 
 the social svstem.'' 
 
 Though the Educational Society perished in the ruins 
 of the social order and Robert Owen retired broken in for- 
 tune from the Waterloo of his efforts as a social architect, 
 Maclure remained in New Harmony and continued his 
 
 253
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 educational experiments. Almost pathetic is the story of 
 his after efforts as an educational architect. In 1827 he 
 published an announcement of " Maclure^s Seminary/' 
 stating : " Young men and women are received without 
 any expense to them, either for teaching, or food, lodging 
 and clothing. Hours, from five in the morning until eight 
 in the evening, divided as follows: The scholars rise at 
 five ; at half past five each goes to his occupation ; at seven 
 the bell rings for breakfast ; at eight they return to work ; 
 at eleven their lessons begin, continuing until half past 
 two, including half an hour for luncheon; then they re- 
 turn to their occupation until five, when a bell calls them 
 to dinner. Afterward until half past six they exercise 
 themselves in various ways ; then the evening lessons begin, 
 and last until eight. The basis of the institution is that 
 the scholars repay their expenses from the proceeds of their 
 seven hours' labor, but to effect this will require several 
 years more." 
 
 On May 27, 1827, Mr. Maclure announced "The 
 Orphans' Manual Training-School." The Manual Train- 
 ing- School had its laboratory in a separate building, 
 equipped " with such requisites as are necessary for an 
 experimental course of lectures in chemistry. In another 
 building is a small room lately fitted up for containing the 
 philosophic apparatus, for which it is well adapted. The 
 other room of this building has been used for some time as 
 the drawing-school, but it is to be converted into a museum, 
 in which all the natural productions of Harmony and the 
 surrounding country will be accumulated, as well as the 
 collection made by Mr. Maclure during his travels through 
 Europe and America." Mr. Maclure also founded what he 
 called " The School of Industry," which had for its prin- 
 cipal motto, " Utility shall be the scale on which we shall 
 endeavor to measure the value of everything." Under the 
 auspices of this organization Mr. Maclure established, on 
 January 16, 1828, the New Harmony Disseminator, " con- 
 
 254
 
 TEE EDUCATIONAL EXPERIMENT 
 
 taining hints to the youth of the United States; edited, 
 printed, and published by the pupils of the School of In- 
 dustry." 
 
 When one by one his educational experiments in the 
 training of children, in each of which he placed such high 
 hopes, came to naught, William Maclure, still eager to do 
 something for the cause of education and for the produc- 
 tive classes, " who earn their living in the sweat of their 
 brows," directed his philanthropy toward the formation of 
 an educational society for adults which he dubbed " The 
 Society for Manual Instruction." Announcing its forma- 
 tion, the Disseminator, in 1828, explains that the new so- 
 ciety is really a mechanics' institution ; that it differs only 
 in name from the mechanics' institutes of the United 
 States and Europe, its objects and means being the same as 
 these ; and that its objects are to " communicate a general 
 knowledge of the arts and sciences to those persons who 
 have hitherto been excluded from a scientific or general 
 education by the erroneous and narrow-minded policy of 
 colleges and public schools, which have invariably endeav- 
 ored to confine learning to the rich few, so that they might 
 tyrannize over the uneducated many." 
 
 In 1828 Maclure went to Mexico to recuperate his fail- 
 ing health, leaving his financial and educational interests 
 under the management of Thomas Say. The state of his 
 health finally compelled him to take up his permanent resi- 
 dence there. Within a few years after his departure, the 
 last School of Industry which he established closed its 
 doors because of the withdrawal of the financial support of 
 its founder. The Society for Mutual Instruction led a 
 more or less insignificant and halting existence for several 
 years and then " died for want of breath." Strange to say, 
 after his departure from New Harmony Maclure seems to 
 have lost all his former abundant interest and faith in his 
 educational ventures for children. Not even in his corre- 
 spondence with Thomas Say and Madame Fretageot does 
 
 255
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 he allude to his former efforts in behalf of Pestalozzianism 
 and self-supporting schools. 
 
 Yet within a year before his death in a strange land, we 
 find Maclure still interested in the productive classes at 
 New Harmony, still eager to do something for the educa- 
 tion of the children of a larger growth. Through Mr. 
 Achilles E. Fretageot, son of Madame Fretageot, he in- 
 augurated in 1837 a correspondence with the workingmen 
 of New Harmony which resulted in the establishment of a 
 Working Men^s Institute and Library, which rose like 
 Phenix of old out of the dormant ashes of the Society for 
 Mutual Instruction. The gifts which he had contemplated 
 for this Working Men^s Institute had not been bestowed at 
 the time of his death. They were executed in part by 
 the brother and sister, whom he named as the executors 
 of his will. 
 
 This Working Men's Institute, as will be described in a 
 subsequent chapter upon the Maclure Libraries, is in ex- 
 istence to-day, operates the New Harmony Library, was the 
 first of the large group of institutes and libraries which 
 Maclure established through the terms of his will, and is 
 the sole remaining evidence of the educational efforts of 
 the first American geologist. All the other educational 
 ventures perished as perished the social order, leaving no 
 record of their existence save that which they have writ- 
 ten by their influence upon the educational methods and 
 svstems of the countrv. 
 
 What were the educational principles and aims of the 
 New Harmony schools ? 
 
 ( 1 ) First of all, as has been stated repeatedly, the Pes- 
 talozzian system of instruction was followed even more en- 
 thusiastically than at New Lanark. Owen advocated this 
 system and Maclure was its devoted apostle. The pro- 
 spectus for the schools written by Maclure was simply an 
 exposition of the Pestalozzian method of teaching the vari- 
 ous branches of study treated in the prospectus. The 
 
 256
 
 THE EDUCATIONAL EXPERIMENT 
 
 eleven postulates of the so-called Pestalozzian creed as 
 given by Morf constituted the chart and compass of the 
 educational experiments on the Wabash. 
 
 Morf^s twelfth postulate, advocating religious training, 
 was rejected at New Harmony, as it had been at New 
 Lanark. Maclure was a pronounced atheist and opposed 
 even more bitterly than Owen the Christian religion, which 
 he denounced as an institution by the aid of which the 
 non-productive oppressed and held in bondage the pro- 
 ductive classes. The peculiar religious opinions of Owen 
 and Maclure attracted to their venture, along with the idle 
 and the vicious and the adventurous, men vehemently ad- 
 Tocating every shade and phase of religious belief and un- 
 belief. In such an atmosphere religious training was 
 neither popular nor possible. From the columns of the 
 New Harmony Gazette it is apparent that the two features 
 or phases of the Pestalozzian system most emphasized 
 were: 
 
 (a) The object method of teaching. 
 
 " Children in course of instruction are not perplexed 
 with words of the meaning of which they have no concep- 
 tion." Models or pictures of the objects to be explained 
 are employed where the object itself can not be immediately 
 presented to the senses of the child. 
 (h) The concrete in preference to the abstract. 
 
 " The whole of the time at school is devoted to demon- 
 strable fact, leaving all abstract studies until judgment is 
 matured by a correct knowledge of them and an extensive 
 acquaintance with the things around them." 
 
 (2) The children, in the language of the New Har- 
 mony Gazette, "were taught to value virtue for its own 
 sake, without the hope of artificial reward or fear of arti- 
 ficial punishment." The abolishment of all reward and 
 punishment save that arising out of the very nature of the 
 act of the child was the cardinal principle of the New Lan- 
 18 257
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 ark schools and the feature of the work there in which 
 Eobert Owen took the greatest interest. When Eobert 
 Dale Owen, while teaching in the community schools, con- 
 quered Ben in the manner which he describes on a previous 
 page of this chapter, without the use of the ferule, he was 
 but carrying out the chief educational principle which his 
 distinguished father espoused. 
 
 Maclure, strongly approving of the system of school 
 government exploited by the Owens, incorporated it into 
 the educational system of the community. He was es- 
 pecially vehement in his opposition to the methods of 
 punishment prevailing in contemporary schools. In the 
 New Harmony Gazette of March 21, 1826, after stating 
 his objections to those methods of punishment which pro- 
 duce fear, he continues : " Fear is a sensation so humili- 
 ating, irksome, and disagreeable to all the feelings of our 
 species (as well probably as to those of all other animals), 
 that the best disciplined temper can not prevent attaching 
 hatred to the cause of it. But of all the manifold and de- 
 structive effects that fear has on the human family none 
 is so injurious to the well-being of society and so totally 
 subversive of the true interest of mankind as the fear of 
 the child for the teacher, for, in addition to the innumer- 
 able bad consequences inseparable from fear in any stage 
 of life, it closes the mind against receiving instruction 
 from the only source that is accessible to children, their 
 entire attention being occupied in watching the symptoms 
 of anger in their teacher in order that they may be pre- 
 pared to ward off the blow or contrive some means of 
 escaping punishment.'^ 
 
 It is well to remember here that twenty-five years be- 
 fore " Nicholas Nickleby " exposed the brutality of the 
 English boarding-schools and in the very days when the 
 birch rod lay like the sword of Damocles across the desk of 
 every New England schoolmaster, a school system whose 
 only means of government was the love between teacher and 
 
 258
 
 THE EDUCATIONAL EXPERIMENT 
 
 pupils, which, permeating every school, would render cor- 
 poral punishment obsolete, flourished in a Western wil- 
 derness. 
 
 (3) More of the aims and hopes of the educational ex- 
 periments at New Harmony are to be gathered from the 
 educational views of the proprietors and teachers than 
 from what little the schools accomplished or failed to ac- 
 complish during their brief career. Some of these will 
 be briefly set forth in the paragraphs which follow. 
 
 THE RIGHT EDUCATION OF CHILDREN 
 
 The ideal training which the educational system of 
 the social scheme hoped ultimately to bestow is described 
 in an article, evidently written by one of the Owens (either 
 Eobert or Eobert Dale, probably the latter), published in 
 the ]^ew Harmony Gazette, May 16, 1827, from which the 
 following is taken: 
 
 ''' The right education of children — not that education 
 which teaches the child but a few, to him, unmeaning words 
 and phrases, gives him, perhaps, a knowledge of some of 
 the sciences, or even instructs him to hold converse with 
 men of other days in their own languages, and makes hira. 
 familiar with the history of ancient nations and people — 
 yet too often leaves him morose, sullen, bigoted, and deceit- 
 ful or cruel, passionate, and overbearing; a prey to envy, 
 ambition, pride, vanity, and conceit; a being incapable of 
 enjoying life himself and equally a source of misery to 
 others — but that education which watches over the child 
 from its most tender infancy, with a care that knows no 
 intermission; that superintends his instruction and neg- 
 lects him not in his amusements; that assists him in his 
 difficulties and prevents their recurrence ; that seeks to give 
 him such habits, feelings, and desires alone as experience 
 may prove to be a source of happiness ; that leaves him not 
 
 259
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 on his entrance into the world, but ever endeavors to sur- 
 round him through life with circumstances in unison with 
 his previous habits and inclinations and thus to make him 
 an intelligent companion, a pleasing associate, and a happy 
 being/' 
 
 Value of interest and the means ly which it may he se- 
 cured. — Some of the educational ideas which Maclure sets 
 forth in the three volumes of his Opinions are ridicu- 
 lous from the standpoint of the intelligent teacher and lay- 
 man of to-day. Some of them, however, even the peda- 
 gogue of the twentieth century would do well to remember. 
 After making the query, whose interest has been consulted 
 in all our old-school operations, Maclure continues : " At- 
 tention is the only medium through which instruction 
 passes into the mind; without it nothing makes a lasting 
 impression on any of the mental faculties. Can undivided 
 attention be secured by fear or coercion ? This is a query 
 necessary to be solved, as a principle upon which education 
 must be bottomed. Does not fear brutalize and paralyze 
 all the faculties of the mind ? Let any one at a mature age 
 reflect on his feelings when under the impression of fear 
 and he will find that neither his memory, judgment, nor 
 any other of his mental faculties were sound. Fear per- 
 haps is the great predisposing cause of many both moral 
 and physical diseases. 
 
 "If fear has so debilitating an influence upon the 
 physical and moral qualities of men hardened and strength- 
 ened by practise and experience, how much more must its 
 baleful influence pervert and deteriorate the young and 
 tender minds of children. In a state of fear the attention 
 is distracted, and can not act in unison with the subject 
 taught, but is secured by good-will, arising out of the 
 pleasure and amusement children take in exercises that 
 interest them. If so, and my experience does not permit 
 me to doubt it, the essential business and duty of a teacher 
 is to find out the inclination of his pupils, and teach them 
 
 260
 
 THE EDUCATIONAL EXPERIMENT 
 
 any and all the useful lessons he may find they study with 
 pleasure." — Maclure's Opinions, vol. i, page ^Q. 
 
 Reasons why the useful arts should be introduced into 
 the schools. — As has been before stated, Maclure was a 
 thorough-going believer in industrial education. After 
 condemning the pleasures which men derive from sports 
 involving the practise of "tormenting cruelties" (such as 
 fishing, shooting, horse-racing, and bull-baiting), he con- 
 tinues : " If pleasurable ideas can by habit and practise be 
 united with such mortifying exhibitions of human deprav- 
 ity, where every result is annihilated the moment the action 
 is finished, how much more easy would it be for teachers 
 to imprint on the tender minds of children the union of 
 pleasurable ideas with the useful occupation of some me- 
 chanical art. This would furnish the necessary muscular 
 exercises so conducive to health, while, at the same time, 
 the gratification would be prolonged by the permanent 
 benefit obtained by the utility of what is produced, and 
 securing pecuniary independence in being capable of prac- 
 tising a productive trade in case of necessity. 
 
 " The being taught to make shoes or coats does not 
 force the possessor of such knowledge to be a shoemaker or 
 tailor, any more than learning mensuration or navigation 
 obliges one to become a surveyor or sailor. They are all 
 acquirements good to "have in case of necessity, and in no 
 state of society is that necessity more likely to occur than 
 in our system founded on liberty and equality, where the 
 only bar to the most complete equalization of the whole 
 population is the ignorance of the great producing classes, 
 which, however, is vanishing rapidly before the increasing 
 means of obtaining useful knowledge; and children ought 
 to be trained and educated to suit the probable situation 
 which the circumstances of the next age may place them 
 in. Even at present, all our farmers and manufacturers, 
 nine-tenths of our population, would be very much bene- 
 fited by possessing one or two of the mechanic arts, suit- 
 
 261
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 able to their occupations." — Maclure's Opinions, vol. ii, 
 page 147. 
 
 The value of natural science as a study. — After discuss- 
 ing the obligation of every parent to give his children an 
 education, Maclure recommends that the pursuit of some 
 natural science be included in the training given, in these 
 words : " While parents are giving their children the use- 
 ful knowledge to carry them respectably through life, they 
 ought not, on any account, to neglect giving them an occu- 
 pation or an amusement to fill up their spare time, the 
 want of which is the cause of most of the drinking and 
 debauchery of youth. The best, most useful, and cheapest 
 pastime is the natural sciences, which can be practised in 
 all countries and climates at the least expense of either 
 money or morals; the pursuits of which are productive of 
 health, liberality, and the utmost extension of toleration, 
 as there is room enough for all, without jostling or in- 
 fringing on each other^s rights or property; they banish 
 envy and promote contentment, raising their votaries above 
 the silly squabbles of disappointed ambition and teaching 
 them an accurate mode of examining the properties of sub- 
 stances they are interested in knowing." — Maclure's Opin- 
 ions, vol. iii, page 224. 
 
 '^ The senses and the imagination ought to he trained." — 
 Maclure believed this with all the radicalism of his strenu- 
 ous nature. His scientific pursuits had made him thor- 
 oughly utilitarian. In his eager search for the accurate 
 knowledge which only the senses can yield, he had lost 
 sight forever of the realm of the spirit, where faith reigns 
 and imagination dwells a handmaiden. Hear the argu- 
 ment by which he exalts the senses and eliminates imag- 
 ination from the curriculum ! 
 
 " Nature has given us our senses, through which we re- 
 ceive all our ideas. ISTor can the ingenuity of men invent 
 the figure or form of anything that has not come to them 
 "either entire or by piecemeal through the medium of their 
 
 262 
 
 '■fi 
 
 I
 
 TEE EDUCATIONAL EXPERIMENT 
 
 senses. . . . Our senses being the only medium 
 through which we can receive our knowledge of matter or 
 motion, the only channel by which we can receive informa- 
 tion of the qualities or properties of animated things, it 
 must follow of course that teaching the correct and rapid 
 use of all our senses and avoiding all abuse and deceptions 
 of them ought to be the principal object of education. 
 
 " The delusion of the imagination, being one of the 
 greatest abuses of our sentient faculties, ought to be left at 
 a great distance from all places of instruction. . . . 
 Imagination has been so beaten up, mixed, and compounded 
 with the wisdom of our senses, that it is difficult to draw 
 the line of separation between them ; but every vision of the 
 mind, which neither directly nor indirectly has come to 
 us through our senses, may be considered to be the child 
 of the imagination, which sometimes produces pleasure, 
 like an opiate, to end in debility or disappointment; but 
 most frequently it exaggerates imaginary evils, and, per- 
 haps, nine-tenths of the anxiety, misery, and wretchedness 
 of humanity are the fruits of imagination. It is probably 
 not the natural state of man, but the artificial state, engen- 
 dered by the fallacies of education, and kept up by the 
 rulers of the church and state." 
 
 Proper subjects to teach in the school of a free people. — 
 In his Opinions, vol. i, page 48, Maclure declares that edu- 
 cation, like mankind, may be divided into two species, the 
 productive and non-productive, the useful and the orna- 
 mental, the necessary and the amusing. The productive, 
 useful, and necessary subjects in teaching are those which 
 we acquire through the senses, such as drawing, chemistry, 
 natural history, mineralogy, geology, botany, zoology, arith- 
 metic, mechanics, natural philosophy, geography, and 
 astronomy. The non-productive and ornamental subjects 
 are those which train the imagination, such as literature, 
 mythology, etc. " It is the productive, useful, and neces- 
 sary that constitute the comfort and happiness of the 
 
 263
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 millions, and ought alone to occupy the care and attention 
 of all representative governments, elected by the majority 
 of the millions, who produce all that is consumed under 
 the domination either of public or private revenue. The 
 millions have a right to what they produce ; and all appro- 
 priations out of the public treasury, for teaching the non- 
 productive knowledge which is merely ornamental or 
 amusing to the possessor, may perhaps be considered as a 
 deviation from right and justice, in expending the fruit of 
 the labor and toil of the productive classes, to teach the 
 children of the idle and non-productive how to consume 
 their own time and the public property in learning to 
 amuse themselves and kill time agreeably." — Maclure's 
 Opinions, vol. i, page 48. 
 
 FREE, EQUAL, AND UNIVERSAL EDUCATION 
 
 The persistency with which both Owen and Maclure 
 throughout their stormy careers advocated the establish- 
 ment of a system of State schools, supported by the public 
 purse, wherein without cost every child might receive an 
 education equal to that of his fellows, constitutes their 
 greatest claim on public gratitude. When the social ex- 
 periment opened its doors invitingly to the discontented 
 of the Eepublic, there were no public schools, in the 
 sense in which we use the term to-day, outside of New 
 England. " Public schools " in the Middle and Southern 
 States were either " free schools " or " pauper schools.'' It 
 was not until 1871 that some sections of the Eastern 
 States ceased to charge a fee for the fuel consumed by the 
 pupil. In our own time the public-school idea in some 
 portions of the South is compassed by the care which it is 
 thought the State should take of the dependent and un- 
 fortunate classes. It required the constitution of 1852 to 
 establish in Indiana the principle that the property of the 
 State should educate the children of the State and that all 
 
 264
 
 THE EDUCATIONAL EXPERIMENT 
 
 the common schools should be open to pupils without 
 charge. Even the township schools of New England, 
 though bestowing an education that was " free and equal/' 
 were not " universal," for, basing their moral and religious 
 training upon the narrow creed of the dominant sect, they 
 often alienated the support and the patronage of the fol- 
 lowers of other faiths. 
 
 Yet in 1825, nine years before the first free school sup- 
 ported by taxation on Indiana soil opened its doors, and at 
 least half a century in advance of the prevailing thought of 
 the era, Kobert Owen and William Maclure established upon 
 the very frontier of civilization an educational system for 
 all where instruction could be obtained "without money 
 and without price." Though the non-residents were 
 charged tuition, to the children of the community the 
 schools were indeed and in truth free, equal, and universal ; 
 and it was hoped they would become self-supporting, for 
 it was expected that their industrial training would ul- 
 timately relieve The New Moral World of the expense of 
 maintaining the educational system. Just as Owen held 
 up before the eyes of the nations a new social order, which, 
 convinced of its benefits, they were expected to adopt in 
 their respective civilizations, so Maclure hoped through the 
 educational experiments within that social order to guide 
 the human race toward the blessings of schools " free as the 
 living waters." 
 
 The public utterances and writings of both men are 
 replete with the sturdy assertion of the idea that schools 
 ought to be " of the people, for the people, by the people." 
 After maintaining that public schools furnish the most 
 effective means of shaping character, Robert Owen declares 
 that "the national plan for the formation of character 
 should include all the modern improvements of education 
 without regard to the system of any one individual and 
 should not exclude the child of one subject in the empire." 
 Equally vehement is Maclure, who says : " One of the 
 
 265
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 most sacred duties of a free people, the first time they 
 exercise the right of universal suffrage, is to elect into 
 power none but such as will enact such laws as will se- 
 cure to all free, equal, universal, and general instruction, 
 at the expense of the public, which is the people's purse. 
 Once secure an equality of knowledge by placing the whole 
 population by free schools on the same footing, the equal- 
 ity of the two other essentials of freedom, property and 
 power, must follow as certainly as light and heat follow 
 the rays of the sun." 
 
 The sons of Robert Owen caught the spirit of free 
 schools from their father. In an address delivered at 
 I^ew Harmony in 1840 Eichard Owen said : " It should 
 be our strenuous endeavor to give an education free and 
 universal to the son of the poorest farmer as to the son 
 of the chief magistrate. It may require much time and 
 patience to attain the desirable result, but it should never 
 be lost sight of. Let our first patriotic object at all times 
 be — equal and universal education." 
 
 Though a subsequent chapter presents the invaluable 
 services which Eobert Dale Owen rendered to the cause of 
 free schools in the formative days of the Indiana educa- 
 tional svstem, we can not forbear to mention here his atti- 
 tude on the question of equal and universal education. 
 Years after the educational experiments went down in the 
 ruins of the social order, Eobert Dale Owen still breathed 
 their spirit, when, through the editorial columns of the 
 Free Enquirer, he declared : " We desire to see our public 
 schools so endowed and provided that they shall be equally 
 desirable for all classes of society. To effect this the means 
 of instruction which are offered to the poor should be the 
 very best which can be provided. This is no mere fanciful 
 theory. I object, therefore, to all exclusive establishments 
 for education in a republic ; and exclusive every school or 
 university is which denies admittance to the son of the 
 poor on account of his father's poverty. I desire to see the 
 
 266
 
 RICHARD OWEN.
 
 THE EDUCATIONAL EXPERIMENT 
 
 living waters of knowledge bought without money and 
 without price; for, so should they be in a commonwealth 
 like this/^ 
 
 Startling to the age in which they were proclaimed as 
 were the declarations of the founders of New Harmony 
 concerning free public schools, they were no more so than 
 the innovations which Maclure read into them, and by 
 which he proposed to secure and perpetuate them. To a 
 people vigorously debating the very legality of " pauper 
 schools," he proposed and sought, through the educational 
 experiments at The New Moral World, to demonstrate the 
 wisdom and the feasibility of a Spartan system of educa- 
 tion. 
 
 SPARTAN SYSTEM OF EDUCATION 
 
 Like Pestalozzi, Maclure believed that in education lay 
 the only hope of uplift for the working classes, whose cause 
 he always championed. That this education might be open 
 to them, he contended for free, equal, and universal 
 schools. That such schools when established might reach 
 the productive classes and serve them most efficiently, he 
 proposed that in them all the children of the State, whether 
 of low or high degree, " should be fed, clothed, and in- 
 structed at the expense of the people's purse, formerly 
 called the public treasury." Not since the days of ancient 
 Sparta had a system of instruction been advocated which 
 was predicated upon the surrender of children of tender 
 years to the absolute care and control of the State. Under 
 the Spartan regime, home control did not cease and that 
 of the government begin until the child had attained the 
 age of seven. In Maclure's system, the infant at the age 
 of two years must be transferred from parental to State 
 care. The aim of the system of instruction in Sparta was 
 bodily strength and agility. Maclure sought for the chil- 
 dren of his care utility and mechanical skill. The original 
 Spartan system of instruction was designed to prepare the 
 
 267
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 male youth for the pursuit of war. Maclure hoped through 
 its revival to prepare both the male and female descendants 
 of the productive classes for industry and for an " inde- 
 pendence of the oppression which their ancestors had suf- 
 fered from the worthless classes of society." 
 
 Maclure gave numerous reasons for " pressing a revival 
 of the ancient Spartan school organization upon the people 
 of North America." 
 
 (1) The children would be divorced during their 
 formative years from the handicap of ignorant and im- 
 moral homes. 
 
 (2) The productive classes, relieved of the burden of 
 maintaining the children, would be better able to work out 
 their own redemption. 
 
 (3) The forcible removal, if necessary, of children to 
 the State schools would defeat the indifference of parents 
 toward education. 
 
 (4) By making the surroundings as well as the instruc- 
 tion of children the same, a greater equality of opportunity 
 of all social classes would be secured. 
 
 (5) By the grouping of the children in large numbers, 
 they could be instructed and maintained for less than the 
 cost under the present arrangement either to the parents of 
 supporting them or to the State of educating them. 
 
 (6) Only by a system wherein the State commands the 
 entire time of a child can he be properly taught a useful 
 trade that will insure his industrial independence as a 
 citizen. 
 
 (7) Through the useful trades and occupations taught 
 the pupils, " free, equal, and universal schools " could be 
 made self-supporting, thus " relieving the productive 
 classes of the burden of maintaining them." 
 
 (8) Best of all, the complete surrender of all children 
 to the care of the republic would settle, once and forever, 
 in the affirmative the question of State responsibility for 
 the education of its wards. 
 
 268
 
 TEE EDUCATIONAL EXPERIMENT 
 
 Eobert Owen accepted Maclure's innovation because it 
 afforded an opportunity to transplant the offspring of 
 rude, debased, often vicious homes into the refining at- 
 mosphere of the system of instruction which he hoped to 
 see established at New Harmony. When he drew up the 
 plans of organization for The New Moral World, he pro- 
 vided therein for the absolute surrender of all its children, 
 at the age prescribed by his partner, to the educational 
 system. During the brief life of the new social order no 
 feature of its educational work was so rigidly enforced as 
 that, which, for want of a better name, we may term Ma- 
 clure^s New Spartan System. Eobert Dale Owen became 
 a firm convert to the idea, for many years later he declared 
 through the editorial columns of the Free Enquirer, " I 
 hold it befitting a republic that the State should furnish 
 throughout the land, at public expense. State institutions 
 where every young citizen should be educated and main- 
 tained from youth to manhood." 
 
 Self -supporting Schools 
 
 While the educational experiments at New Harmony 
 were in progress, the people between the Connecticut and 
 the Wabash were opposed to the maintenance by public 
 taxation of free schools wherein the pupils received in- 
 struction only. Maclure's innovation added maintenance 
 to the burden of instruction which the populace had al- 
 ready refused to bear. In order to secure the coveted 
 free training to w*hich the majority had not yet granted 
 support, and fearful lest the burden of taxation, even 
 if shouldered, might fall too heavily upon his favorite 
 " producing classes," Maclure revived Pestalozzi^s scheme 
 for self-supporting schools, and during the educational 
 experiments in community days made repeated efforts 
 to demonstrate their feasibility. Though his industrial 
 schools fell as far short of self-support as did the less 
 
 269
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 ambitious effort of the Swiss schoolmaster at Neuhof, yet 
 Maclure, nothing daunted, still stoutly contended that the 
 foremost reason for the introduction of the useful arts into 
 the schools was " the great economy of enabling children 
 to feed, clothe, and educate themselves by their own exer- 
 tions; thus rendering them independent of the labor of 
 others and establishing an equality founded on each ad- 
 ministering to his own wants from the most early age." 
 
 Consolidation or Centralizing of Schools 
 
 Modern advocates of the consolidating or centralizing 
 of rural schools will be interested in knowing that three- 
 quarters of a century ago William Maclure recommended 
 for the schools patterned after the ISTew Harmony experi- 
 ment, which he confidently expected to be established 
 throughout the land, the same procedure. 
 
 At a period when educational affairs in the country 
 west of the Appalachians were in a chaotic state, Maclure 
 strenuously and repeatedly urged that the newly formed 
 States adopt a civil township of the New England type as 
 the local unit for the administration and support of the 
 schools. 
 
 When these townships had been so created by process of 
 law, Maclure hoped to see erected, at the center of each, 
 one of his " Spartan systems of self-supporting free public 
 schools.'^ With extreme care he locates and describes the 
 schoolhouse. " The locality must be chosen in a healthful 
 situation, removed from swamps or stagnant water, on or 
 near canals, great roads, or navigable rivers, surrounded at 
 least by two acres of land for every child, as a productive 
 farm from which they might obtain wherewith to feed 
 them." " Buildings must be erected expressly for the pur- 
 poses of the school." " The arrangement and commodious 
 position of the workshops, houses, courtyards, gardens, 
 etc., are necessary to successful execution of the plan." 
 
 270
 
 TEE EDUCATIONAL EXPERIMENT 
 
 . . " Materials used in construction ought to be solid 
 and durable." " Wood to be avoided because of perishable 
 quality and liability to harbor noxious insects." 
 
 " Pise, a mixture of gravel, sand, and clay, rammed 
 solidly between a shifting frame, might perhaps fulfil 
 all the requisites of durability, health, and economy for 
 buildings." ..." With a coat of whitewash it has 
 the solid and handsome appearance of a stone building 
 and might be roofed with tiles or slates that would make 
 it fireproof." " It might be heated by hot air or steam 
 by the latest improvements in the construction of the 
 kitchens." . . . " A parallelogram or square may be 
 thought the best form for centralizing all the inhabitants, 
 that the least time might be lost in changing place. A 
 courtj^ard would occupy the center and all around the 
 buildings would be the gardens, both for the convenience 
 of culture and collecting the fruits." 
 
 With the characteristic confidence of the reformer, 
 Owen^s partner describes the benefits to be derived from 
 such a plan of centralization : 
 
 ( 1 ) " In a township six miles square, the school situ- 
 ated at its center would be only three miles from its distant 
 parts, bringing the scholastic operation within the reach of 
 the inspection of all the inhabitants who are to benefit by 
 the good management or suffer by the bad. 
 
 (2) "All being fed and clothed by the establishment, 
 the vicinity of parents is not necessary and the schools may 
 collect the children of a large district to the number of 
 some hundreds, and each would serve in place of twenty or 
 thirty small district schools, when the children eat and 
 sleep at home. 
 
 (3) " An immense saving would be effected in time in 
 a country so thinly peopled as the United States, where the 
 greatest part of the children's time is wasted in going and 
 coming at least once a day to a school necessarily at a 
 considerable distance. 
 
 271
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 (4) " The grouping of the children as to age, capa- 
 bility, or aptitude would be facilitated, which is utterly im- 
 possible in the present method of small schools. 
 
 (5) " Such a centralized system of schools would ren- 
 der possible the employment of more and better teachers, 
 the teaching of a wider range of subjects, and the purchase 
 of models, prints, and instruments incalculably superior to 
 anything that the parish schools can possibly afford to 
 buy. 
 
 (6) " Best of all under such a system, free, equal, and 
 universal schools could be operated successfully at a mini- 
 mum of expense, if not entirely without expense to the 
 productive classes/' 
 
 NEEF's plan of EDUCATION" 
 
 No discussion of the methods of instruction or the prin- 
 ciples of education which dominated the experiments at 
 New Harmony would be complete which failed to set forth 
 at least some of the views of Joseph Neef . Preceding pages 
 of this book have sketched briefly the career of the man 
 who was principal of both the early schools founded for 
 the purpose of perpetuating the Pestalozzian system of in- 
 struction in this country. No man since the great Swiss 
 schoolmaster has possessed either a greater devotion to his 
 principles or a more unselfish allegiance to the cause of 
 education. 
 
 In the introduction to his book, published seventeen 
 years before the birth of Robert Owen's Utopia, and styled 
 a Sketch of a Plan of Education Suited to the Offspring 
 of a Free People, wherein the author exploits at length 
 his peculiar educational principles and methods, Neef 
 humbly acknowledges that the training of children and the 
 rearing of vegetables are the only occupations for which 
 he feels any aptitude. " I have, therefore, seriously in- 
 quired in which of these two spheres of activity I should 
 
 272
 
 TEE EDUCATIONAL EXPERIMENT 
 
 produce the greatest advantage to the society of which I 
 am a member, whether by clearing and tilling some se- 
 cluded spot of land, or by cultivating the pretty bewildered 
 field of education. After mature examination, I became 
 fully convinced that in the latter capacity my faculties will 
 be more likely to be beneficial to my fellow citizens. 
 . Hear it, ye men of the world ! To become an 
 obscure, useful, country schoolmaster is the highest pitch 
 of my worldty ambition ! '' 
 
 The meaning of education. While Socrates, Plato, and 
 many of the profound thinkers of the Christian era had 
 uttered related truths, it remained for Pestalozzi to define 
 education, as he does many times in different phraseology, 
 to be "the natural progressive and symmetrical develop- 
 ment of all the powers and faculties of the human being." 
 When Joseph jSTeef, transplanted to the Western conti- 
 nent by William Maclure, became the first great American 
 apostle of Pestalozzianism, he brought with him, as the 
 cardinal tenet of his creed, the same conception of the 
 meaning and purpose of education which the author of his 
 faith had proclaimed. In an age in which the cramming 
 system sat enthroned in the boasted New England schools 
 and threatened a triumphal march westward, i^eef an- 
 nounced to the people of the United States through his 
 Sketch that according to his humble opinion " education 
 is nothing else than the gradual unfolding of the faculties 
 and powers which Providence chooses to bestow on the 
 noblest work of this sublunary creation, man. This defini- 
 tion may appear new, but I trust that its newness will not 
 prevent its being as solid and true as just and plain. Cer- 
 tainly it requires no superior degree of acuteness to dis- 
 cover that Xature gives every human being physical, intel- 
 lectual, and moral capacity. The new-born infant contains 
 the ger mines of those faculties as the acorn comprehends 
 the future majestic oak. Teach and accustom the young 
 mind to make a just use of these faculties and your task 
 
 19 273
 
 THE NE^V HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 as an educator is done. This unfolding of these powers is 
 the real object of education, or, rather, education itself. 
 Our arts and sciences, by the means of which that display 
 is effected, are but accessory things." 
 
 While the definition of the meaning and purpose of 
 education given by Pestalozzi and Neef was too broad for 
 the age to which it was uttered, it has become too narrow 
 for our own. Education has always been a subject having 
 many phases. Successive reformers in its fields have re- 
 defined it in terms of the phase which each wished to 
 emphasize; in terms of the reform which each sought to 
 achieve. The scholars of the Eenaissance, aglow with en- 
 thusiasm for the glory that was Athens and the power 
 that was Eome, declared learning and culture to be the 
 sole aim of instruction and made education and knowledge 
 synonymous. This view emphasizes the content of the 
 course of study. Pestalozzi and Neef, attacking the system 
 of instruction in the schools of the Humanists, maintained 
 education "to be not knowledge, but the unfolding of 
 childish power." This view emphasizes education as a 
 process. It addresses itself to the method of instruction 
 rather than to the content of the curriculum. By it one 
 may determine better how to teach than what to teach out 
 of the wealth of possible subjects that confront the twen- 
 tieth-century pedagogue. These definitions of the meaning 
 of education, asserted by the Humanists and by Pestalozzi, 
 are, within certain limits at least, phases of the truth. Yet, 
 both fall short of the lofty purpose which the twentieth 
 century is breathing into the educational process. 
 
 All previous ages, in attempting to state the purpose of 
 the schools, have focused their attention upon the child as 
 an individual. The definition of education which they 
 framed emphasized the ego and read into the educational 
 process only an individual purpose. To the worshipers of 
 the New Birth the summum honum of instruction was to 
 bestow learning upon the child; to Pestalozzi and Neef it 
 
 274
 
 TEE EDUCATIONAL EXPERIMENT 
 
 was to unfold the powers and faculties of the child^ 
 Though hoth realized to some extent that the welfare of the 
 social order was dependent upon the training of its future 
 citizens, both made the interests of the child the center 
 and circumference of all educational effort. There is a 
 large element of truth in this view. All instruction must 
 be individualized, since it must be comprehended and 
 absorbed, not in social groups but personally and indi- 
 vidually. Just, and only, in the proportion that the chil- 
 dren of the Eepublic are made individually better and wiser 
 will the society which they are to constitute become better 
 and wiser. 
 
 These latter days have become more altruistic in stating 
 the mission of the schools. The educational thinkers of the 
 twentieth century have focused their eyes upon the child 
 as a factor in society. They see both the child as an in- 
 dividual, who must be unfolded; and the social order for 
 which he must be fitted, and wherein he should play his 
 part as a citizen, touch elbows with his fellows, live to their 
 fulness the measure of his days, work out his own in- 
 dividual destiny and be a weapon for good in the fight for 
 social uplift. From the broad view-point of twentieth-cen- 
 tury altruism the supreme duty of the schools is not tO' 
 perfect the ego, but to fit it to play well a part which 
 throughout life it must play in the struggle for the better- 
 ment of the race. By common consent we are seeking to 
 rewrite the definition of education in altruistic phrase, are 
 restating its meaning in terms of life, and reading into 
 the very web and woof of the educational process a great 
 social purpose. 
 
 What is the new meaning and purpose of education? 
 Many would answer, "preparation for life," and many, 
 " training for citizenship." Excellent as are these replies, 
 they have grown so gray in the service of writers on edu- 
 cational topics that they have degenerated into meaning- 
 less catch-phrases. 
 
 275
 
 TEE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 Nicholas Murray Butler would answer, " A gradual ad- 
 justment to the spiritual possessions of the race." While 
 Columbia's president would doubtless read and probably 
 has read into his answer much, if not all, that the critics 
 find wanting, nevertheless, in its wording his definition 
 seems inadequate and one-sided. The schools must not 
 only bring the child into an adjustment with his spiritual 
 possessions; they must prepare him to be a thinlvcr and a 
 worker, who shall so react upon those possessions that they 
 shall be transmitted, enlarged and enriched, to posterity. 
 Otherwise, progress would be impossible. 
 
 These, and many other similar definitions, reflect with 
 a greater or less degree of accuracy the educational thought 
 of the hour. Language is always more limited than 
 thought. Any attempt to state in words the aim of the 
 schools must necessarily fall short of the high mission 
 which this altruistic age has assigned to them. 
 
 Conceding these things to be true, many believe that 
 so far, at least, Paul Hanus has made the best state- 
 ment of the aim of education when he declares it to be 
 " preparation for complete living." " To live completely is 
 to be as useful as possible and to be happy." To be as use- 
 ful as possible one must be a worker, striving with skill 
 and earnestness. " To be happy one must enjoy both his 
 work and his leisure." 
 
 This description of the educational process is best be- 
 cause it encompasses all that the other definitions em- 
 phasize, and more. To prepare for complete living is 
 certainly to inculcate learning and culture, since without 
 these life must needs be narrow and fragmentary; is cer- 
 tainly to unfold completely every childish power and fac- 
 ulty; is certainly to prepare for life in its fulness; is 
 certainly to train for citizenship, since one could not live 
 completely who was deficient in civic duties ; is certainly to 
 hring the student into adjustment with the spiritual pos- 
 sessions of the race, since one could not even begin to live 
 
 276 
 
 i
 
 THE EDUCATIONAL EXPERIMENT 
 
 completely until he had been brought into the ownership 
 of his scientific, his literary, his esthetic, his institutional, 
 and his religious inheritance. 
 
 If each generation be prepared to live completely, it 
 must be a testator as well as an heir, receiving from the 
 educational process both the priceless inheritance which its 
 forefathers have bequeathed, and the power to make that 
 legacy still more priceless for generations yet to come. 
 
 School Republics for Self-government of Children 
 
 The last few years have witnessed numerous attempts 
 in the United States to demonstrate the wisdom and the 
 feasibility of managing schools through no other authority 
 than that exercised by juvenile republics organized for the 
 purpose of training their members in self-government. 
 These attempts have been heralded as distinct departures 
 in school management. Yet, in 1808, Joseph Neef out- 
 lined and subsequently attempted, both on the Schuylkill 
 and on the Wabash, to execute successfully an elaborate 
 plan for a self-governed school. 
 
 It was Neef's thought that the organization of the re- 
 public should be preceded by a very elaborate course in 
 ethics, dealing with rights and duties, most of which must 
 have been beyond the comprehension of the children. At 
 the completion of this preliminary preparation for citizen- 
 ship, Neef stepped before his pupils and inaugurated the 
 republic in this language: 
 
 " Hitherto, my dear little friends — ^hitherto, my will 
 was your law; it was the supreme rule to which you were 
 obliged to conform your actions; I was your despot; your 
 government was despotic. But you have now discovered 
 the eternal laws of reason, which are to be the supreme regu- 
 lators of your future behavior ; that is, of all your actions ; 
 you are capable of being your own legislators, your own 
 governors; you are, therefore, worthy of a free govern- 
 
 277
 
 TEE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 ment; you are worthy to be governed by your own laws, 
 or rather by the dictates of universal reason, which the 
 Almighty has made a constituent part of your nature, and 
 which you have now discovered; you are no longer my 
 :subjects, but you are, and must ever be, subject to your 
 duties. To be a member of your society, a citizen of your 
 little republic, is my ambition; it is your business to de- 
 termine whether, by my preceding deportment toward you, 
 I deserve to be your fellow citizen and fellow student." 
 
 The first business in order after the " inaugurating 
 speech " was the formation of a constitution for the doubly 
 infant republic. With characteristic enthusiasm and con- 
 fidence, Neef describes the growth of the written instru- 
 ment of government to which he had assigned his " guber- 
 natorial authority." 
 
 " Do unto others that which thou wouldst have done to 
 thee. This shall be the first statute, or rather the basis and 
 foundation of our constitution. On one side we shall set 
 down our unalienable rights, on the other our immutable 
 duties, correlative to and resulting from our rights. All 
 our laws will be nothing else but corollaries from and 
 further explanations of our first and supreme law. 
 
 " Eegulations of police will soon be found indispensably 
 necessary, and of course they shall be made. 
 
 " The first transgression of a law or regulation will 
 -convince us that our little republic wants a court of justice 
 .and an executive power, and they will, of course, be es- 
 tablished; a penal code will be wanted, and consequently 
 Kjreated. 
 
 " That punishment and trespass ought to be rigorously 
 proportional will not be liable to the least doubt ; and this 
 •exact proportion we shall, therefore, strive to explore and 
 •to establish. 
 
 " If one of us happens to be accused, he shall enjoy all 
 possible liberty to defend himself against his accuser ; and, 
 should his fellow citizens declare him to be not guilty, his 
 
 278
 
 THE EDUCATIONAL EXPERIMENT 
 
 accuser shall suffer the same punishment to which the 
 accused would have been liable had he been found culpable. 
 " In framing our laws, statutes, and regulations we 
 shall take peculiar care to make as few as possible, and ex- 
 ert all our skill to remove from them the least shade of 
 baneful equivocation. All the citizens of our republic shall 
 know and understand all their own laws." 
 
 Classical Education Unnecessary 
 
 Neef was in hearty sympathy with the utilitarianism of 
 the New Harmony curriculum and shared in Maclure's 
 violent antipathy toward the learned languages. " It is 
 universally believed," says Neef , in his Sketch, " or at least 
 pretended, that in order to render a boy's education liberal, 
 learned, and classical he must absolutely learn that the 
 Athenians called a fox aXoi-n-q^, and the Komans vulpes. 
 Against this sufficiently ridiculous belief I make no great 
 opposition, because I care very little about what is called 
 a liberal, learned, and classical education, and because I be- 
 lieve that the education of a rational man ought to be 
 rational, and nothing more. I shall raise against me the 
 tremendous outcry of all our learned Hellenists and Latin- 
 ists ; I shall be charged with barbarism and vandalism, but 
 I can not help starting the following question: Is the 
 knowledge of those languages necessary, and consequently 
 useful? Is it reasonable, is it comformable to common 
 sense, to lose, nay, waste, from six to ten precious years in 
 acquiring those languages? Are the advantages flowing 
 from that knowledge a competent requital for the loss of 
 time and of better knowledge that might be acquired in 
 that time ? 
 
 " I have maturely weighed and reflected on the matter 
 and my answer to these questions is decidedly in the nega- 
 tive. I can not find the least necessity, nor consequently 
 the least utility, in learning those learned languages. I 
 
 279
 
 THE NE^Y HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 am wholly unable to discover any real advantage which 
 they bestow on the learner. I conclude, therefore, that it 
 is repugnant to common sense to lose so many years as is 
 usual in studying them." 
 
 Neef s radical opposition to the study of the Greek and 
 Latin tongues was an attack upon the narrow curriculum 
 of contemporary schools. In them the classical course con- 
 stituted the one course of study required of all. The edu- 
 cational experiments on the Wabash were a revolt against 
 the content as well as the method of the prevailing system 
 of education. But in their eagerness to offer and do full 
 justice to the utilities which the New England schools ig- 
 nored, Maclure and ISTeef eliminated the cultures from the 
 New Harmony course of study and made their boasted cur- 
 riculum as narrow as that which it came to conquer. 
 
 Both the group of educators in The New Moral World 
 and their contemporaries were right and yet wrong — right 
 in that each emphasized an important phase of the twen- 
 tieth-century curriculum, and wrong in that each failed 
 to recognize the value of that which the other advocated. 
 Few, if any of us, will agree with Neef that the so-called 
 learned languages ought to be entirely eliminated from 
 the curriculum. There is still a place, and that place a 
 very important one, for a classical education in the affairs 
 of men. Such a training provides unsurpassed mental 
 discipline; is an unchallenged badge of scholarship and 
 culture; leads, as no other road can, to the mastery of 
 language, to skill and distinction in oratory and literature ; 
 and girds the learned with the open sesame by which the 
 inner life of the ancient world is being laid, a priceless 
 treasure, at the feet of these latter days. 
 
 Manv, however, have come to believe that differences in 
 taste, aptitude, ability, and prospective calling in life make 
 the enforced pursuit of a classical course in many cases 
 " unnecessary, useless, and unjust." Moreover, many will 
 live to see the day when the hurdle of a foreign tongue 
 
 280
 
 TEE EDUCATIONAL EXPERIMENT 
 
 will no longer be thrust across the path of the pilgrim seek- 
 ing light ; when the entrance requirements of all our schools 
 will be as broad as the tastes and the aptitudes of the chil- 
 dren of men; when the fittest shall be all those who have 
 even the one talent which our educational system may 
 enroll in the service of the republic. 
 
 NEW HARMOXY'S failures 
 
 What features of the New Harmony schools were ob- 
 jectionable? What features has the evolution of schools^ 
 demonstrated to be either erroneous or impracticable? 
 
 (1) First of all, though Maclure never completely 
 abandoned the hope that they might be successfully oper- 
 ated at a later day, the self-supporting schools of the new 
 social order fell of their own weight. Neither then nor 
 since has any type of industrial school been self-maintain- 
 ing. No modern trade-school attempts as did Maclure's to 
 feed, clothe, and shelter as well as train all its students. 
 Yet, so little has the labor product aided in meeting the 
 expense budget, that, in most, if not all, our technological 
 and trade-schools, no pretense is made of placing upon the 
 market the handiwork of the pupil. Not even in the mod- 
 ern reformatory, where needs are the simplest, cost of 
 maintenance the lowest, and the workmanship of the in- 
 mates better than that of immature children can ever hope 
 to be, do the receipts from either the labor or the products 
 of the institution lift from the shoulders of the taxpayers, 
 of the State more than a small portion of the burden of 
 maintaining it. A self-supporting factory is a common- 
 place thing. But if it were continuously and solely depend- 
 ent upon the labor of an ever-shifting body of promiscuous 
 children, unskilled, immature in strength and experience,, 
 as well as years, and often lacking taste as well as aptitude 
 for the work, then the self-supporting factory, like the 
 
 281
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 self-supporting school, would become an unattainable 
 dream. 
 
 (2) The Spartan system of education, which Maclure 
 hoped to revive, eliminated the home as a factor in the 
 training of the child. His scheme, providing as it did for 
 the surrender of the infant to the community as soon as 
 he could be safely taken from the arms of the mother 
 who bore him, would rob the home of its sociological and 
 educational importance. 
 
 In that little masterpiece, Through Nature to God, 
 John Fiske shows conclusively : ( 1 ) That in the enormous 
 increase in duration of infancy, or the period when paren- 
 tal care is needed, lies the fundamental difference between 
 man and any of the higher mammals, such as dogs, horses, 
 and apes; (2) that this prolonged period of infancy is 
 necessary to bring the child into proper adjustment with 
 his environment; (3) and that this long period of help- 
 lessness and dependence, by knitting the parents together 
 around a common center of interest, lies at the foundation 
 of the human family and therefore at the foundation of 
 society and of institutional life. 
 
 History demonstrates it to be equally true that as civil- 
 ization has become more complex and life richer, deeper, 
 and more far-reaching, we have extended further the 
 period of infantry or tutelage, " until now, while the physi- 
 ological period of adolescence is reached in perhaps four- 
 teen or fifteen years, the educational period of dependence 
 is almost twice as long." (The Meaning of Education, 
 Nicholas Murray Butler, page 12, Macmillan Company, 
 New York, 1901.) This is but saying in other words that 
 the length of the period of infancy has kept step with the 
 progress of the race and that the duration of parental care 
 furnishes an accurate barometer of the civilization of any 
 given epoch. 
 
 Maclure's proposition to transplant the weanling from 
 its mother's breast to a motherless school system was a 
 
 282
 
 THE EDUCATIONAL EXPERIMENT 
 
 blow at the very vitals of the institution of the family^ for 
 since it arose only to care for the child during the years of 
 his adjustment, without him the home has neither meaning 
 nor purpose. Nor is it any the less true that the surrender 
 of the infant at the tender age of two years to a hard-and- 
 fast industrial system was a retrograde movement, a turn- 
 ing back of the hands of the clock of civilization, since 
 such a procedure practically abolished the all-too-short 
 period of dependence and parental care prevailing in the 
 days when Maclure sought to revive the custom of ancient 
 Sparta. ^ 
 
 It is no answer to this last criticism to argue that in 
 Maclure's proposed regime the State was to stand in loco 
 parentis to the child. For that institution we call the 
 government can no more be father and mother to the 
 human offspring than the incubator can perform all the 
 functions and duties of motherhood. Both the home and 
 the school are necessary factors in the process of adjust- 
 ing the child to his environment. To eliminate either is 
 to rob him of a portion of his heritage. 
 
 (3) Enthusiastic over the evident efficiency of Pes- 
 talozzian methods and devices, the New Harmony group of 
 educators ascribed to them power in the teaching of ab- 
 stract conceptions and difficult processes which they did not 
 possess. The prospectus of the school promises that " by 
 an instrument called the trignometer the most useful prop- 
 ositions of Euclid are to be reduced to the comprehension 
 of a child five or six years old." (!) After a very detailed 
 description of the construction of Pestalozzi^s three arith- 
 metical tables, Neef cites triumphantly a series of prob- 
 lems which — though he declares that with the aid of the 
 tables they were solved with ease and rapidity by children 
 nine years of age — are beyond the intelligent comprehen- 
 sion of any class short of second-year algebra to-day. 
 These instances are typical of the confidence with which it 
 was expected that the Pestalozzian system of instruction 
 
 283
 
 THE NE^Y HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 would make every branch of the scientific course of study 
 as plain and easy to little children as the road to market. 
 The mistake lay not in the system of instruction, but in 
 ascribing to that system the impossible. The inevitable 
 consequence was a curriculum which throughout its length 
 and breadth was beyond the capabilities of those for whom 
 its various studies were intended. Against the New Har- 
 mony course of study the criticism may be urged, just as 
 it has been rightfully urged against many of the educa- 
 tional practises of later days, that " all instruction should 
 be adapted to the capabilities of the learner. The impor- 
 tant thing is not what children can be made to do, but what 
 they ought to do at their stage of development." 
 
 (4) The course of study in the schools of the new social 
 order bestowed upon the child only one of the five spiritual 
 inheritances which successive ages have transmitted, en- 
 riched and enlarged, to posterity, and which it is the privi- 
 lege and duty of the educational process to bestow. 
 
 These five inheritances to which the child is entitled 
 are : (a) His scientific inheritance. The child is entitled 
 to be armed with the modern scientific method and the re- 
 sults of modern scientific research. Thus prepared, he is 
 entitled to go out into nature " to love it, to come to know 
 it, to understand it," above all, to commune with it and to 
 master it. 
 
 (h) His literary inheritance. This is the richest 
 legacy because it is the one to which, for twenty-five hun- 
 dred years, the race has given the most attention. The 
 child is entitled to dip deeply into the storied lore of the 
 ages, for through it will he quicken his imagination, enrich 
 his vocabulary, master his own mother-tongue, think the 
 thoughts of the prophets, seers, and sages of old, and 
 acquire the learning and culture which the Greeks best 
 describe by the use of " that fine old word Humanitas." 
 
 (c) His esthetical inheritance. The child is entitled 
 to be brought into a feeling of appreciation and love for 
 
 284
 
 THE EDUCATIONAL EXPERIMENT 
 
 the beautiful, the artistic, the picturesque and the sub- 
 lime. He is entitled to the cultivation of that dormant 
 esthetic sense which, whatever be his vocation, will lift 
 his thought and taste above the sordid things of life into the 
 realm where the soul revels in the true and the beautiful ; 
 and transform him from a hewer of wood and a drawer of 
 water into a king with a destiny. 
 
 (d) His institutional inheritance. The child is en- 
 titled to know how the human institutions, which are to 
 play such a large part in his life-story, came to be; to re- 
 ceive a clear insight " into his rights, which are so easy to 
 teach, and into his duties, which are so easy to forget " ; to 
 be brought into sympathy and harmonious relationship 
 with the institutional life enveloping him, which, if he 
 understands it aright, will teach him needed lessons con- 
 cerning the duties and responsibilities of citizenship and 
 " the necessity of cooperation in the working out of high 
 ideals." 
 
 (e) His religious inheritance. Somewhere, either in 
 the schoolroom or in the home, the- child is entitled to 
 know the wondrous story, freed from creed and dogma, by 
 which that branch of the human family to which he belongs 
 explains its own origin and destiny. Call that story a 
 superstition, if you will, it is the only superstition which 
 time has strengthened. Leaving out of consideration even 
 the acceptance of its truth, the child is yet entitled to the 
 Christian story, since it is so closely interwoven with the 
 last nineteen centuries of racial progress that it is abso- 
 lutely essential to their interpretation. 
 
 NEW HAEMONY's successes 
 
 What features of the New Harmony educational experi- 
 ments merit our approval? Though in 1826, Albert Galla- 
 tin, then ambassador to Great Britain, declared " the New 
 Harmony system of education to be the best in the world," 
 
 285
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 even the special pleader in their behalf must concede that 
 the early educational ventures on the Wabash (1) failed 
 to meet the expectations of Owen and Maclure; (2) failed 
 as institutions as dismally as did those of the social order ; 
 and (3) failed to influence the few contemporary schools 
 surrounding them. The value of the educational efforts in 
 The New Moral World must be measured not by what they 
 achieved in themselves, for they accomplished little and 
 perfected nothing ; but rather by what they attempted — by 
 the precious seed which they sowed on a frontier soil; and 
 by the results which came from them in after years — ^by 
 the golden harvest into which after many days that seed 
 has ripened. 
 
 (a) The precious seed sown ly the New Harmony educa- 
 tional group. To describe this is to enumerate almost all 
 the innovations, to recapitulate almost all the educational 
 fields in which, both in thought and practise, the reformers 
 of the new social order were pioneers. They advocated 
 and embodied into institutions educational ideas half a 
 century in advance of contemporary thought. To Owen, 
 Maclure, and Xeef, and to the group of distinguished scien- 
 tists and lesser educational lights aiding and abetting them, 
 we must thankfully rest debtor for those priceless con- 
 tributions : 
 
 (1) The first infant school established in America. 
 This was in 1826. It was not until three years later that 
 a school for children of tender years was inaugurated in 
 New York City — a school to which Boone erroneously gives 
 the credit of being the first infant school on this side of 
 the Atlantic — ^an error not surprising, in view of the ab- 
 sence of any published account of the New Harmony edu- 
 cational experiment at the time his interesting and valu- 
 able work was written. 
 
 (2) The first kindergarten of any type in the Western 
 World. To the extent that the play-school at New Har- 
 mony, like Buchanan's earlier efforts at New Lanark, was a 
 
 286
 
 TEE EDUCATIONAL EXPERIMENT 
 
 forerunner of FroebeFs more efficient organization, the 
 kindergarten of the N^ew Harmony schools preceded the 
 first kindergarten of the Froebel type by thirty-four years, 
 for it was not until 1860 that Miss Peabody, " without a 
 knowledge of the details of FroebeFs system," opened in 
 Boston a school based upon the kindergarten idea. 
 
 (3) The first use of the kindergarten as a part of the 
 public-school system. Though the Froebel kindergarten was 
 introduced in 1860, its recognition and adoption by the 
 public-school systems of the country was tardy. It was 
 not until 1873 that Dr. W. T. Harris, then superintendent 
 of the public schools at St. Louis, after years of agitation of 
 the question, induced that city to be the first in the United 
 States to introduce the kindergarten into its public educa- 
 tional system. 
 
 (4) The first distinctively trade-school and the second 
 industrial school in point of time inaugurated in the 
 United States. 
 
 (5) The first industrial school of any type to he made a 
 part of a free puhlic-school system. 
 
 (6) The first noteworthy American attempt and the 
 second American attempt of any character to introduce 
 and perpetuate the Pestalozzian system of instruction 
 which has conquered the schools of this nation. 
 
 (7) The first public-school system, free or unfree, of- 
 fering the same educational advantages to both sexes. 
 
 (8) The first free puhlic-school system in a land in which 
 to-day the blessings of an education, " free as the living 
 waters" (as Eobert Dale Owen so earnestly hoped that it 
 might become), forces itself upon the American children, if 
 need be, by due process of law. 
 
 (9) The first real public-school system west of the 
 Appalachians. 
 
 (10) The first formidable revolt ever made by a public- 
 school system in this country against that so-called " lib- 
 eral" education, which, regardless of taste and aptitude, 
 
 287
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 ability and prospective calling, persist in thrusting the 
 -classics down the throats of all its unwilling victims. 
 
 (11) The most humane and enlightened system of 
 scliool government to be found anywhere — for it was not 
 equaled even by that in the schools of the tender-hearted 
 Pestalozzi himself. 
 
 (12) The most enthusiastic and determined advocacy 
 and support of " free, equal, and universal schools " that 
 history records. 
 
 (13) The most ambitious and pretentious educational 
 experiment which the world had yet witnessed and, with 
 the exception of Pestalozzi's earlier effort, the most cour- 
 ageous and unseltish educational experiment which the 
 world lias yet witnessed. 
 
 (h) The results that came from the sowing. Immedi- 
 ate results there were none. It was not to be expected 
 that there would be. Owen and Maclure and the " Boat- 
 load of Knowledge '' were prophets and seers upon the 
 mountain-top, their backs to the wilderness, their faces 
 turned toward a fleeting vision of the promised land. The 
 New Harmony educational experiments were half a cen- 
 tury in advance of their times. The educational principles 
 and practises of that all-too-brief golden age on the Wabash 
 did not lie within the comprehension of either the frontier 
 pedagogue or the New England schoolmaster. Both fol- 
 lowed blindly and implicitly in the footsteps of Master 
 •Cheever. The prejudice with which the sturdy pioneer 
 from New England viewed the social and religious ideas 
 of the Commune extended to its educational svstem and all 
 pertaining to it. Schools were few and far between, 
 poorly equipped and poorly attended, uncertain in dura- 
 tion and taught by poorly paid, poorly prepared back- 
 woodsmen or roving adventurers from the East. The 
 TOugh frontiersmen, engaged in a life-and-death struggle 
 with the forces of the wilderness, had little time and 
 less thought for the affairs of the schoolroom. The 
 
 2^S
 
 THE EDUCATIONAL EXPERIMENT 
 
 few who, in that age of slow eommurdcatioii between 
 widely scattered settlements, had heard the story of the 
 educational ventures at New Harmony associated them 
 with the " other social vagaries " by which the new social 
 order astonished, and yet at the same time amused the 
 practical pioneers of the Western country. When the last, 
 lingering school of the Commune closed its door it was 
 apparent, even to an unprejudiced observer, that, meas- 
 ured by the immediate eSect upon contemporary education, 
 the New Harmony group of educators had labored and 
 given of their substance entirely in vain. 
 
 But one " can not see, ^neath winter's field of snow, the 
 silent harvest of the future grow.'' If Owen and Maclure, 
 standing on the ruins of their golden dream for the better- 
 ment of their fellows and vouchsafed one clear vision into 
 the future, could have seen the seed seemingly fallen among 
 thorns and on stony ground grow, as it did grow, into a 
 golden harvest of methods and measures and institutions 
 for the educational betterment of men, they would have 
 exclaimed in imison, " It is well." For, measured by its 
 after-effect, the educational experiment at New Harmony 
 deserves to rank among the most important educational 
 movements in this countrv. 
 
 A subsequent chapter tells, in detail, the story of the 
 chain of public libraries, modeled after the Society for 
 Mutual Instruction of community days, which Maclure 
 by the generous provisions of his will, established in one 
 hundred and sixty frontier settlements of the West. 
 Given at a time when there were few private and no 
 public libraries, it is impossible to overestimate the im- 
 petus which this wise benefaction gave to intellectual de- 
 velopment in every one of the one hundred and sixty 
 communities which enjoyed the benefits of Maclure's lib- 
 erality. 
 
 Subsequent pages describe the attainment and distin- 
 guished services of the noted group of scientists who^ 
 20 389
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 drawn to The N'ew Moral World originally by the first 
 American geologist, made the scene of Maclure's disas- 
 trous educational efforts a rendezvous and Mecca of scien- 
 tists for many years. By their labors New Harmony 
 became not only the first important scientific outpost in 
 the West, but also the strongest scientific center in America. 
 
 The closing chapter of this book deals with the life 
 and distinguished services of Eobert Dale Owen. He 
 was the very incarnation of the spirit of the founders 
 of the new social order. In him both his father and 
 William Maclure lived again, for his act was their act, 
 made more effective by his talent. Whether as editor 
 of the Free Enquirer or law-maker, we find him always 
 the earnest, effective champion of " free, equal, and uni- 
 versal schools," and of wise measures for their better- 
 ment. As a member of the National Congress, he became 
 the legislative father of the Smithsonian Institution. As 
 a member of the legislature of the very State from which 
 his distinguished father had withdrawn in chagrin over 
 the failure of his educational, as well as his social schemes, 
 Eobert Owen, filled with the ancient enthusiasm of his 
 house for popular education, formulated and brought to 
 a successful passage the school-law whose enactment marks 
 the natal day of the Indiana educational system. Eobert 
 Dale Owen was truly the legislative father of the Indiana 
 common-school system. Through the wise legislation for 
 which he must be credited, most of the educational prin- 
 ciples and plans for the organization of common schools 
 which the New Harmony group of reformers advocated, 
 triumphed throughout the Middle West. 
 
 Though denied immediate consideration by contempo- 
 rary schools, the educational doctrines of the New Har- 
 mony group found entrance to them in other ways. Neef's 
 Plan and Method of Education and his Methods of 
 Teaching, both published almost a generation before 
 HalPs Lectures on School Keeping and Page's Theory 
 
 290 
 
 I
 
 THE EDUCATIONAL EXPERIMENT 
 
 and Practise of Teaching, were among the first peda- 
 gogical treatises in America. The New Harmony ex- 
 periments gave these two books for the first time the 
 recognition and prestige which made them one of the 
 authorities in school management and methods throughout 
 the country west of the AUeghanies for fully a quarter of 
 a century after the collapse of the educational ventures of 
 The New Moral World. Through the writings of his first 
 American disciple Pestalozzi influenced the pioneer teach- 
 ers on the frontier of civilization. 
 
 During their brief career the New Harmony educa- 
 tional experiments afforded the first training-school for 
 teachers in all the West. Boone says that " the Pestaloz- 
 zian theory found admirable exposition in the community 
 school for both young men and young women, to whom it 
 was more than a model school in their later teaching; it 
 was at once an inspiration and a liberal training.^^ When 
 Owen^s social system dissipated into thin air, there went 
 forth from brief homes on the Wabash men and women 
 who, scattering in every direction through the Ohio and 
 Mississippi valleys, and becoming the instructors of the 
 pioneer youth, sowed in almost every isolated hamlet the 
 tenets of the educational creed which Pestalozzi and Neef 
 and Maclure had espoused. 
 
 The eminent scientists who made New Harmony a 
 rendezvous were themselves bearers of good seed and glad 
 tidings. Their achievements and contributions drew re- 
 newed attention to the best features of the educational 
 " light that had failed.^' Most of them, enthusiastic be- 
 lievers in the methods and aims of the New Harmony 
 group, carried with them on their scientific explorations to 
 every remote spot the new educational faith. Climbing 
 to eminence in every Western State as surveyors and geolo- 
 gists and university instructors, their advocacy of the free 
 public school and the Pestalozzian system of instruction 
 commanded the attention which their distinguished attain- 
 
 291
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 ments merited. They secured, after many days, the tardy 
 recognition for which the New Harmony group of educa- 
 tors had asked, and asked in vain. 
 
 When the social system went to pieces, hundreds of 
 its most enthusiastic devotees turned their backs upon the 
 scene of the great disappointment and sought permanent 
 homes elsewhere. Some returned to the country east of the 
 Appalachians, while a greater number scattered themselves 
 through the promising hamlets of the Ohio and Mississippi 
 valleys. All carried to the new habitation an enthusiastic 
 support of the free public school and the Pestalozzian 
 creed. Who can estimate the influence which they have 
 exerted in molding the spirit, the method, and the organ- 
 ization of the public-school systems both north and south 
 of Mason and Dixon's line? 
 
 The second distinctive Pestalozzian movement in this 
 country invaded the conservative atmosphere of staid New 
 England. It numbered in the list of its enthusiastic cham- 
 pions such men as Horace Mann and Barnas Sears and 
 George Boutwell and Lowell Mason and Agassiz and David 
 Page and E. A. Sheldon, and a host of others almost as 
 illustrious. No more distinguished group of educators has 
 blessed any epoch in our career as a nation. Their achieve- 
 ments constitute one of the brightest pages in our educa- 
 tional history. Combining with the enthusiasm that char- 
 acterized the New Harmony group the conservatism and 
 intellectual balance necessary to permanent reform, they 
 gave the Pestalozzian faith a firm foothold on American 
 soil, wrote its spirit into wise laws and enduring institu- 
 tions, and sent it westward to complete the work that New 
 Harmony had inaugurated. Whence came the first in- 
 spiration of this second Pestalozzian group? From the 
 East or from the West, or f rofti both ? Who can answer 
 with safety? Would it not be pardonable, at least, if the 
 teachers of the Middle West should elect to believe that the 
 traditions and the influence of the New Harmony experi- 
 
 298
 
 TEE EDUCATIONAL EXPERIMENT 
 
 ments, working silently through the years, played at least 
 a small part in the awakening of New England and served 
 in some slight degree to turn the minds and hearts of its 
 educational thinkers in expectant faith to the teachings 
 of the master of Burgdorf ? 
 
 Most of the educational doctrines of the New Harmony 
 group of educators have triumphed and a national free 
 public-school system, for which they so strenuously con- 
 tended, more far-reaching and eflBcient than pictured in 
 their fondest dream, is consummating that very equality of 
 opportunity among the classes which the social experiments 
 of The New Moral World sought to achieve. Eobert Owen 
 and William Maclure did not fail, for in the fulness of 
 time they have come into their own. 
 
 293
 
 CHAPTER XXI* 
 
 JOSIAH WARREN' 
 
 "A remarkable American, Josiah Warren, " 
 
 — John Stuart Mill. 
 
 Among the most remarkable characters attracted to 
 New Harmony in community days was Josiah Warren, 
 equally notable as an inventive genius, a social philosopher, 
 and a peaceful revolutionist. He was born in Boston in 
 1798, of historically famous Puritan stock. Of his parents 
 and early life but little is known. At an early age he 
 displayed musical talents, and, with his brother George, 
 played professionally in local bands. At the age of twenty 
 he married, and soon after set out from his native place 
 to improve his fortunes in the West. He settled in Cincin- 
 nati, and gained an honorable repute as an orchestra leader; 
 but he had other interests besides music. Mechanical pur- 
 suits occupied his leisure hours, the earliest fruit of which 
 was the invention of a lamp, patented in 1823, which sub- 
 stituted lard for tallow as fuel, giving a better light at a 
 lower cost. Its success was such that the inventor before 
 long was running a lamp manufactory in Cincinnati. 
 
 More pressing problems than those of illumination 
 were, however, shortly to arise and absorb the active mind 
 and generous heart of the ingenious young New Englander. 
 There came to Cincinnati in 1824 a visitor whose reputa- 
 
 * This chapter is the contribution of Mr. William Bailie, of Boston, 
 who has made a searching study of the life and services of Josiah 
 Warren, and is the best informed authority on the philosophy of that 
 remarkable man. 
 
 294
 
 JOSIAH WARREN,
 
 JOSIAH WARREN 
 
 tion as the boldest and most successful social reformer of 
 the age was world-wide. When Eobert Owen, with a 
 fervor of conviction and inspiring enthusiasm which have 
 never been surpassed, unfolded his plans for the inaugura- 
 tion of The iN'ew Moral World, Warren was so much im- 
 pressed that he decided to join the grand experiment which 
 was about to begin at New Harmony. So, after disposing 
 of his lamp factory, Warren, with his young family, joined 
 Owen and his enthusiasts on the Eappite property, hoping 
 to assist in founding the ideal community which was to 
 usher in a millennium of peace and plenty, brotherhood 
 and happiness, ultimately to embrace all mankind. 
 
 Here Warren found a field in which to study the prob- 
 lems of government, property, and industry, together with 
 the relation of the individual to society, such as never be- 
 fore was given to man. During two stormy years of vicis- 
 situdes, disappointments, and failure Warren remained 
 with the community, and bore his share of the burdens 
 incident to so pretentious an undertaking. And when he 
 finally departed it was not, like so many others, as an 
 embittered reactionary, but as an earnest, hopeful student 
 who had spent his time to good purpose. As one who had 
 with painful solicitude witnessed the inadequacy of com- 
 munism to correct the evils of property; and the failure 
 of paternal authority, as well as of majority rule, to solve 
 the problems of government, he had learned an invaluable 
 lesson, and stored up pregnant experience for use in future 
 efforts to grapple with the same vital issues. With Warren 
 the failure of communism was simply a reason for trying 
 another plan of attack upon the existing institutions of 
 society. Like Owen, he never doubted that the ^' emancipa- 
 tion of man " was possible, and human happiness only a 
 question of suitable social adjustment and the application 
 of what he deemed to be right principles. 
 
 Chief among the causes which, in Warren's mind, led 
 to disaster at New Harmony, were the suppression of in- 
 
 295
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 dividuality, the lack of initiative, and the absence of per- 
 sonal responsibility. When everything was decided by 
 authority, or by the will of the majority, each was prone 
 to ascribe the faults of the system to the shortcomings of 
 his neighbors. These defects Warren believed to be in- 
 separable from any social scheme based upon government 
 and community of goods. Even under the most favorable 
 conditions failure would in the long run be assured. He 
 concluded, therefore, that the basis of all future reform 
 must be complete individual liberty. Every one should be 
 free to dispose of his person, his property, his time, and 
 his reputation as he pleases — ^but always at his own cost; 
 this qualification of the principle is inseparable from it, 
 the core, as it were, of his philosophy. 
 
 The New Harmony experience had convinced Warren 
 that any theory of reform, however perfect or plausible, 
 should be put to the test before being offered to the world 
 as a remedy for existing evils. To this end, therefore, he 
 undertook his first experiment, the Time store. 
 
 On the 18th of May, 1827, there was unpretentiously 
 opened at the corner of Fifth and Vine streets in Cin- 
 cinnati a small country store, conducted on a plan new 
 to commerce. It was the first Equity store, designed to 
 illustrate and practicalize the cost principle, the germ of 
 the cooperative movement of the future. When the ad- 
 vantages of the store became known, it proved to be the 
 most popular mercantile institution in the city. The people 
 called it the " Time store " because a clock was used by 
 the merchant to determine the amount of compensation 
 for his service in waiting upon the customers. The store- 
 keeper exchanged his time for an equal amount of the time 
 of those who purchased goods from him. The actual cost 
 of the goods bought was paid for in cash, the labor note of 
 the customer was given to the merchant to pay for hie 
 service. It ran something after this fashion : " Due to 
 Josiah Warren, thirty minutes in carpenter work. — John 
 
 296
 
 > 
 
 < 
 
 (—1 
 GO 
 
 pa 
 

 
 THE LIBRARY 
 OF THE
 
 JOSIAH WARREN 
 
 Smith." Here was the application of the principle of 
 labor for labor, the cost principle, in its most primitive 
 form, which was subsequently modified to allow for the 
 different valuations of the various kinds of labor. 
 
 The idea of labor notes originated with Robert Owen, 
 but Warren's application of it was original and proved 
 entirely successful. Though at the beginning the Equity 
 store met with scant encouragement, it was but a short 
 while until it taxed all the reformer's time and energies. 
 The merchant on the next corner soon found himself with- 
 out occupation, and requested Warren to explain to him 
 the method of conducting business on the equity plan. 
 The founder of the movement was only too happy to as- 
 sist his rival to convert his place into a " Time store," and 
 delighted to see so quickly an instance of what competition 
 could do in enforcing the adoption of more equitable 
 methods of exchange. 
 
 Warren's store was a labor exchange where those who 
 had products to sell could dispose of them, provided the 
 goods were in demand, without having to give the lion's 
 share as profit to the middleman. It was also a bureau 
 for labor seeking employment, and thus served to direct 
 the reformer's attention to the long and useless apprentice- 
 ships by which the common trades were hedged around. 
 He wished to disprove the need for long terms of industrial 
 servitude, and this desire led to the idea of a cooperative 
 village. Full of enthusiasm for the principles which he 
 was now convinced would solve the deeper economic prob- 
 lems of society, having tried them in regard to the dis- 
 tribution of wealth, he longed to see them applied to its 
 production. 
 
 Robert Dale Owen at this period became interested in 
 Warren's plans, but after much waiting, and a visit to New 
 York in 1830, the Cincinnati reformer decided to prepare, 
 unaided, for a village experiment. He set himself to learn 
 many practical arts, including wagon-building, wood and 
 
 297
 
 TEE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 metal working, printing and type-founding. The first 
 village of Equity was commenced in Tuscarawas County, 
 Ohio, and after a two years' trial was abandoned, owing to 
 the malarial and unhealthful condition of the locality. 
 Many interesting experiments in the industrial and practi- 
 cal education of the young were carried out by Warren, 
 which showed that in this field he was a true pioneer, for 
 it is only to-day that his views are finding realization in 
 the manual training-schools and technical institutions for 
 practical education. 
 
 The Peaceful Eevolutionist, Warren's first periodical, 
 appeared in January, 1833, but survived only a few 
 months. It was a four-page weekly of conspicuously neat 
 typography, and was devoted to expositions of the prin- 
 ciples of equity. So primitive at the time were his re- 
 sources, and so marvelous his skill and ingenuity, that the 
 plates from which the paper was printed were cast over the 
 fire of the same stove at which the wife cooked the family 
 meals. The printing-press he used was his own invention, 
 and with his own hands he made type-molds, cast the type 
 and the stereo-plates, built the press, wrote the articles, set 
 them up, and printed off the sheets. 
 
 The years prior to 1842 were devoted mainly to me- 
 chanical pursuits and printing inventions. About 1840 
 Warren constructed the first press that was ever used to 
 print newspapers from a roll. The following description 
 of this mechanism is from an editorial which appeared 
 February 28, 1840, in an Evansville paper: 
 
 " The first number of the Southwestern Sentinel is the 
 first newspaper probably in the world which was ever 
 printed on a continuous sheet. Our press or printing ma- 
 chinery is the invention of Mr. Josiah Warren, of New 
 Harmony. He has brought a series of experiments extend- 
 ing through nine years to a successful close, and this 
 machine, which he calls his speed press, is one of the re- 
 sults." 
 
 298
 
 J08IAH WARREN 
 
 Unfortunately the innovation was opposed by the print- 
 ers, who saw in its labor-saving power a menace to their 
 interests. They deliberately threw the press out of geai 
 at every opportunity, and at length so exasperated the in- 
 ventor that he came one day to the Sentinel office, had the 
 • press hauled away, and deliberately broke it to pieces. 
 
 Typographical inventions continued, however, to oc- 
 cupy Warren's attention. His purpose was to extend his 
 stereotyping inventions to all varieties of printing, illus- 
 tration, and artistic reproduction. His improvements in 
 this field he termed " universal typography." 
 
 The Indiana Statesman, of New Harmony, under dates 
 of October 4, 1845, and March 7, 1846, contains flattering 
 accounts of the progress and utility of Warren's inventions. 
 His typographical plates were durable, cheap, and had a 
 I' smooth, glassy surface, so like stone that the inventor 
 termed them " stone-types." He claimed that the facility 
 with which illustrations could be got up, the rapidity of 
 stereotyping and printing them, together with the dura- 
 W bility of the plates, justified the expectation that they would 
 ultimately supersede woodcuts, steel-plate and copper-plate 
 engraving and printing, and lithography. The process in- 
 cluded printing in colors, besides a result similar to what 
 is now known as half-tones. 
 
 While it is doubtful if Warren ever received an equiva- 
 lent for his ingenuity, labor, and outlay on these inventions, 
 at which he worked during the larger part of his life, it is 
 certain that his methods were utilized by others, and the 
 * world is accordingly the gainer by his improvements. The 
 processes now in use for the finer class of stereotype work 
 are based upon his discoveries. The latter years of his life 
 were devoted to studies and experiments with a view to 
 perfecting his inventions, and his final results, it is be- 
 lieved, were not made known to the world, nor rendered 
 available when death terminated his labors. 
 
 The New Harmony Time store was opened in 1842. At 
 
 299
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 first it encoimtered strong opposition at the hands of in- 
 terested rivals, but its beneficial influence was soon felt in 
 a fall of retail prices throughout the surrounding country. 
 Of this, his second store experiment, Warren wrote: 
 " Whatever may be thought of the hopelessness or the un- 
 popularity of reform movements, I will venture to assert 
 that no institution, political, moral, nor religious, ever 
 assumed a more sudden and extensive popularity than the 
 Time store of New Harmony. But it was principally 
 among the poor, the humble, and the downtrodden. None 
 of those who had been accustomed to lead, none who had 
 anything to lead with, offered the least assistance or aid, 
 nor scarcely sympathy, though they did not attempt to 
 deny the soundness of the principles. . . . When all 
 the stores in the surrounding country had come down in 
 their prices to an equilibrium with the Equity store, the 
 custom naturally flowed back again to them, and the next 
 step was to wind up the Time store and commence a vil- 
 lage." 
 
 Warren next turned his ingenuity to the production in 
 1844- of an original system of music, denominated by him 
 " Mathematical Notation," designated on scientific prin- 
 ciples to accomplish in the representation of harmonic 
 sounds a similar service to that performed by phonography 
 in the representation of the elements of speech. The 
 author printed the book by his newly perfected universal 
 typography, and, as may still be seen by a copy preserved in 
 the library of the New Harmony Working Men's Institute, 
 it was a beautiful example of his stereotyping process, re- 
 producing his own handwriting in delicate copper-plate. 
 Dr. Mason, a musical authority of that day, admitted the 
 comprehensiveness and simplicity of Warren's musical 
 notation, but believed it would be a hopeless under- 
 taking to attempt to supersede the universally accepted 
 system. 
 
 About this period Warren received seven thousand dol- 
 
 300
 
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 ^flf UBURY 
 Of THE 

 
 JOSIAH WARREN 
 
 lars for his stereotyping patents, and sucli a wave of finan- 
 cial prosperity revived his desire to found another Equity 
 village. For this purpose he secured land near New Har- 
 mony, but abandoned it for more favorable prospects in 
 Ohio. The village of Utopia was founded by Warren in 
 1847 about a mile above Claremont, a Fourierist com- 
 munity which had just then come to grief. Unlike the 
 latter, there was no common ownership of property in 
 Warren's experiments. Each family owned its own lot and 
 house (after it was erected), but the members of the village 
 cooperated in all cases where it was mutually advantageous 
 to do so. Warren's efforts were for those* whose only means 
 ivas their labor force, and his purpose was to demonstrate 
 that such people, with free access to natural resources, 
 could, by exchanging their labor on equitable terms, by 
 means of labor notes, build their own houses, supply their 
 prime necessities, and attain to comfort and prosperity 
 without dependence on capitalists, or any external author- 
 ity, for the means of life. 
 
 Utopia went on progressing in a quiet way for many 
 years. It was the policy of the settlers to avoid publicity, 
 and to refrain from encouraging outsiders to visit or to 
 join them. One of the pioneers, E. G. Cubberly, in Oc- 
 tober, 1872, while still residing in his original home in 
 Utopia, wrote : " The labor notes put us into a reciprocat- 
 ing society — the result was, in two years twelve families 
 found themselves with homes who never owned homes be- 
 fore. . . . Labor-capital did it. I built a brick cot- 
 tage, one-and-a-half stories high, and all the money I paid 
 out was nine dollars and eighty-one cents — all the rest was 
 effected by exchanging labor for labor. Mr. Warren is 
 right, and the way to get back as much labor as we give is 
 by the labor cost prices; money prices, with no principle 
 to guide, have always deceived us." 
 
 It may naturally be asked what became of the village. 
 Why did equity villages not multiply? Why did the pio- 
 
 301
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 neers keep from the public as far as possible all informa- 
 tion concerning them? To such questions no satisfactory 
 answer in a few words can be given. Owing to the high 
 price of the surrounding land, most of the settlers, after 
 about four years, moved from Utopia into Minnesota, 
 where land was cheap and abundant. 
 
 Leaving the scenes of his labors in Ohio and Indiana, 
 Warren in 1850 visited New York and Boston, and, by 
 means of a quiet propaganda, succeeded in arousing the 
 interest of many earnest people in the individualistic form 
 of cooperation advocated by him. He met the brilliant 
 writer and reformer, Stephen Pearl Andrews, who hence- 
 forth became Warren's most ardent disciple, and the liter- 
 ary exponent of equity. Andrews' Science of Society, an 
 exposition of the sovereignty of the individual, and cost the 
 limit of price, has probably done more toward calling the 
 attention of independent thinkers and reformers to War- 
 ren's philosophy than anything ever put forth by himself, 
 and is by far the ablest statement of the " principles '^ 
 which has yet appeared. 
 
 As a result of Warren's activity the Village of Modern 
 Times was founded in 1851. The site was on Long Island, 
 forty miles by railroad from New York City. The soil 
 was considered worthless, but this did not deter the en- 
 thusiasts of equity. They came by ones and twos, and 
 gradually began to clear the ground for market-garden- 
 ing, meanwhile building themselves houses of such preten- 
 sions as their limited resources permitted. About a hun- 
 dred souls had settled on the ground when the New York 
 Tribune began to feature the colony and create a publicity 
 as undesirable to the settlers as it proved to be annoying. 
 The newspaper notices brought many visitors, some to stay, 
 mostly ignorant of the ideas on which the village was 
 founded. True to their principles, which allowed equal 
 rights to all in natural opportunities, the pioneers re- 
 frained from taking any steps to exclude the newcomers, 
 
 302
 
 JOSIAH WARREN 
 
 so long as they did not invade the rights of others. This 
 devotion to principle had, however, its drawbacks, though 
 in the end it proved a self-corrective. One man began to 
 advocate plurality of wives, and started a paper to support 
 his views. Another believed clothing to be a superfluity 
 and not only personally practised his Adamic vagaries but 
 inflicted them upon his helpless children. A woman who 
 would not have passed for a model of physical perfection, 
 displayed herself in male attire, which gave rise to the 
 newspaper comment that "the women of Modern Times 
 dressed in men's clothes and looked hideous." Still an- 
 other woman had the diet mania so severely that, after 
 trying to live on beans without salt until reduced almost to 
 a skeleton, she died within a year. Whereupon the news- 
 papers declared : " The people of Modern Times are kill- 
 ing themselves with fanatical ideas about food." These- 
 were some of the burdens the real settlers had to bear 
 because they acted on the non-invasive principle, and ac- 
 corded liberty to do even the silliest things, believing that; 
 experience, and the application of personal responsibility 
 in allowing things to be done at each one's own cost, would 
 work the surest and most effectual cure. 
 
 Despite the persistent misrepresentations and the with- 
 ering slanders to which the colony was subjected during- 
 its earlier years, the pioneers prospered. But after reap- 
 ing so much of the undesirable fruits of notoriety, the- 
 name was changed to Brentwood, under which appellation 
 it is still known. 
 
 Writing to an English friend in 1857, one of the set- 
 tlers, Edward Linton, asks : " You have been here, sir,. 
 and I ask you, considering the natural obstacles to over- 
 come, if you ever saw greater material success attained in 
 so short a time by the same number of people without capi- 
 tal, and with only their hands and brains to operate with, 
 under all the disadvantages of habits formed by a false- 
 education and training. . . . And as it regards in- 
 
 303
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 dividual and social happiness and the entire absence of 
 vice and crime, I am confident this settlement can not be 
 equaled. This is, emphatically, the school of life. It is 
 vrhat has been learned here, infinitely more than what has 
 "been done, that constitutes what I consider the greatest 
 success of the settlement. What has not been done is, I 
 think, of far more consequence than what has been done. 
 I would rather that my children would live here 
 and have the advantages of the society and practical les- 
 sons taught here, than for them to have what is called 
 an education in the best institutions of learning in the 
 world." 
 
 Linton^s tribute to Warren in the same letter can not be 
 omitted : " But whether I ever live to see the practical 
 realization of the principles or not, here or elsewhere, I 
 never can feel sufficiently grateful to the unostentatious 
 man whose remarkable and peculiar constitution of mind 
 enabled him to discover the most subtle and sublime truths 
 ever made known to man for his self-government and the 
 regulation of his intercourse with his neighbors. In my 
 own person and in my own domestic affairs I have been 
 incalculably benefited." 
 
 Broad avenues, tree-shaded streets, pretty cottages 
 surrounded by strawberry-beds and well-tilled gardens, 
 formed the outward appearance of Modern Times. The 
 occupants were honest, industrious, and had learned to 
 mind their own business, while readily cooperating with 
 their neighbors for mutual advantage. They were free 
 from sectarian dissensions, law-courts, jails, rumshops, 
 prostitutes, and crime. No one acquired wealth save by 
 his own industry. Long afterward the people who lived 
 there during the years that the principles of equity were 
 the only law among citizens, looked back with regret 
 mingled with pleasure on those pioneer days of effort to 
 achieve a higher social ideal. 
 
 It should be remembered that the equity villages did 
 
 304
 
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 \i \vi. t»n TW'VTVi' PiiT'VliS OF CiiRN 
 
 LABOR NOTE ISSUED BY .TOSIAH WARREX,
 
 JOSIAH WARREN 
 
 not fail in the sense that Xew Harmony, Brook Farm, and 
 numerous other similar experiments failed. The Modern 
 Timers had no trouble over property or forms of govern- 
 ment. Each owned his house and land, and by mutual 
 understanding political or civic authority was dispensed 
 with. None felt responsible for the failure of his neigh- 
 bors, and only aggressive or invasive action was resented 
 by combined action. The panic of 1857, which in New 
 York City alone threw upward of twenty thousand people 
 suddenly out of work, shattered a manufacturing enter- 
 prise that had been successfully begun in Modern Times. 
 Before the effects of the ensuing industrial depression 
 had cleared away, the country was in the throes of 
 civil war, and all hope of success was for the time 
 dissipated. 
 
 In July, 1854, while living at Modern Times, Warren 
 began the publication of his Periodical Letters, a record 
 of the movement and further exposition of the principles, 
 which were issued with more or less regularity until the 
 end of 1858. He spent the winter of 185 5-' 56 visiting his 
 old friends in Ohio and Indiana. After 1860 he returned 
 no more to the Long Island village. 
 
 The reformer's activity declined with advancing age. 
 Several years were spent quietly at Cliftondale, near Bos- 
 ton, and in 1873 he went to reside with his friends, the 
 Heywoods, in their home at Princeton, Massachusetts. Here 
 he wrote and printed his last production. Part III, of the 
 True Civilization series, giving " practical applications " 
 and the " facts and conclusions of forty-seven years' study 
 and experiments in reform movements through commun- 
 ism to elementary principles found in a direction opposite 
 to and away from communism, but leading directly to all 
 the harmonic results aimed at by communism." Equitable 
 Commerce, his first book, containing practically all his 
 views, was first published in 1846, and was several times 
 reprinted. 
 
 21 305
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 The last months of Warren's life were passed in Boston 
 at the house of his early friend, Edward Linton, where 
 he was cared for in his last illness by kindly hands. Kate 
 Metcalf, one of the pioneers of Modern Times, nursed him 
 to the end, which came on April 14, 1874. 
 
 306
 
 CHAPTEE XXII 
 
 EGBERT OWEN^S LATER LIFE 
 
 *'He originated and organized infant schools. He secured a re- 
 duction of the hours of labor for women and children in factories. 
 He was a liberal supporter of the earlier efforts to obtain national 
 education. He labored to promote international arbitration. He was 
 one of the foremost Englishmen who tauglit men to aspire to a higher 
 social state by reconciling the interests of capital and labor. He spent 
 his life and a large fortune in seeking to improve his fellow men by 
 giving them education, self-reliance, and moral worth. His life was 
 sanctified by human affection and lofty effort." — Inscription on monu- 
 ment to Robert Owen in Kensal Green Cemetery, 
 
 In" the autumn of 1827 Eobert Owen arrived again in 
 England. Through negotiations with the minister from 
 Mexico to the Court of St. James he projected a plan 
 for communistic colonization in the provinces of Texas 
 and Coahuila. Immense tracts of land in these provinces 
 were to be set apart for Mr. Owen^s use, though remain- 
 ing under Mexican control, and here he was to be given 
 an opportunity to establish a vast communistic common- 
 wealth, colonized from all quarters of the globe. Mr. 
 Owen went to Mexico in order to complete these plans, 
 but the negotiations came to an end when he discovered 
 that the degree of religious toleration he demanded would 
 not be granted. In the spring of 1829 he was again at 
 New Harmony, and in April of that year he met Alex- 
 ander Campbell in a famous debate on religious ques- 
 tions. The discussion was held in Cincinnati, and lasted 
 several days, before immense audiences. It was a veritable 
 
 307
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 battle between giants ; for years the printed report of these 
 debates was read and reread throughout the West. 
 
 From Cincinnati he journeyed to Washington, where 
 he interested himself in bringing about a better feeling 
 between the United States and Great Britain. As he 
 became intimately associated with President Jackson and 
 Secretary of State Van Buren, his labors were not with- 
 out effect. The same year he returned to England and 
 began the campaign in behalf of cooperation which he 
 continued to the end of his life. His systems of " labor 
 exchange " and " equitable commerce '' attracted wide 
 attention, and have developed into the great labor co- 
 operative system of Great Britain. 
 
 Eobert Owen frequently crossed the Atlantic to visit 
 his sons and daughter in America, and to urge his plans 
 on this side of the ocean. As late as 1844, while Fourier- 
 ism was planting its phalansteres in America, he arrived 
 in New York and published an address to the people of 
 America, declaring that he had come " to effect in peace 
 the greatest revolution ever yet made in human society." 
 He called a world^s convention to consider reform move- 
 ments, in 1845, but this was a failure. Adin Ballon, as 
 quoted by Noyes, said of him at this time : 
 
 " Robert Owen is a remarkable character. In years, 
 nearly seventy-five; in knowledge and experience, super- 
 abundant; in benevolence of heart, transcendental; in 
 honesty, without disguise ; in philanthropy, unlimited ; in 
 religion, a skeptic; in theology, a Pantheist; in meta- 
 physics, a necessarian circumstantialist ; in morals, a uni- 
 versal executionist ; in general conduct, a philosophic 
 non-resistant; in socialism, a communist; in hope, a ter- 
 restrial elysianist; in practical business, a methodist; in 
 deportment, an unequivocal gentleman. . . . Mr. 
 Owen has vast schemes to develop, and vast hopes of 
 speedy success in establishing a great model of the new 
 social state, which will quite instantaneously, as he thinks, 
 
 308
 
 ROBERT OWEN'S LATER LIFE 
 
 bring the human race into a terrestrial paradise. He in- 
 sists on obtaining a million of dollars to be expended in 
 lands, buildings, machinery, conveniences, and beautifica- 
 tions for his model community. He flatters himself he 
 shall be able, by some means, to induce capitalists, or 
 perhaps Congress, to furnish the capital for this object. 
 We were frankly obliged to shake an incredulous head 
 and tell him how groundless, in our judgment, such 
 splendid anticipations must prove. He took it in good 
 part, and declared his confidence unshaken and his hopes 
 undiscourageable by any man^s unbelief." 
 
 Eobert Owen spent the following winter in New Har- 
 mony. In June, 1846, he addressed the Constitutional 
 Convention of the State of New York on Human Eights 
 and Progress. 
 
 " Six times," says Noyes, " after he was fifty years 
 old, and twice after he was seventy, he crossed the At- 
 lantic and back in the service of communism. Let us not 
 say that all this wonderful activity was useless. Let us 
 not call this man a driveler and a monomaniac. Let us 
 rather acknowledge that he was receiving and distribu- 
 ting an inspiration, unknown even to himself, that had 
 a sure aim, and that it is at this moment conquering the 
 world. His hallucination was not in his expectations, 
 but in his ideas of time and methods." 
 
 Ealph Waldo Emerson makes some interesting allu- 
 sions to Eobert Owen as he appeared to him in 1845. 
 " Eobert Owen of New Lanark," he says, " came hither 
 from England in 1845 to read lectures or hold conversa- 
 tions wherever he could find listeners — the most amiable, 
 sanguine, and candid of men. He had not the least doubt 
 that he had hit on the plan of right and perfect social- 
 ism, or that mankind would adopt it. He was then 
 seventy years old, and being asked, ' Well, Mr. Owen, 
 who is your disciple ? how many men are there possessed 
 of your views who will remain after you are gone to put 
 
 309
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 them in practise ? ' replied, ^ Not one.' Eobert Owen 
 knew Fourier in his old age. He said that Fourier 
 learned of him all the truth that he had. The rest of 
 his system was imagination and the imagination of a 
 visionary. Owen made the best impression by his rare 
 benevolence. His love of men made us forget his ' three 
 errors.^ His charitable construction of men and their 
 actions was invariable. He was the better Christian in 
 his controversies with Christians. 
 
 " And truly I honor the generous ideas of the social- 
 ists, the magnificence of their theories, and the enthu- 
 siasm with which they have been urged. They appeared 
 inspired men of their time. Mr. Owen preached his doc- 
 trine of labor and reward with the fidelity and devotion 
 of a saint in the slow ears of his generation. 
 
 " One feels that these philosophers have skipped no 
 fact but one, namely, life. They treat man as a plastic 
 thing, or something that may be put up or down, ripened 
 or retarded, molded, polished, made into solid or fluid 
 or gas at the will of the leader ; or perhaps as a vegetable, 
 from which, though now a very poor crab, a very good 
 peach can by manure and exposure be in time produced — 
 and skip the faculty of life which spawns and spurns sys- 
 tems and system makers; which eludes all conditions; 
 which makes or supplants a thousand Phalanxes and New 
 Harmonies with each pulsation. 
 
 " It would be better to say, let us be lovers and serv- 
 ants of that which is just, and straightway every man 
 becomes the center of a holy and beneficent republic 
 which he sees to include all men in its laws, like that of 
 Plato and of Christ. 
 
 " Yet, in a day of small, sour, and fierce schemes, one 
 is admonished and cheered by a project of such friendly 
 aims and of such bold and generous proportions; there 
 is an intellectual courage and strength in it which is 
 superior and commanding; it certifies the presence of so 
 
 310
 
 ROBERT OWEN'S LATER LIFE 
 
 much truth in the theory, and in so far is destined to be 
 fact. 
 
 "I regard these philanthropists as themselves the 
 effects of the age in which they live, in common with so 
 many other good facts the efflorescence of the period and 
 predicting the good fruit that ripens. They were not the 
 creators that they believed themselves to be; but they 
 were unconscious prophets of the true state of society, 
 one which the tendencies of nature lead unto, one which 
 always establishes itself for the sane soul, though not 
 in that manner in which they paint it." 
 
 In his later years Mr. Owen came to recognize a truth 
 which he had overlooked in all his schemes for social re- 
 generation — the controlling influence of the spiritual na- 
 ture. As he himself confessed, while he had provided for 
 the physical, the intellectual, and the moral needs of 
 man, he had overlooked the spiritual. " Yet, this, as he 
 now saw," says Sargent, "was the most important of all 
 in the future development of mankind. . . . Owen 
 says that in looking back over his past life he can trace 
 the finger of God directing his steps, preserving his life 
 under imminent dangers, and impelling him onward on 
 many occasions." 
 
 " For the last ten years of his life," says Lloyd Jones, 
 " the proceedings of Eobert Owen had ceased to be dis- 
 cussed in the newspapers and on the platform. It need 
 not be concluded from this^ however, that he was entirely 
 inactive. He republished a considerable portion of his 
 earlier writings, among other things his plan for dealing 
 with the wretched condition of Ireland. He restated his 
 views on national education, maintaining that ' the great 
 want of the world was a good training from birth, and 
 a sound, practical education for all, based on true prin- 
 ciples.' He drew up proposals for a treaty of federation 
 between Great Britain and the United States of North 
 America — ^^the gist of which is that Great Britain and 
 
 311
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 America should declare their interests to be the same; 
 should agree to a federative union to which all other 
 nations should be admitted, and recognize it as a duty to 
 terminate war and live in the abundance of a peaceful 
 industry and friendly exchange/^ Thus Robert Owen 
 anticipated by fifty years propositions which have in 
 recent years been made for a permanent treaty of arbi- 
 tration between the United States and Great Britain. 
 
 As late as 1857, while in his eighty-sixth year, Mr. 
 Owen attended a meeting of the Social Science Associa- 
 tion at Birmingham, and read a paper on The Human 
 Eace Governed without Punishment. Attempting to 
 read a paper at the meeting of the association at Liver- 
 pool the following year, he broke down and was carried 
 from the platform. He was taken to his native town of 
 Newton, where he secured accommodations in the house 
 next to the place where he was born. Robert Dale Owen 
 was summoned from Naples, where he was charge 
 d'affaires for the United States, and, holding the hand of 
 his distinguished son, the great philanthropist breathed 
 his last. His last words were, " Relief has come." 
 
 " The agitation of Owen," writes his friend and fol- 
 lower, Lloyd Jones, " was unsuccessful in its immediate 
 results, but though the immediate consummation of our 
 hopes be denied, it is for us to work on as wisely and as 
 faithfully as we can, trusting the fulfilment will come, 
 perhaps in a better way and at a time more suitable than 
 he could appoint. For everything done by Robert Owen 
 and his friends in founding cooperative villages and work- 
 shops, there is ample recompense in the present success 
 of the cooperative idea. I think it constitutes an especial 
 claim on our gratitude that Owen brought into practical 
 activity for the public good the energies of the humblest 
 and the poorest, to augment the vast popular power by 
 which the present cooperative movement is maintained. 
 It is only since Owen^s influence has been felt that it can 
 
 312
 
 ROBERT OWEN'S LATER LIFE 
 
 truly be said the masses of the people have been brought 
 collectively into action for the promotion of objects 
 which have been attended by results that are likely to be 
 permanent; because, while they secure general advan- 
 tages, they confer a general discipline and strength. 
 The cooperative movement is rapidly becoming a national 
 movement, sustained by the development and activity of 
 an ever-increasing popular knowledge. ... In every 
 effort he made for the benefit of society his aims were 
 honest, his industry unimpeachable, his generosity un- 
 bounded, his sacrifices great and unhesitatingly incurred. 
 He labored for the people; he died working for them, 
 and his last thought was for their welfare.^' 
 
 313
 
 CHAPTEE XXIII 
 
 ISTEW harmony's LATER HISTORY 
 
 When Eobert Owen's splendid social bark went to 
 wreck upon the rocks and shoals of human nature at New 
 Harmony, the company of genius which in part composed 
 its crew was left stranded on what then seemed a desert 
 island in the illimitable wilderness. But that little cen- 
 ter of progressive thought and philanthropic spirit be- 
 came a lighthouse destined to diffuse its guiding rays far 
 beyond the limits of the frontier State of which it was a 
 part. Through William Maclure New Harmony was to 
 give a vast impetus to popular education, particularly 
 throughout the West ; through David Dale Owen and his 
 coadjutors it was to accelerate the development of Ameri- 
 can science; through Frances Wright it was to fix its 
 indelible impress upon American popular sentiment; 
 through Eobert Dale Owen it was to become a potent 
 factor in American institutional development; through 
 Josiah Warren it was to affect the trend of economic 
 thought, and through Eobert Owen, his views modified 
 in the great school of experience he had set up at New 
 Harmony, it was to exert an influence in fixing the tend- 
 encies of the cooperative movement in England and the 
 United States. 
 
 The residence in New Harmony of William Maclure, 
 Gerard Troost, Thomas Say, Charles A. Lesueur, and the 
 younger Owens, made it the rendezvous of scientists for 
 many years. Prince Maximilian von Neuweid, with his 
 corps of scientific explorers, spent the winter of 1832 at 
 
 314
 
 NEW HARMONTS LATER HISTORY 
 
 New Harmony, making a careful study of local natural 
 history in company with Say and Lesueur. Prince Maxi- 
 milian was one of the most indefatigable scientific ex- 
 plorers of the first half of this century. He left the Prus- 
 sian Army after attaining the rank of general and set out 
 on an expedition through the interior of Brazil, studying 
 especially the natural history, geology, and ethnology of 
 that region. He published the results of this expedition 
 in several volumes. In 1832-^34 he traveled in the United 
 States "under the title of Baron Braunberg, accom- 
 panied by his artist Bodmer and his taxidermist Drei- 
 doppel." After visiting the larger Eastern cities, he em- 
 barked from Pittsburg for New Harmony on October 9, 
 1832. He arrived at New Harmony on October 19th. In 
 the following spring he descended the Wabash and Ohio 
 rivers to Cairo by steamboat, thence ascending the Miss- 
 issippi to the mouth of the Missouri and the Missouri to 
 the Eocky Mountain region. In May and June, 1833, he 
 was again at New Harmony. Early in June, 1834, accom- 
 panied by C. A. Lesueur, he went by wagon from New 
 Harmony through Owensville, Princeton, Vincennes, 
 " thence eastward very near the route now followed by 
 the B. and 0. S. W. Ey. across Indiana; thence north- 
 ward to Lake Erie; thence eastward via Niagara Falls 
 to Boston.^' His observations during his American jour- 
 neys were embodied in two large volumes, entitled Eeise 
 Durch Nord Amerika, published at Coblentz, 1838-43 
 — " one quarto volume of texts and illustrations and 
 another folio volume of maps and texts." " An English 
 version of this text was published in 1843," says Dr. 
 Schnack, "but the translation is a very free one, and 
 therefore not accurate or available for scientific purposes. 
 His journal contains many valuable observations in 
 almost all departments of physical and natural science, 
 being especially interesting on birds, reptiles, and flowers, 
 not omitting geology, and the habits and manners of the 
 
 315
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 natives. The Maximilian Collection of Birds is in the 
 possession of the American Museum of Natural History, 
 in New York City, and is regarded as a valuable collec- 
 tion. In his journal he gives a list of fifty-eight trees 
 and mentions a large number of shrubs he had observed 
 in the vicinity of New Harmony/^ 
 
 In June, 1839, Dr. David Dale Owen, who, since the 
 close of the community experiments, had returned to 
 Europe in order to pursue his studies in geology, in 1835 
 had taken a medical degree from the Ohio Medical Col- 
 lege, and in 1837 had been commissioned to make a pre- 
 liminary geological survey of Indiana, was appointed 
 United States geologist. His headquarters were estab- 
 lished at New Harmony, and he was given instructions 
 to make a survey of the Northwest, including what is 
 now Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, and the northern part 
 of Illinois, with a view to locating mineral lands pre- 
 liminary to the sale of the public domain. This great 
 work was completed in two months. Dr. Schnack thus 
 describes Dr. Owen's interesting method of work : " A 
 large number of men, many of them eminent scientists, 
 were employed. The entire corps was divided into two 
 companies, each having an intelligent head to look after 
 the work; and to each company was allotted a district, 
 in which every section was to be visited and samples of 
 the rock, etc., collected. 
 
 " At stated points Dr. Owen would meet each camp 
 and study the work accomplished. The country was 
 almost without settlements, and each camp had to be 
 supplied with hunters, whose duty it was to furnish game 
 for subsistence. In looking over Dr. Owen's report one 
 can not fail to appreciate the skill and fidelity with which 
 this great geologist performed this extensive survey un- 
 der immense difficulties and in such a short time. He 
 carried with him, on the trip up the Mississippi Eiver, 
 supplies of the most important rocks, minerals, and re- 
 
 316
 
 NEW HARMONY'S LATER HISTORY 
 
 r 
 
 agents. These were exposed on a table in the cabin of the 
 steamboat, and he would daily give his men instruction 
 in geology and point out the characteristic rocks of the 
 leading formations, and the minerals likely to be found 
 in them/' 
 
 In this way, by the time they reached the place to dis- 
 embark they had been made acquainted with the first 
 principles of geology. " In after years/' continues Dr. 
 Schnack, " this region was more systematically surveyed 
 by Dr. Owen. The headquarters of the United States 
 Geological Survey continued at New Harmony up to 
 1856, when, at the completion of the Smithsonian Insti- 
 tute building at Washington, they were conveyed to that 
 building. A part of the immense collection was taken to 
 Washington, another to the Indiana State University at 
 Bloomington, and a third to the American Museum of 
 Natural History in Central Park, New York. In passing 
 through the first and last of these institutions, I have 
 been surprised to find such a large proportion of the 
 specimens in all departments labeled as coming from the 
 New Harmony collection." 
 
 When New Harmony became the headquarters of the 
 United States Geological Survey the old granary-fortress 
 of the Harmonists, which had been equipped with gra- 
 tings and loopholes by the Eappites for protection against 
 marauders, was turned into a museum. In this were 
 stored not only the specimens collected by surveying par- 
 ties, but the collections made by Thomas Say in the sur- 
 rounding States, and by William Maclure in Spain, Portu- 
 gal, Italy, France, Mexico, and the West Indies. Over 
 the old desk at New Harmony Hall lectures on chemistry, 
 geology, and biology were delivered by the leading scien- 
 tists of the country and the foreign travelers attracted 
 to New Harmony by its international reputation as a 
 scientific center. 
 
 One of Dr. Owen's most valuable assistants in the 
 
 317
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 prosecution of the geological surveys undertaken from 
 New Harmony was Eiehard Owen, who was a young man 
 of eighteen, " fresh from the schools of Europe," at the 
 conclusion of the community period. Another was the 
 coworker of Thomas Say, Charles A. Lesueur, who lived 
 in New Harmony many years, exploring the mounds of 
 southern Indiana, writing voluminously on the fishes and 
 mollusks of the West, and " making his living largely 
 with his pencil in painting and making sketches." Le- 
 sueur finally returned to France and spent the last years 
 of his life as curator of the museum at Havre. John 
 Chappelsmith, " a wealthy Englishman, an artist and 
 engraver," drew many of the cuts of fossils for the geo- 
 logical reports, and made meteorological observations for, 
 a number of years. Mrs. Chappelsmith was an enthu- 
 siastic student of entomology, and had some reputation 
 as a lecturer. 
 
 James Sampson, who came to New Harmony in 1828, 
 was another scientific student of the David Owen regime. 
 " After making in the dry-goods business a sufficient in- 
 come," wrote Colonel Eiehard Owen, "he devoted him- 
 self to collecting objects of natural history, by hunting 
 and fishing as well as by exchange, until he had accu- 
 mrdated quite an extensive collection, more especially of 
 land and fresh-water shells and archeological specimens, 
 his whole residence being virtually a museum." 
 
 Alexander Maclure, brother of William Maclure, lived 
 in New Harmony many years, engaged in study and the 
 administration of his brother^s affairs. He was especially 
 interested in social science. 
 
 Connected with the geological survey, to again quote 
 Dr. Schnack, were " Colonel Charles Whittlesy, the vet- 
 eran geologist; F. B. Meek, the eminent paleontologist, 
 who determined and sketched most of the fossil animals 
 for the reports of the Illinois geological survey ; Leo Les- 
 quereux, the noted fossil botanist, who has described and 
 
 318
 
 NEW HARMONY'S LATER HISTORY 
 
 sketched more fossil plants of IN'orth America than all 
 the rest of the authors combined; . . . Dr. Elder- 
 horst, author of a standard work on the Blowpipe, and 
 Dr. C. C. Parry, who served on Dr. Owen^s geological sur- 
 vey of the Northwest in 1848, and whose knowledge of 
 the Western flora was probably exceeded by none.''^ 
 Eobert Henry Fauntleroy, of the United States Coast 
 Survey, spent several years at Xew Harmony, where he 
 made some interesting experiments in magnetic declina- 
 tion and intensity. He married, in 1835, Miss Jane Dale 
 Owen, Robert Owen's daughter. Samuel Bolton, an Eng- 
 lish chemist, lectured frequently on his specialty in Xew 
 Harmony, beginning as early as 1828. Evidence of the 
 importance of Xew Harmony as a scientific center is 
 found in the number of State geologists appointed from 
 that place. David Dale Owen occupied this position in 
 Kentucky from 1854 to 1857^ in Arkansas from 1857 to 
 1859, and in 1859 and 1860 was State geologist of Indi- 
 ana, his service being terminated by his death. He was 
 succeeded in Indiana by Richard Owen, who later became 
 colonel of an Indiana infantry regiment during the civil 
 war, and for fifteen years, beginning in 1864, was pro- 
 fessor of natural science in the Indiana State University, 
 — ^the first of a series of great students and teachers who 
 have given this institution wide repute as a center of 
 instruction and research in natural science. Richard 
 Owen survived all other members of the famous Owen 
 second generation, dying in his eighty-first year at 
 New Harmony on March 24, 1890. Dr. Gerard Troost 
 became a professor of chemistry and mineralogy in the 
 Nashville University, and was later State geologist of 
 Tennessee. Major Sidney Lyon superintended the geo- 
 detic and topographical survey of Kentucky. Professor 
 A. H. Worthen served as state geologist of Illinois from 
 1858 until his death nearly thirty years later, during 
 which time he published seven volumes of reports, " con- 
 
 319
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 stituting probably the most complete geological survey 
 that has been made of any Western State/' Prof. E. T. 
 Cox, son of one of the Owenite communists, was State 
 geologist of Indiana from 1868 to 1880. Dr. J. C. Nor- 
 wood conducted an early State geological survey of 
 Illinois. 
 
 Among the visitors to New Harmony while it was a 
 scientific Mecca were Audubon, the ornithologist, then a 
 storekeeper at Henderson, Kentucky, forty miles distant, 
 and Dr. George Engelman, who rode to the place on 
 horseback from St. Louis in February, 1840, only to miss 
 seeing the coterie of scientists he had expected to meet 
 there. He chronicles as the result of his trip the sight 
 of a " broad-fruited maple in bloom.^' 
 
 Sir Charles Lyell, the eminent Scottish geologist, was 
 one of the last of the many European scientific explorers 
 who visited New Harmony during its scientific golden age. 
 On his second tour of the United States in 1845-'46, he 
 came by boat from New Orleans up the Mississippi and 
 Ohio to Mount Vernon, thence by stage to New Harmony. 
 In his notes he says : " We spent several days very agree- 
 ably at New Harmony, where we were most hospitably en- 
 tertained bv Dr. and Mrs. David Dale Owen. 
 Some large buildings, in the German style of architec- 
 ture, stand conspicuous, . . . the principal edifice 
 being now appropriated as a public museum, in which I 
 found a good geological collection, both fossils and min- 
 erals, made during the State survey, and I was glad to 
 learn that by an act of the Indiana Legislature, with a 
 view of encouraging science, this building is exempt from 
 taxation. Lectures on chemistry and geology are given 
 here in the winter. Many families of superior intelli- 
 gence, English, Swiss, and German, have settled in the 
 place, and there is a marked simplicity in their manner 
 of living which reminded us of Germany. They are very 
 sociable, and there were many private parties, where 
 
 320
 
 
 1^ 
 
 as 
 
 i3 
 
 
 32 

 
 NEW. HARMONY'S LATER HISTORY 
 
 there was music and dancing, and a public assembly once 
 a week^ to one of which we went^ where quadrilles and 
 waltzes were danced, the band consisting of amateur 
 musicians. . . . 
 
 " We found also, among the residents, a brother of 
 William Maclure, the geologist, who placed his excellent 
 library and carriage at our disposal. He lends his books 
 freely among the citizens, and they are much read. We 
 were glad to hear many recent publications, some of the 
 most expensively illustrated works, discussed and criti- 
 cized in society here. We were also charmed to meet 
 with many children, happy and merry, yet perfectly obe- 
 dient; and once more to see what, after the experience of 
 the last two or three months, struck us as a singular 
 phenomenon in the New World, a shy child. There is no 
 church or place of public worship in New Harmony, a 
 peculiarity which we never remarked in any town of 
 half the size in the course of our tour of the United 
 States. Being here on week-days, only, I had no oppor- 
 tunity of observing whether on Sunday there were any 
 meetings for social worship. I heard that when the 
 people of Evansville once reproached the citizens of this 
 place for having no churches, they observed that they also 
 had no shops for the sale of spirituous liquors, which is 
 still a characteristic of New Harmony." 
 
 22 321
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 THE MACLURE LIBRAEY MOVEMENT 
 
 In the person of William Maclure, New Harmony 
 gave to the United States its first great founder of 
 libraries. Though the earlier gifts to public libraries 
 from the " Father of American Geology ^^ lacked the mu- 
 nificence of those by which the Master of Skibo Castle has 
 startled the world, yet they were equally as generous 
 and even more timely, for they were given in pioneer 
 days, when standards of culture were being established, 
 when frontier manhood and womanhood were being 
 formed, when the foundations for the public-library sys- 
 tems of to-day were being laid. 
 
 Though the utter collapse of his educational experi- 
 ments at New Harmony during and after the Owen. 
 regime discouraged Maclure from any further attempts 
 to establish self-supporting schools for children, not 
 even old age and failing health abated his interest in the 
 productive classes nor his conviction that education was 
 the only means by which those classes could be rescued 
 from the oppression under which he believed them to be 
 suffering. Feeling the rapid approach of death, Maclure 
 determined to attempt one more venture for the edu- 
 cation of those who " earn their living in the sweat of 
 their brows." 
 
 Nine years after his departure from New Harmony 
 to Mexico, Maclure, a stranger in a strange land, sick 
 unto death, focused a renewed benevolence upon the 
 little town that had been the scene of bitter defeat to 
 
 322
 
 WILLIAM MACLUEE.
 
 TEE MACLURE LIBRARY MOVEMENT 
 
 his former educational experiment; and upon his native 
 land, whose social and industrial system he had so often 
 and so bitterly denounced. 
 
 The Working Men's Institute was the only one of 
 Maclure's pathetic educational efforts at New Harmony 
 which weathered the collapse of The New Moral World 
 successfully. This institute, modeled after the noted 
 Mechanics' Institutes then so much in vogue in the Brit- 
 ish Isles, was a club of laboring men holding stated meet- 
 ings from house to house for the discussion of social, 
 political, and religious questions and for mutual instruc- 
 tion. A few years after Maclure's departure the insti- 
 tute " went to sleep." He determined to resurrect the 
 organization, give it a permanent home, add a library to 
 it, and make it a model for other and similar institutions 
 to be established by him in other parts of the country. 
 
 As a result of a vigorous correspondence between 
 Maclure and the citizens of New Harmony " who labor 
 with their hands," the Working Men's Institute was reju- 
 venated and incorporated under the laws of the State. 
 He immediately gave the organization an order upon a 
 London bookseller for books to the value of one thousand 
 dollars, and conveyed to it as a permanent home a wing 
 of the old Eappite church. 
 
 Death cut short his further plans. While returning 
 to the Wabash country for the purpose of executing a 
 trust providing generously for this, his anticipated 
 " model library and institute," he expired near the little 
 village of San Angel, Mexico, after a short illness, on 
 the 27th of March, 1840. 
 
 In his last will and testament, drawn and signed be- 
 fore the United States Consul in the City of Mexico, 
 Maclure provided for the inauguration of a system of 
 libraries. Though his estate was but a pittance as com- 
 pared with the holdings of Mr. Carnegie, yet it was both 
 formidable and peculiar for the age in which it was 
 
 323
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 accumulated. ^^ It seems strange to read in the will of an 
 Indianian (for such we must hold Maclure to be)/' writes 
 Jacob P. Dunn, in an interesting monograph on the his- 
 tory of the Indiana library system, " the disposition not 
 only of some thirty buildings at New Harmony and about 
 ten thousand acres of land in that vicinity, but also over 
 a million reals in Spanish securities, his house No. 7 Calle 
 del Lobo, in Alicante; his Convent of St. Gines and ac- 
 compan3rLng estate of ten thousand acres in Valencia; his 
 convent and estate of Grosmano, near Alicante; his estate 
 of Carman de Croix; the Valley of Murada; forty-one 
 thousand francs in French securities; notes and mort- 
 gages on properties scattered from Big Lick plantation 
 in Virginia to various parts of England, France, and Spain ; 
 the total remaining editions of Michaux's Sylvia, Condil- 
 lac's Logic, and Garner's Dictionary; more than one hun- 
 dred boxes of minerals, prints, etc., and near two thousand 
 copper plates of engravings and illustrations of various 
 kinds." 
 
 The will by which Maclure hoped to create perma- 
 nent libraries for the working people of his native 
 country sets forth, with its maker's characteristic vehe- 
 mence, hatred for the non-productive classes, respect for 
 labor, confidence in the worthiness of the common people, 
 and an abiding faith in the regenerating virtue of edu- 
 cation. " The power and influence of the classes who 
 live by the ignorance of the millions has prevented the 
 spread of knowledge." " Industry and persevering man- 
 ual labor puts the last finish to every species of prop- 
 erty before it can enter into the value of either indi- 
 vidual or national wealth." " In all the countries I have 
 had access to I have found the laborers the most honest, 
 upright, and useful classes, and the only class that can 
 make a good use of knowledge to diminish the immor- 
 ality, vice, and crime producing poverty, ignorance, mis- 
 ery, and wretchedness." 
 
 324
 
 TEE MACLURE LIBRARY MOVEMENT 
 
 The will made the testator's brother^ Alexander 
 Maclure, and his sister^ Anna Maclure, his executors, and 
 directed among other things that they should donate 
 " the sum of five hundred dollars to any club or society 
 of laborers who may establish in any part of the United 
 States a readinf'- and lecture-room with a library of at 
 least one hundred volumes/' The instrument proceeds 
 to define " laborers " as " the working classes who labor 
 with their hands and earn their living in the sweat of 
 their brows." 
 
 Being advised that the trust in favor of these libra- 
 ries was void because created for the benefit of bodies 
 not in existence, Maclure's brother and sister, though 
 generously remembered in the will, proceeded to consume 
 the entire estate, of which, in the failure of the provisions 
 respecting libraries, they were the sole heirs. 
 
 But a young attorney of Posey County, A. P. Hovey, 
 afterward governor of Indiana, believing the trust to be 
 good in law, fought the cause of the libraries through 
 the Supreme Court of the State, which established the 
 trust and made Hovey its administrator. In 1855 the 
 estate was finally converted into funds and the distribu- 
 tion began. Organizations styling themselves " Working 
 Men's Institutes," " Mechanics' Associations," and " Lit- 
 erary Societies " pretended at least to comply with the ^ 
 provisions of the will respecting both the personnel of 
 their membership and the collection of books. To these 
 donations of five hundred dollars each were made. The 
 following table gives in order the Maclure libraries thus 
 established in Indiana, the location being given by county, 
 with the name of the town following in parenthesis when 
 shown by the records: 
 
 Posey Co. (Mt. Vernon); Flo5^d (New Albany); Owen 
 (Gosport); Parke (Annapolis); Posey (Poseyville) ; Hunt- 
 ington (Huntington); Spencer (Liberty); Grant (Mar- 
 ion) ; Posey (Farmersville) ; DeKalb (Vienna) ; Switzer- 
 
 325
 
 TEE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 land (Yevay); Owen (Spencer); Ohio ( ); Henry 
 
 (Knightstown) ; Hancock (Greenfield); Wayne (Center- 
 ville) ; Bartholomew (Columbus) ; Decatur (Greens- 
 burg) ; Lawrence (Bedford) ; Fayette ( Conner sville) ; 
 Posey (Stewardsville) ; Dearborn (Aurora); Gibson (Bar- 
 ren); Martin (Mt. Pleasant); Adams (Decatur); St. Jo- 
 seph (South Bend) ; Fulton (Eochester) ; Knox (Vin- 
 cennes); Boone (Thorntown); Elkhart (Goshen); White 
 (Monticello) ; Clay (Brazil); Miami (Peru); Greene (Lin- 
 ton); Gibson (Princeton); Hamilton (Westfield); Hen- 
 dricks (Danville); Crawford (Leavenworth); Fountain 
 (Covington) ; Tippecanoe (Lafayette) ; DeKalb (Au- 
 burn); Clinton (Frankfort); Blackford (Hartford City); 
 Lagrange (Lima); Parke (Rockville); Whitley (Columbia 
 City); Starke (Knox); Noble (Albion); Putnam (Green- 
 castle) ; Kosciusko (Warsaw) ; Greene (Bloomfield) ; Jack- 
 son ( ) ; Porter (Valparaiso) ; Warrick (Boonville) ; 
 
 Lagrange (Lagrange); Jay (Portland); Martin (Dover 
 Hill) ; Fountain (Attica) ; Pike (Petersburg) ; Benton 
 (Oxford); Posey (Wadesville) ; Jefferson (South Han- 
 over); Sullivan (Sullivan); Gibson (Snake Run); Hamil- 
 ton (Noblesville) ; Wabash (Wabash); St. Joseph (Misha- 
 waka); Monroe (Bloomington) ; Tippecanoe (Farmers); 
 Shelby (Shelbyville) ; Perry (Cannelton); Rush (Rush- 
 ville); Madison (Anderson); Dearborn (Lawrenceburg) ; 
 Union (Liberty); Howard (Kokomo); Floyd (ISTew Al- 
 bany); Orange (Paoli); Orange (Lost River); Washington 
 (Salem) ; Jennings (Vernon) ; Johnson (Franklin) ; Dela- 
 ware (Muncie); Wayne (Richmond); Posey (Cynthiana); 
 Floyd (New Albany); Union (Cottage Grove); Morgan 
 (Mooresville) ; Harrison (Corydon); Clark (Jefferson- 
 ville); Tipton (Tipton); Spencer (Rockport); Ripley 
 (Versailles); Scott (Lexington); Sullivan (New Leba- 
 non); Randolph (Winchester); Allen (Fort Wayne); 
 Franklin (Springfield); Posey (New Harmony); Vander- 
 burg (Evansville) ; Clark (Charlestown) ; Morgan (Mar- 
 
 326
 
 THE MACLURE LIBRARY MOVEMENT 
 
 tinsville); Henry (IS'ewcastle) ; Wayne (Cambridge City); 
 Vermillion (Eugene); Jackson (Seymour); Putnam 
 (Bainbridge) ; Jefferson (North Madison); Greene 
 (Worthington) ; Vigo (Terre Haute); Sullivan (Car- 
 lisle); Crawford (Alton); Pulaski (Winamac); Carroll 
 (Delphi) ; Steuben (Angola) ; Montgomery (Crawfords- 
 ville); Clay (Bowling Green); Gibson (Patoka); Mont- 
 gomery ( ); Gibson (Marsh Creek); Franklin 
 
 (Brookville) ; Cass (Logansport) ; Boone (Lebanon) ; 
 Lake (Crown Point) ; Warren (Williamsport) ; Vermillion 
 (Newport); Wells (Bluffton); Putnam (Portland MiUs); 
 Elkhart (Elkhart) ; Parke (Bloomingdale) ; Posey (Smith 
 Township); Gibson (Black Eiver); Daviess (Washing- 
 ton); Brown (Nashville); Jasper (Eensselaer) ; Marshall 
 (Plymouth); Howard (Poplar Grove); Johnson (Edin- 
 burg); Laporte (Michigan City); Jackson (IJniontown) ; 
 Vermillion (Clinton); Johnson (Greenwood). 
 
 One hundred and forty-four of these libraries were 
 inaugurated in Indiana through Maclure's benefactions. 
 Eighty-nine out of ninety-two counties were the recipi- 
 ents of donations. Sixteen organizations in Illinois were 
 aided, making in all one hundred and sixty libraries cre- 
 ated by the distribution of eighty thousand dollars under 
 the provisions of the will. 
 
 Though it suffered many vicissitudes, the New Har- 
 mony Working Men's Institute has been the only suc- 
 cessful and permanent library established through the 
 well-meant but misdirected benevolence of the first Amer- 
 ican geologist. The organization realized but little from 
 the aid which Maclure had planned for it. Death pre- 
 vented an endowment from his hands. The London book- 
 seller against whom the order for books to the value of 
 one thousand dollars was drawn became a bankrupt, and 
 the order was only partially honored. The old German 
 church, at best a crude library home, tumbled into 
 ruins above the aspiring head of the " model library and 
 
 32'^
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 institute/^ Nor did the rejuvenated organization seek 
 to avail itself of the provisions of the will. But while 
 Maelure failed to render to his first and best beloved 
 library the aid which he had so fondly planned, yet he 
 did breathe into the dead institute the breath of life, 
 turn its activities into the direction of library work, and 
 set its feet in the paths of permanency. For from the 
 date of the Maelure grant the New Harmony Working 
 Men^s Library has maintained a continuous existence. 
 To quote the words of Mr. Dransfield, the present libra- 
 rian, it " has grown slowly but surely." 
 
 Permanent itself, the Working Men's Library, on the 
 site of so much that had proved visionary and futile, 
 profited by the demise of neighboring organizations. A 
 Maclurean Institute, organized under the provisions of 
 the will which Hovey had so faithfully labored to estab- 
 lish, after a two-years^ struggle gave up the ghost and 
 turned its books, some three hundred volumes, over to 
 the older society. At the close of the war, an old town- 
 ship school library of six hundred volumes was absorbed. 
 
 Others emulated the earlier generosity of Maelure. 
 In the year 1854 a member of the corporation, limited 
 by the terms of its charter to twenty-six members, died 
 leaving one thousand dollars for the purchase of books 
 " treating of science and fact." Twenty years later, out 
 of an abundant prosperity and in grateful remembrance 
 of the early struggles of their society, the later followers 
 of George Eapp, then known as the Economy Society, pur- 
 chased the dilapidated old church, tore it down, converted 
 it into a school building, which they presented to the to^vn 
 of New Harmony, and at an expense of two thousand 
 dollars repaired the wing owned and occupied by the Work- 
 ing Men's Institute and Library. 
 
 By far the most substantial aid received by this 
 library, however, came through the repeated generosity 
 of Dr. Murphy, a citizen of New Harmony, and one 
 
 328
 
 TEE MACLURE LIBRARY MOVEMENT 
 
 of the twenty-six members composing the library cor- 
 poration. Dr. Murphy was a waif^ born in the city of 
 Cork, Ireland, in December, 1813. At a tender age he 
 was brought to Louisville, Kentucky, by a brutal man who 
 claimed to be his uncle. Mistreatment forced him to run 
 away. His wanderings brought him barefooted and 
 starving to New Harmony shortly after the inauguration 
 of Owen^s new social order. The people of the Com- 
 mune received him with open arms, supported him, and 
 educated him in the model schools with which Maclure 
 hoped to revolutionize the educational systems of a con- 
 tinent, and in which Murphy was taught the trade of a 
 tailor. 
 
 After the collapse of Owen^s scheme Murphy plied 
 his trade in the little town that had proved a haven of 
 refuge to him. Unsuccessful in this vocation he at- 
 tempted farming, in which he likewise failed. Eeturning 
 to New Harmony he engaged in the general clothing 
 business, in which his financial failure was complete. 
 Leaving New Harmony he attended a medical school in 
 Louisville, graduating with distinction. Eeturning to 
 the scene of his former misfortunes Murphy entered 
 upon a successful career as a general practitioner. For- 
 tunate investments added to the lucrative income which 
 he received from his professional work, until he and his 
 wife, a childless couple, had amassed a considerable 
 fortune. 
 
 With the characteristic loyalty and gratitude of his 
 race Murphy sought some method of discharging his 
 debt to the community to which he owed so much. From 
 its earliest revival he had been deeply interested in the 
 affairs of the Working Men^s Library, and it became the 
 object of his generosity. 
 
 In 1893 he induced the Library Society to sell its 
 old quarters and assisted it to erect the building now 
 occupied. This is a handsome brick structure containing 
 
 329
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 in addition to its excellent library quarters a large audi- 
 torium^ a museum, and a very creditable art gallery. Dr. 
 Murphy made contributions of books and specimens for 
 the museum and filled the art gallery with costly paintings 
 purchased in Italy. In 1899 he made a further donation 
 of forty-five thousand dollars. In 1900 the gift was in- 
 creased to seventy-six, thousand dollars. At his death, in 
 December, 1900, the sum total was increased to one hun- 
 dred and fifty-five thousand dollars. 
 
 The present estimated wealth of the society is two hun- 
 dred thousand dollars, from which is derived an annual 
 income of six thousand dollars. Two thousand dollars per 
 year is spent for books and periodicals, and a lecture 
 course costing twelve hundred dollars is offered each win- 
 ter. From four hundred and twenty-five volumes in 1847, 
 the number upon the open shelves of the library has grown 
 to more than seventeen thousand, to which the yearly ad- 
 ditions are in excess of twelve hundred books. No other 
 towTi of even double the same population can boast such 
 library facilities as can the site where the stolid Rappites 
 toiled and dozed away their narrow lives in ignorant con- 
 tentment. The number of books per capita in the New 
 Harmony library is probably greater than that of any 
 other public library. Better still, the circulation per 
 capita exceeds that of all competitors. Best of all, it is 
 claimed that the per cent of illiteracy on the site of the 
 first great Pestalozzian school is less than at any other 
 point in the United States. 
 
 Two features of the New Harmony library merit spe- 
 cial commendation. One is the rare good judgment con- 
 stantly displayed in the purchase of new books. Mr. 
 Carnegie advises that the novel of the hour be sub- 
 jected to a three-years^ test at the hands of the reading 
 public before it is given recognition by a free library. 
 The book committee of the sole surviving institution 
 founded by the earlier Carnegie has obeyed this injunc- 
 
 330
 
 [f TEE MAC LUBE LIBRARY MOVEMENT 
 
 ■v tion almost to the very letter. The shelves of no public 
 ': library are freer from the worthless fiction by which, 
 , : in an effort to pander to the popular clamor, the intel- 
 • lectual standard of too many communities has been low- 
 i ered and the literary tastes of too many readers perverted. 
 jk The other commendable feature of the Working Men's 
 ■ Institute is the extraordinary care and diligence which, 
 ^ for many years, has been exercised in the collection and 
 preservation of local history material. The New Moral 
 World was not only the most ambitious communistic ex- 
 periment which the world has yet witnessed, but it was 
 also the effort to found an ideal social order which has 
 bequeathed to posterity the most complete record of its own 
 proceedings. The older Owen and his followers believed 
 that the experiments which they were conducting on the 
 Wabash would be imitated by other community groups, 
 and ultimately lead to the peaceful revolution of society. 
 Hence a faithful account of the proceedings of the 
 parent community must be kept, both because of the 
 success and fame that was destined to attend its philan- 
 thropic efforts, and because it was to serve as a prototype 
 and guide for other communities certain to follow in its 
 wake. The records of no municipality of these latter days 
 surpass in fulness and accuracy those which the semi- 
 visionary, semipractical citizens of The New Moral World 
 made for their Utopia. 
 
 These records ultimately became the property of the 
 Working Men's Institute. From the day on which Ma- 
 clure breathed into the defunct organization a new spark 
 of life, its chief pleasure and pride has been to preserve 
 and to augment them. Every publication, every news- 
 paper, every scrap of material treating of any phase of 
 the problems which The New Moral World sought to 
 solve, or throwing additional light upon any phase of the 
 Eapp and Owen regimes, have been carefully culled and 
 filed. The very ends of the earth have been searched for 
 
 331
 
 TEE NEW HAR3I0NY MOVEMENT 
 
 additional facts concerning the unfortunate social ventures 
 of which the New Harmony library has constituted itself 
 the historian. This labor of love has widened until it has 
 included within its scope the traditions and early struggles 
 of the county of which the site of the labors of the Rapp- 
 ites and Owenites was formerly the county seat. To-day 
 the library is a repository of valuable sociological and his- 
 torical material^ much of which can not be duplicated 
 elsewhere. 'No other known library approaches it in the 
 completeness of its local history collection. Valuable both 
 in quantity and quality as are the general publications 
 upon its shelves, by far the most precious asset, measured 
 from any standpoint which this library possesses, is the 
 record of memorable early days in the Pocket, which have 
 been so faithfully and intelligently compiled, especially 
 during the regime of the present secretary of the Work- 
 ing Men's Institute, Mr. Arthur Dransfield. 
 
 This is a feature of library work which every similar 
 institution would do well to emulate. Eeminiscences of 
 the rapidly disappearing pioneer, records yellow with 
 age, old and current newspaper files, publications and 
 contributions of every type reciting any fact or achieve- 
 ment of the community or its citizenship — all these 
 should be gathered and preserved in some archive. If 
 need be, money should be appropriated out of the com- 
 mon treasury of the library to further this worthy duty. 
 No similar amount spent for any other given feature of 
 the work will confer as much ultimate value and benefit 
 upon the institution and its patrons. Where the vicinity 
 is not blessed with a public library, or, though so blessed, 
 the library fails to rise to the mark of its high calling 
 as local historian, then some other local group or organ- 
 ization should undertake the task. And who so compe- 
 tent to discharge this necessary labor of love as the teach- 
 ers, through their township and county organizations? 
 
 How different the fate of the Maclurean libraries 
 
 332
 
 THE MACLUBE LIBRARY MOVEMENT 
 
 created by the will ! " There was nothing in their forma- 
 tion to insure and but little to encourage perpetuity/^ 
 The preliminary library of one hundred books collected 
 as a condition precedent to the bestowal of the testator's 
 bounty usually consisted of old books of all sorts, hastily 
 gathered together and possessing neither value nor dura- 
 bility. The books purchased through Maclure's gener- 
 osity were almost exclusively standard works of a scien- 
 tific and technical character, designed for a limited 
 coterie of readers, and possessing little or no interest for 
 the majority of the very class which their donor sought 
 to reach. For this strange collection of books there was 
 neither a competent custodian nor suitable quarters. What, 
 with lack of supervision and rough usage, they melted 
 away. And there was neither taxation nor endowment, 
 a testator nor a " good angel " in the flesh to replace them ! 
 What books survived the perilous ordeal of a brief circu- 
 lation were in many instances divided among the remain- 
 ing members and became their individual properly. 
 
 In 1854, under the provisions of a law for which 
 Eobert Dale Owen stood sponsor, township libraries were 
 organized by the State of Indiana. These, separate and 
 independent from the Maclure libraries, gradually ab- 
 sorbed such of the latter as had remained intact. Here 
 the earlier Carnegie planned better than he knew; for 
 the books by which his will so pathetically sought to 
 found libraries for the benefit of a distinct class in 
 society, became the nucleus of many of the free public 
 libraries of township and city which, with their doors 
 wide flung to rich and poor, constitute such a proud 
 feature of American life to-day. 
 
 So rapidly, however, did the Maclure books disappear 
 that, as early as 1890, the special reports made by the 
 county superintendents of schools on the various libraries 
 of the several counties of the commonwealth mention 
 but two Maclure libraries in addition to the formidable 
 
 333
 
 TEE NE\Y HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 one which the citizens of New Harmony have main- 
 tained so creditably. These are located at Williamsport, 
 Warren County, and Princeton, Gibson County. " At 
 Williamsport one hundred and forty-five volumes of a 
 Maclure library are deposited in the high-school build- 
 ing, and the public is privileged to use them." At 
 Princeton an old collection of books purchased by a gift 
 which Hovey made possible, initiated the present town 
 library of three thousand six hundred and seventy-three 
 volumes. 
 
 It is possible that a thorough search would reveal 
 the presence of a few Maclure books in other libraries. 
 The remainder of the one hundred and sixty collections 
 have become less than a tradition. Outside of the town 
 and county in which he exercised his greatest philan- 
 thropy the name of Maclure is known to but few of the 
 most intelligent citizens of his adopted State. " Where 
 known, it is usually connected with a vague recollection 
 of some sort of library of which very little knowledge 
 is had." 
 
 The New Harmony library is a monument of which 
 the great Scotch ironmaster, were he the founder, might 
 well be proud. If the life of the earlier Carnegie has 
 accomplished no other good he has not lived in vain, for 
 in the Working Men's Institute his philanthropic efforts 
 have reaped a posthumous success granted to the labors of 
 but few men. It is difficult to assign to Maclure's other 
 benevolent experiments their true place and worth. 
 Measured by their permanency, failure must be writ in 
 large letters across the face of all of them, from the Pesta- 
 lozzian School to the^remotest Maclurean institute. Meas- 
 ured by their influence upon men and institutions, success 
 must be written across the face of his benevolence ; for the 
 far-reaching results radiating in every direction from 
 them, furthered better than he had hoped, and in ways 
 which he had not anticipated, the uplift of humanity. 
 
 334
 
 THE MACLURE LIBRARY MOVEMENT 
 
 Measured by the spirit which prompted them, their un- 
 selfishness entitles the " Father of American Geology " to 
 an honored place in the long list of benefactors who have 
 dedicated their time and their substance to the better- 
 ment of men. 
 
 335
 
 CHAPTEE XXV 
 
 ROBERT DALE OWEN" 
 
 " Although Owen failed to make his community successful, his 
 opinions spread far and wide. The courts of law, the halls of legisla- 
 tion, and the family government have been modified and influenced by 
 the opinions taught by Mr, Owen in the early days of New Harmony, 
 and afterward promulgated by his son, Robert Dale Owen." 
 
 — George Flowek. 
 
 EoBERT Dale Owen, the most distinguished of the 
 four talented sons of Eobert Owen, first saw the light of 
 day in Glasgow, Scotland, November 7, 1801. Born to 
 wealth, every possible educational advantage was thrust 
 upon him by his father. At the age of sixteen he was sent 
 to Fellenberg's School at Hofwyl, where, like William 
 Maclure, he became an enthusiastic believer in the Pesta- 
 lozzian creed. When he returned to Scotland Eobert Dale 
 entered with hearty and intelligent sympathy into his 
 father's social and educational experiment at New Lan- 
 ark. His influence cast into the scale determined the 
 purchase of Harmonic from the Eappites. In that golden 
 age on the Wabash, as editor, teacher, or assistant to his 
 illustrious father in the management of the affairs of the 
 Commune, he played a conspicuous and creditable part. 
 
 Early in life Eobert Dale Owen began the literary la- 
 bors that won for him fame little less than that achieved 
 as a statesman. His first production was a play called 
 Pocahontas, which was performed at New Harmony by 
 the Thespian Society. This society was formed in 1828, 
 and continued as an organization for nearly fifty years, 
 
 336
 
 m^ 
 
 -\ 1 
 
 EGBERT DALE OWEN. 
 September, 1875.
 
 THE LIBRARY i 
 
 OF THE ; 
 
 UKIYERSITY Of ILLINOIS ^
 
 ROBERT DALE OWEN 
 
 in that time graduating a large number of young people to 
 the professional stage. The scenery for the plays produced 
 by this society was for many years painted by Charles 
 A. Lesueur. 
 
 Following Frances Wright's lecturing tour in 1828, 
 Eobert Dale Owen became associated with her in the pub- 
 lication of the Free Enquirer, which was removed to Xew 
 York City. In this journal these two brilliant editorial 
 writers advocated many of the social and educational re- 
 forms which had been exploited at New Harmony. One 
 outcome of their agitation was a political movement in 
 the State of I^ew York, organized by George H. and Fred- 
 erick W. Evans, two of their converts. As the result of 
 the efforts of the Evans brothers a working men's party 
 was formed, demanding, among other things, " the aboli- 
 tion of chattel slavery and wage slavery.'^ In 1830 a con- 
 vention was held in Syracuse and Ezekiel Williams was 
 nominated for governor. He received nearly three thou- 
 sand votes, and by a fusion the party elected one member 
 of the legislature. It was called the " Fanny Wright 
 party " by its opponents. 
 
 The agitation extended to Massachusetts, and numberell 
 Edward Everett among its supporters. The organization 
 was finally merged into the " Locof oco '' party, and had no 
 small influence in developing the antislavery movement. 
 All over the country organizations, composed largely of 
 working men advocating the principles promulgated by the 
 Free Enquirers, were formed, marking the first organized 
 participation of working men in x4merican politics. The 
 movement was, however, soon overshadowed by the great 
 issues which divided the country into two hostile camps, 
 and ultimately were settled by the arbitrament of war. 
 
 In 1836 Eobert Dale Owen entered Indiana politics as 
 a member of the State legislature. In the same year he 
 was nominated as a Van Buren elector and went upon 
 the stump in Indiana to become a political orator of wide 
 
 23 337
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 renown. His speeches were models of logic and free from 
 the taint of personal abuse. 
 
 In 1842 he was elected to Congress, and was returned 
 in 1844, but in 1846 was defeated. He impressed himself 
 upon the leaders of his party in Congress as a man of 
 unusual ability, and his advanced views exercised a marked 
 influence in determining the trend of Democratic thought 
 on public questions. While in Congress he originated and 
 introduced the bill providing for the application of the 
 neglected Smithson bequest to the founding of the Smith- 
 sonian Institution. This bill was introduced by Mr. Owen 
 on December 14, 1845, and on the same day it was re- 
 ferred to a select committee of which the distinguished 
 Indianian was a chairman. On February 28, 1846, the bill 
 was reported to the House by him, and on April 2 2d it was 
 taken up by the Committee of the Whole. During the same 
 session it was passed by both the House and Senate. 
 
 In a speech of characteristic force Mr. Owen advocated 
 the passage of the bill, outlining the nature of the work 
 which it was intended this institution should undertake, 
 and which it is still pursuing. At this time it had been 
 ten years since the United States Government accepted the 
 bequest of Smithson, and numerous suggestions as to the 
 manner of its application had come to naught. 
 
 Mr. Owen referred to the various plans proposed by 
 distinguished scholars upon whom the President had called 
 for advice. Professor Wajdand suggested the founding of 
 a university exclusively for higher research — an institution 
 something like that for which Mr. Carnegie has made pro- 
 vision at Washington by a gift of ten million dollars. A bill 
 in line with this suggestion was introduced in the Senate, 
 but was laid on the table. Dr. Cooper proposed an institu- 
 tion for original research in higher mathematics, chemistry, 
 and agriculture. Eichard Eush advocated the establishment 
 of a college to undertake about the same work now being 
 done by the department of agriculture, his plans including 
 
 338
 
 ROBERT DALE OWEN 
 
 buildings and grounds of sufficient size to make possible 
 the propagation of seeds for general distribution, and the 
 delivery and publication of courses of lectures on scientific 
 topics of popular interest. John Quincy Adams proposed 
 a Government astronomical observatory — the Government 
 now maintains one at Washington. Senator Choate, of 
 Massachusetts, advocated the establishment of a library to 
 rank with the largest institutions of similar character in 
 the Old World — an idea which has in later years been de- 
 veloped in the Library of Congress. It is a rather re- 
 markable fact, indeed, that every one of these suggestions 
 has been carried out by the Government. 
 
 As an associate of Mr. Owen's on the select committee 
 declared, the bill providing for the institution was " an 
 anthology from all the plans submitted, though possessing 
 valuable original features, the credit of which belongs to 
 the chairman of the committee, Mr. Owen.'' Mr. Owen's 
 idea was to make the institution of value not merely to a 
 few scholars but to the whole people, developing fully 
 Smithson's desire that it should be devoted to " the diffu- 
 sion of learning." 
 
 In view of the lifetime of effort which Mr. Owen de- 
 voted to the advocacy of the common-school idea, it is not 
 strange that one of his plans, which has never been de- 
 veloped, anticipated the establishment of a national nor- 
 mal school for the training of teachers for State normal 
 schools, two of which had alreadv been founded in the 
 United States. "I hold it to be a democratic dutv," he 
 said, " to elevate to the utmost of our ability the character 
 of our common-school education." 
 
 The Smithsonian building is said to represent peculiar 
 ideas of architecture held by Eobert Dale Owen and his 
 brother, David Dale Owen, who was United States geologist 
 when the structure was erected. Eobert Dale Owen became 
 a member of the first board of regents of the Smithsonian, 
 and was influential in determining the nature of its future 
 
 339
 
 THE NEW HA2M0NY MOVEMENT 
 
 work, concerning which there was much discussion among 
 American scientists of that period. 
 
 Creditable as was his all too brief congressional serv- 
 ice, Mr. Owen's well-merited reputation for unselfish and 
 far-seeing statesmanship must rest upon his action as a 
 member of the lower house in the Indiana Legislature dur- 
 ing the twenty-second and twenty-third assemblies; as a 
 member of the Indiana Constitutional Convention of 1850, 
 and as a member of the State legislature which met in the 
 capital city of the Hoosier State close upon the heels of 
 the newly adopted constitution. 
 
 Elected a member of the Indiana Constitutional Con- 
 vention in 1850, he entered upon the period of his great- 
 est usefulness, for at last there arrived the opportunity for 
 writing into law some of the advanced doctrines for which 
 his father stood, and which the younger Owen had been 
 eloquently and forcibly advocating during all the years 
 succeeding the collapse of the ISTew Harmony communities. 
 In that body, as Mr. John Holliday says, " He was beyond 
 all comparison the most laborious, fertile, and efficient 
 member. The law reforms and the provisions for woman's 
 rights and free schools were especially his work, and leave 
 upon our statute-books the ineffaceable marks of his 
 father's inculcations, modified and strengthened by his own 
 talent and observation." 
 
 ISTor could Eobert Dale Owen be other than a valiant 
 fighter for free schools and be loyal to his father, to 
 William Maclure, and The New Moral World. Sturdy as 
 was his defense of the property and social rights which 
 he believed ought to be enjoyed by the women of a nine- 
 teenth-century civilizatioif, he was, if anything, more en- 
 thusiastic and certainly more successful in his efforts to 
 consummate on Indiana and neighboring soil a public- 
 school system that should afford to the children of all 
 classes an education " without money and without price." 
 His writings and public utterances are replete with brave 
 
 340
 
 ROBERT DALE OWEN 
 
 and wise arguments favoring the establishment of schools 
 " free and universal " " to the son of the poorest farmer as 
 to the son of the chief mayor." It is difficult to cull from 
 his declarations concerning the free public school those 
 which all would agree upon as being the wisest — the most 
 striking and prophetic. 
 
 When the New Harmony Gazette, rescued from the ruin 
 of the " social system/^ became the Free Enquirer, Eobert 
 Dale Owen, as editor-in-chief of the rejuvenated publica- 
 tion, employed its columns as zealously in the cause of 
 free schools as he did in the interest of the peculiar social 
 and religious views with which he and Frances Wright 
 astonished and angered the country. 
 
 Detecting in the educational legislation of the newly 
 formed States of the Middle West a tendency to discrim- 
 inate against the children of the ignorant and the vicious, 
 Mr. Owen in the Free Enquirer, hastened to declare that 
 '^ all poverty is not caused by misconduct. Many men are 
 poor because they are more scrupulous than their neigh- 
 bors; such poverty is honorable; and if the father's worth 
 is to be the measure of the son's deserts, the child of such 
 a poor man merits as good, nay, a much better education 
 than the son of the fortunate speculator whose coffers 
 groan under a half million. But we deny the position that 
 because the parent is worthless the child ought to be neg- 
 lected. The child of the greatest criminal in the Republic 
 has as good a right to a rational education as that of the 
 most disinterested patriot. Does a child make its parents or 
 choose them ? According to what principles of justice then 
 can it be punished with ignorance for their crimes ? " 
 
 Just before the Constitutional Convention Mr. Owen but 
 voiced the feeling of the people of his adopted State when 
 he declared its educational organization to be chaotic and 
 its schools far behind other and younger Western States in 
 efficiency. In urging the necessity of a constitutional pro- 
 vision under which the school system might be properly 
 
 341
 
 TEE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 reorganized, he declared a truth which it has required 
 twenty centuries to impress upon a small portion of the 
 race: 
 
 " We hold that there is no object of greater magnitude 
 within the whole range of legislation, no more imperative 
 demand for public revenue than the establishment of com- 
 petent schools. We hold that, in the nature of things, 
 nothing can be better entitled to a share of the public rev- 
 enue than that from which private and public wealth de- 
 rive all their value and security. In short, our schools are 
 the very foundation upon which rest the peace, good order, 
 and prosperity of society.^' 
 
 Though it denied the efficiency, as an instrument of 
 social regeneration, of the very religion to which his tal- 
 ented daughter declares that Mr. Owen turned in expectant 
 faith in his failing years, the creed which he proclaimed 
 in the lusty days of his young manhood was noteworthy, 
 for it breathed in every line a stirring confidence in the 
 efficiency, as an agent of social redemption, of a national 
 system of education, which for over a quarter of a century 
 through the editorial columns of the Free Enquirer he 
 persistently urged upon the American people. That creed 
 follows : 
 
 I believe in a National System of Equal, Republican, Pro- 
 tective, Practical Education, the sole regenerator of a profli- 
 gate age and the only redeemer of our suffering country from 
 the equal curses of chilling poverty and corrupting riches, of 
 gnawing want and destroying debauchery, of blind ignorance 
 and of unprincipled intrigue. 
 
 By this, my creed, I will live. By my consistency or in- 
 consistency with this, my professed belief, I claim to be 
 
 judged. By it, I will stand or fall. 
 
 Robert Dale Owen. 
 
 During his first term as a member of the Indiana Leg- 
 islature, on William StillwelFs farm, three miles east of 
 New Harmon}^, he spoke from the bed of a rude farm 
 
 34^
 
 ROBERT DALE OWEN 
 
 wagon drawn within sight of the grounds upon which the 
 farmers of the vicinity had at their own expense just com- 
 pleted the building of a small one-room school. Amid 
 these picturesque surroundings Mr. Owen terminated his 
 address with this eloquent tribute to the country school- 
 house : 
 
 " Do you ask me what manner of temple these Temples 
 of Liberty may be? There, behind those trees, recently 
 erected by the citizens of this very neighborhood and soon 
 to be open and filled with those who when we are gone 
 are to maintain or to forfeit the inheritance of their 
 fathers — there is one of them. You will find no polished 
 marble, no massive pillars curiously carved, none of the 
 ornaments of architecture or luxuries of taste. That Tem- 
 ple of Freedom is but an humble schoolhouse. And a 
 country schoolhouse, men will say, is but a small matter. 
 Aye, so also is a cool drink from the spring but a small 
 matter, yet it has saved human life ere now ! And so is a 
 summer shower a small matter, yet without it would our 
 grain grow or our corn ripen? And what a draft of 
 pure water is to the traveler dying of thirst, or a refresh- 
 ing shower to the ground parched with drought, that is 
 Education to Liberty. 
 
 " Yes, in such unpretending institutions as the coun- 
 try schoolhouse are the liberties of our great Eepublic 
 preserved and protected. If not there, they can find pro- 
 tection nowhere. Just in proportion as such buildings 
 abound among us and are managed by enlightened teach- 
 ers and filled by willing scholars — just in proportion are 
 our liberties secured and our independence established on 
 a rock foundation. Any other foundation apart from the 
 intelligence of the people is but of sand, and if thereupon 
 the national edifice be founded the storms of party and 
 the floods of misrule will beat upon that edifice and great 
 will be the fall thereof. . . . If we neglect even so 
 small a matter as common schools, let us not complain of 
 
 343
 
 THE NE^Y HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 the unhappy consequences. We shall have brought them 
 all upon ourselves. 
 
 " The mind of a child is like the rich land before us. 
 Something that land must produce. Rank and luxurious 
 growth must be of tangled weeds and bushes if it be neg- 
 lected and thrown open, but of the best fruits of the earth 
 if it be carefully fenced and diligently cultivated. It is 
 not neglected. See, it has been carefully tilled. The 
 promise of an abundant harvest is all over it. And shall 
 those fields of far richer promise, of far more valuable 
 harvest — the fields of intellect — shall they be left to run 
 to waste, unprotected, uncultivated, forsaken? 
 
 " Every parent will answer, No. Let him do more than 
 so answer. Let him act as well as resolve. If there be no 
 school in his neighborhood, let him use his best exertions to 
 establish one. If he succeed and procure a teacher, his 
 labor will not be in vain. It will return to him a hun- 
 dredfold.^' 
 
 In legislative hall and Constitutional Convention Eob- 
 ert Dale Owen's utterances and services in the cause of 
 free schools were no less wise and brilliant. 
 
 Mr. Owen was a member of the lower house in the 
 Indiana legislature, session of 1838, representing the 
 county of Posey. One of the chief causes of contention 
 during this session was the Surplus Revenue Fund of the 
 common schools. In 1836 the National Treasury had a 
 very large surplus. As there was no national debt to be 
 discharged. Congress determined to distribute a large part 
 of this surplus among the several States of the Union, ac- 
 cording to the population of each. The share of Indiana 
 amounted to $806,254. The legislature of 1837 set apart 
 $573,502.96 of this sum for the use of the common schools 
 and made it a part of the permanent fund under the title 
 " Surplus Revenue Fund." 
 
 A formidable attempt was made during the legislative 
 session of 1839 to divert this Surplus Revenue Fund from 
 
 344
 
 ROBERT DALE OWEN 
 
 the Common School Fund in which the Acts of 1837 had 
 placed it^ and in which it would be used as an interest- 
 bearing principal for the benefit of the schools of the State, 
 into an Internal Improvement Fund, where it would be 
 dissipated in the construction of canals and the deepening 
 of rivers. Worthy and necessary as are internal improve- 
 ments, the friends of the public schools regarded the prop- 
 osition to divert any portion of the Common School Fund 
 of the State to any purpose, however meritorious, as but 
 the entering wedge in a series of assaults by which the 
 fund which has made the Indiana educational system pos- 
 sible would be dissipated. 
 
 When the overzealous champions of the internal im- 
 provement program introduced a "Bill Transferring the 
 First and Second Instalments of the Surplus Eevenue 
 from Common Schools to Internal Improvements," the 
 partizans of the free public-school system of the State 
 fought it with all the vigor and bitterness of which they 
 were capable, both because it proposed to reduce the Com- 
 mon School Fund, which they regarded as the most 
 precious asset possessed by the Commonwealth, and because 
 it established a dangerous precedent for the future. 
 
 None fought this assault upon the resources of the 
 common schools of his adopted State with such skill and 
 earnestness as the representative from Posey. When it 
 appeared that the assault would be successful, Owen, in 
 what was practically his maiden effort as a legislator, made 
 a speech which stemmed the tide, defeated the proposition 
 to divert the Surplus Eevenue, hurled confusion into the 
 ranks of the enemies of free schools, and perpetuated the 
 Common School Fund of Indiana. He said: 
 
 " The gentleman from Wayne says that if this bill were 
 well explained and fully understood among the people it 
 would be popular. 
 
 " Strange, most strange and baseless doctrine ! If the 
 people understood it ! Ah, sir, if the people truly under- 
 
 345
 
 TEE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 stood it — if they knew and felt what their children gain 
 when they receive a liberal education and what they lose 
 when it is denied them — they would rise up, yes, in mass, 
 against a law so unjust, so unrepublican, so subversive of 
 knowledge and equality as this ! 
 
 " Yes, sir, talk of democracy and equality ! They are 
 idle, powerless words without education to give them sub- 
 stance and spirit. 
 
 " In the mind is the true seat of inequality. If the 
 mental resources of one man be abundant and of his neigh- 
 bor be scanty, of small avail is it that their purses are of 
 equal length. Mind commands and ever has commanded 
 both wealth and power. 
 
 '^ If I believe, as I do believe, that I can procure for 
 my children advantages beyond those that may fall to the 
 lot of some others whose parents happen to be somewhat 
 less favored by fortune than myself, it is not because I 
 may chance to have a few extra dollars to leave them — for 
 the advantage of wealth to young people just starting in 
 the world is very problematical — but it is that I have the 
 same means and the desire to give my children those ad- 
 vantages of education which no reverse of fortune can ever 
 take from them ; those advantages of education, which, let 
 their purse be light or heavy, will insure to them, with 
 moderate industry and prudence, consideration and a 
 standing among the favored classes of the land. And, 
 while I know that my circumstances permit me to obtain 
 such knowledge for my own children, shall I vote for a 
 law cutting off others from similar advantages? 
 
 " We have decided this matter once. We have done 
 well. The people have approved our course. They cherish 
 this fund. They look upon it as their own and their chil- 
 dren's. Never with my vote shall it be taken from them. 
 Never, without my protest, shall it be diverted to any 
 other from the sacred cause to which it is now devoted. 
 Never, I am sure, can it be so diverted with the people's 
 
 346
 
 ROBERT DALE OWEN 
 
 consent. And never, if I know anything of the feelings of 
 this house, will they countenance this project for its 
 diversion. 
 
 " Xow at the very outset, in its first stage, do I hope 
 that the bill will be rejected. I am not satisfied to have it 
 defeated. I am unwilling to see it even for a moment 
 countenanced by the house. I wish and hope to see it put 
 down at once; and by such a majority that it shall be 
 evident to the public and to all future legislatures that 
 such efforts ever will be, as they ought to be, idle and un- 
 availing.^^ 
 
 Valiant as was his lifelong advocacy of free public 
 schools, it was as a member of the Indiana Constitutional 
 Convention of 1851 and the legislative session immedi- 
 ately following that he was able to render the most ejfficient 
 and most conspicuous services to the cause of an education 
 " free as the living waters." No intelligent comprehension 
 of the education reforms inaugurated by that second Con- 
 stitutional Convention and no adequate appreciation of the 
 large part which the younger Owen has played in laying the 
 foundations of the public-school systems of Indiana and 
 the Middle West are possible without a knowledge of the 
 history of education in the Hoosier State previous to 1850. 
 This will be briefly sketched. 
 
 The first Constitutional Convention of the newly made 
 State of Indiana, convened at Corydon in 1816, adopted 
 the following provision respecting education: 
 
 " Knowledge and learning generally diffused through a 
 community being essential to the preservation of a free 
 government ... it shall be the duty of the General 
 Assembly as soon as circumstances will permit, to provide 
 by law for a general system of education, ascending in a 
 regular gradation from township schools to a State uni- 
 versity, wherein tuition shall be gratis, and equally open 
 to all." 
 
 Commenting on this in an address before the students 
 
 347
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 of Indiana University in later years, Eobert Dale Owen 
 said: 
 
 "With pride and pleasure may we read in our State 
 constitution the provision which the provident wisdom of 
 the Corydon convention therein established for the promo- 
 tion of public education. You may look through the con- 
 stitution of every State in the Union and you will not find 
 in one of them a prospective provision for public educa- 
 tion so liberal and comprehensive as this of our own 
 young State. Eead aright, that single paragraph should 
 attract as settlers to the forests of Indiana every emi- 
 grant who feels, as parents ought to feel, the engrossing 
 importance of the subject. . . . Education is the 
 noblest object, the most important work that ever occu- 
 pied a legislature's time or a nation's thoughts ; that shall 
 make the world in its coming generation a happy or a 
 miserable one; the only rock foundation of political lib- 
 erty and public order; the Great Moral Arbiter of the 
 future destinies of our race ! " 
 
 The provisions of that natal Constitution were unique 
 and without precedent among the older States. " Previous 
 to Indiana, no State had in its constitution declared for a 
 graduated system of schools extending from the district 
 schools to the university, equally open to all on the basis of 
 gratuitous instruction/' The dictum of the first instru- 
 ment of government for the infant State battling against 
 the strenuous forces of the wilderness was a distinct ad- 
 vance and departure in educational thought and procedure. 
 
 If to do were as easy as to know what it were good to 
 do, the duty of providing by law for a general system of 
 education which the constitution had imposed upon the 
 pioneer people of a frontier commonwealth would have 
 been easily and efiiciently discharged. It was one thing, 
 however, to command by the stroke of the pen the build- 
 ing of an effective school system; it was a much more 
 difficult thing, as the early fathers of Indiana soon dis- 
 
 348
 
 ROBERT DALE OWEN 
 
 covered, to conceive and enact such legislation as should 
 consummate a system of public instruction at once State 
 controlled, uniformly administered, and uniformly avail- 
 able. 
 
 The history of the educational legislation between the 
 first and last Indiana Constitutional Conventions is but 
 the story of repeated efforts, some of them spasmodic, 
 many of them mistaken, all of them unsuccessful, to create 
 a State system of schools in keeping with the ideas of the 
 makers of the early constitution. 
 
 The difficulties against which that early school legisla- 
 tion labored were : ( 1 ) The lack of an overwhelming public 
 sentiment such as we enjoy to-day supporting the schools; 
 (2) the lack of funds with which to maintain them; (3) 
 the lack of competent teachers; (4) the lack of systematic 
 organization of the educational system of the State. 
 
 Education was a secondary consideration during pio- 
 neer days. The rough backwoodsmen, struggling with the 
 Indian and the forest, prized muscle more than culture, 
 and internal improvements more than the public-school 
 system, for which a faithful few never ceased to labor. 
 Theoretically all admitted the advantages and benefits of 
 education both to the individual citizen and the State. 
 " The objection was not so much to schools as to free 
 State-controlled, State-supported schools." 
 
 The arguments against a State public-school system 
 were varied and ingenious. It was urged that the funds of 
 the State, however large, could not support schools operated 
 upon such a vast scale. Bachelors blessed with property, 
 and parents whose children attended private schools, main- 
 tained that the support which they would be compelled to 
 render by taxation to free schools would be entirely out 
 of proportion to the benefit which they received from them. 
 Sectarianism denounced the public school as " godless," 
 while the enemies of religion declared the real object of 
 the proposed free educational system to be the union of 
 
 349
 
 THE NE^V HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 church and state. Eejected by the rich because they could 
 afford the luxury of private instruction for their offspring, 
 the free school was spurned by the less fortunate as a 
 *' pauper institution/' It was contended that " education 
 is a private responsibility of the parent, and if not of the 
 parent then of the church"; that the "real purpose of 
 taxation is to support the Government"; that "taxation 
 for free schools sets limits to individual rights, for the in- 
 dustrious ought not to be taxed to support the indolent " ; 
 that " taxes are a drain in any case, but that educational 
 taxation is larceny"; that the free school propaganda is 
 '^undemocratic," dangerous to the state and subversive of 
 the general good, "a usurpation of local rights and an 
 infringement of personal and family liberties." As late 
 as 1837 a member of the State Legislature declared that 
 he desired for an epitaph the words, " Here lies an enemy 
 of free schools." Within two years of the Constitutional 
 Convention which founded our present educational system, 
 citizens otherwise in good standing in their respective com- 
 munities sought by the display of armed force at the polls 
 to prevent the passage of educational measures which the 
 legislature had submitted for ratification to the voters of 
 the commonwealth. 
 
 Intimidated by such strenuous opposition, successive 
 legislatures, despite the devoted efforts of the faithful 
 friends of education, notable among whom was Robert Dale 
 Owen, cringed and temporized and compromised with the 
 enemies of the free public school. 
 
 In the wake of cowardly compromise came a train of 
 evils. State school funds, created largely through the gen- 
 erosity of the National Government, though bearing prom- 
 ise for the future, yielded but little aid to the free schools of 
 the commonwealth. Failure to assert the right of the State 
 to control, or the duty of the State to assist in maintaining 
 them left the public schools at the caprice of isolated com- 
 munities. Some of these elected not to maintain " pauper 
 
 350
 
 ROBERT DALE OWEN 
 
 schools." Where established, " the schools free as the liv- 
 ing waters/' of which Kobert Dale Owen had so fondly 
 dreamed in those halcyon days at New Harmony, were in 
 reality pay schools, a monthly fee being exacted for the 
 niggardly support of a short-term school of uncertain 
 duration. Ignorance and indifference on the part of the 
 people, coupled with the beggarly pittance which these 
 crude struggling schools yielded to the pedagogue, at- 
 tracted to the work of teaching only the indolent, the ad- 
 venturous, and the incompetent. Since there was no State 
 supervision and no local organization of the schools worthy 
 the name, what little educational system, if system it may 
 be called, which the State possessed or claimed to possess, 
 was in a chaotic state. As a result of these conditions, when 
 the second Constitutional Convention met in 1850 the per 
 cent of illiteracy in Indiana was greater than that of any 
 other State north of Mason and Dixon's line and almost 
 twice as great as the average per cent of illiteracy in all the 
 twenty-six States that then composed the Union. 
 
 In 1843, led by the Hon. Caleb Mills, to whom Indiana 
 owes a debt of gratitude as great as that which Massachu- 
 setts owes to Horace Mann, the friends of education began 
 a crusade in favor of the complete reorganization of the 
 schools of the State. Spurred to action by startling rev- 
 elations concerning both the dangerous and wide-spread 
 illiteracy and the utter inefficiency of the educational sys- 
 tem of the commonwealth, the legislatures of 1848 and 
 1849 submitted wise educational measures, meeting the 
 approval of Mills and his associates, for ratification by the 
 people. In each instance the vote showed a large and in- 
 creasing majority of the citizenship in favor of free schools 
 and their proper support. 
 
 The second Constitutional Convention followed close 
 upon the heels of this ratification of "public schools 
 wherein tuition shall be gratis and open to all." Though 
 its provisions respecting education superseded the measures 
 
 351
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 which the popular vote had but just ratified, yet that rati- 
 fication declared the true attitude of the State, strength- 
 ened the hands of the devoted friends of the schools, and 
 wrote the educational provisions of the new instrument 
 of government. 
 
 Though his experience in the schools at New Lanark 
 and New Harmony, his devotion to the free public school, 
 his wide knowledge of educational affairs, and his tact and 
 ability as a debater and parliamentarian clearly entitled 
 Eobert Dale Owen to the position of chairman of the Com- 
 mittee on Education in the Constitutional Convention, 
 public prejudice against the very name of Owen rendered 
 his appointment impossible. 
 
 Though not even a member of the special committee to 
 which they were entrusted, Owen was the dominant force 
 of the convention in educational matters. He early con- 
 vinced the delegates that the Constitution must provide 
 for the establishment of a general and uniform system of 
 common schools wherein tuition should be without charge 
 and equally open to all. He pointed out to them and to 
 the special committee the general provisions by which the 
 new instrument of government should pave the way for a 
 complete reorganization of the educational machinery of 
 the State. Upon his motion, prominent educators ad- 
 dressed the convention concerning the condition of the 
 educational affairs of the commonwealth and suggested 
 legislative remedies for the same. Owen himself appeared 
 before the committee repeatedly, urged upon it the sec- 
 tions of the article on education in the present Constitu- 
 tion, induced the committee to report that article favor- 
 ably, and aided in bringing the article to a successful 
 passage. It rests in the Constitution to-day, partly the 
 handiwork of Owen. 
 
 The first section of the constitutional provisions relat- 
 ing to education declares that, " Knowledge and learning, 
 generally diffused throughout a community, being essential 
 
 352
 
 ROBERT DALE OWEN 
 
 to the preservation of a free government, it shall be the 
 duty of the General Assembly to encourage, by all suitable 
 means, moral, intellectual, scientific, and agricultural im- 
 provement, and to provide, by law, for a general and 
 uniform system of common schools, wherein tuition shall 
 be without charge, and equally open to all/' 
 
 The Constitution of 1816 had contained substantially 
 the same provision couched in much the same language, 
 save that in it the duty of the General Assembly to pro- 
 vide by law for a general and uniform system of common 
 schools was qualified by the use of the words " as soon as 
 the circumstances will permit." The clash of selfish and 
 sectional interests had never permitted the performance of 
 this duty, and the State was without a general and uniform 
 system of schools when the Constitutional Convention as- 
 sembled. By a majority of eighty thousand the people of 
 the State ordered that the provisions of the Constitution of 
 1850 be carried into effect. Armed with this ratification, 
 Kobert Dale Owen, as chairman of the Committee on 
 Education in the lower house of the legislative assembly 
 that immediately followed the Constitutional Convention, 
 pressed to a successful issue the school law of 1852 that 
 gave form and substance to the constitutional provisions 
 relating to education. 
 
 By successive grants both before and after the adoption 
 of the Constitution of 1816, the National Government had 
 bestowed upon the young commonwealth, battling against 
 the forces of the wilderness, both land and money for edu- 
 cational purposes. The early Constitution did not attempt 
 to define or dispose of these assets but left them to the 
 tender mercies of annual legislation. Since the funds that 
 grew out of these successive congressional grants were en- 
 tirely at the caprice of legislative enactment, the repeal or 
 amendment of the statute under which any given fund had 
 been applied for the benefit of the free schools could easily 
 arrest, divert, or dissipate it. Though these funds were in 
 24 353
 
 THE NE\Y HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 the strictest sense of the word trust funds for the use of 
 the schools^ repeated attempts were made between the two 
 Constitutions to annul or divert them. Only the honor of 
 the State and the never-to-be-forgotten vigilance of the 
 unselfish friends of education defeated the combined as- 
 saults of the enemies of free schools and the misguided 
 friends of other and less worthy enterprises upon the 
 noblest trust fund which history yet records. 
 
 Eobert Dale Owen had been the leader in two of the suc- 
 cessful legislative fights by which the partizans of the public 
 schools had brought confusion upon the assailants of these 
 schools funds. Eecognizing that as long as they were 
 the creatures of the General Assembly they would be in 
 perpetual danger from attacks like those from which he 
 had aided in rescuing them^ he induced the special com- 
 mittee and the convention to define these funds in the 
 Constitution itself and by so doing made them inviolate. 
 
 The second section of the educational provisions of the 
 Constitution declares the Common School Fund of the 
 State to consist of the following: 
 
 1. The Congressional Township Fund. 
 
 2. The Surplus Revenue Fund. 
 
 3. The Saline Fund. 
 
 4. The Bank Tax Fund. 
 
 5. The Seminary Fund. 
 
 6. The Contingent Fund. 
 
 7. The Swamp Land Fund. 
 
 Though the Constitution by defining and dedicating 
 the various educational resources of the State to the com- 
 mon fund had made that fund a perpetual principal for 
 the benefit of the public schools of the State, yet Robert 
 Dale Owen, fearful lest the interpretation of the courts 
 might defeat the plain intent of the Constitution, induced 
 his colleagues to insert among the educational provisions of 
 the Constitution a declaration that all the funds which 
 
 354
 
 no BERT DALE OWEN 
 
 go to make up the Common School Fund of the State 
 should forever be a trust fund to be held sacred and in- 
 violate during the perpetuity of the State government. In 
 the opinion of many able lawyers this provision, for which 
 Owen is to be given the greater meed of credit, places the 
 common fund of the State even beyond the influence of a 
 modification or repeal of the Constitution by which it was 
 created. 
 
 After several wise provisions concerning the distribu- 
 tion of the Common School Fund and the duties and re- 
 sponsibilities of the various county governments with re- 
 spect to the same, the article on education terminates by 
 creating the office of State Superintendent of Public In- 
 struction. The educational affairs of the State were in a 
 chaotic condition, largely because of the lack of a strongly 
 centralized administration of the same. The younger State 
 of Wisconsin had already provided for such an executive 
 officer as the State Superintendent. Mr. Owen urged his 
 colleagues to profit by the example which Indiana's less 
 mature sister State offered the convention. To the crea- 
 tion of this office and to the ability in which it has been 
 administered in all its history, much of the present 
 efficiency of the Indiana educational system must be at- 
 tributed. 
 
 The legislative assembly of 1852, recognizing the serv- 
 ices of Eobert Dale Owen in the cause of education in the 
 Constitutional Convention, bestowed upon him the chair- 
 manship of the Committee on Education which the latter 
 body had denied him, and afforded him the supreme oppor- 
 tunity of his life to render valiant service in the cause of 
 free public schools. 
 
 The provisions of the Constitutions of 1816 and 1850 
 with respect to the character and organization of the 
 schools of the State were almost identical. So nearly do 
 the provisions and the language of the two instruments 
 resemble each other that they suggest the deadly parallel. 
 
 355
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 Yet the Constitution of 1816 did not succeed in creating 
 a general and uniform system of public schools while the 
 Constitution of 1850 was the natal note of the system 
 which has been perpetuated into our own day. That under 
 substantially the same provisions the Constitution of 1850 
 should succeed in doing what the Constitution of 1816 
 failed completely to achieve is due to the genius of Eobert 
 Dale Owen. As chairman of the Committee on Education 
 in the lower house, he realized that the first section of 
 Article 8 of the new Constitution was a dead letter in the 
 absence of wise legislation carrying out its general pro- 
 visions; that the section in question, like its sister section 
 in the Constitution of 1816, was a mere skeleton which the 
 General Assembly must by successive statutes clothe with 
 flesh and blood; and that if the legislative assembly of 
 1852 did not immediately proceed to the task of making 
 the constitutional provision just described effective, the 
 schools under the new instrument would be as lacking in 
 uniformity and efficiency as the schools had been under 
 its predecessor. 
 
 Owen impressed this view upon his colleagues of the 
 committee and upon the members of both Houses of the 
 General Assembly. iVs chairman of the Committee on 
 Education of the lower house and chairman of the joint 
 committee for both houses, he brought to a successful 
 issue the School Law of 1852, with which his name must 
 ever be associated. 
 
 In the new school law the old tone of compromise and 
 apology was superseded by a spirit of hope and earnest- 
 ness. Some of its provisions were revolutionary in pur- 
 pose and scope. A State tax of ten cents on each one 
 hundred dollars' worth of property was levied. This es- 
 tablished the principle that the property of all the State 
 should be taxed for the education of all the children of the 
 State. True to the teachings of William Maclure, who had 
 strenuously advocated the civil township as the unit of 
 
 356
 
 ROBERT DALE OWEN 
 
 school government in all the Western States, the old con- 
 gressional township system was abolished and each civil 
 township was declared a township for school purposes, the 
 township trustee being given full control of its educational 
 as well as its civil affairs. This innovation, copied in modi- 
 fied form by other Western commonwealths, has given In- 
 diana perhaps the best organization of rural schools in the 
 nation. Provision was made for the formation of town- 
 ship libraries and their maintenance. This was the begin- 
 ning of the present public-library system of the State. In- 
 corporated cities and towns were declared school corpora- 
 tions separate and independent of the civil townships in 
 which they were located. They were empowered to appoint 
 school trustees, to build schoolhouses, and to levy taxes for 
 their support. This was the beginning of the present town 
 and city school systems of the State. Provision was made 
 for the election of a State Superintendent of Public In- 
 struction and for the establishment of the State Board of 
 Education, the duties of each being clearly defined. To 
 the ability with which these two factors in the educational 
 administration of the State have been administered the 
 schools of the commonwealth owe much of their efficiency. 
 
 In accordance with the mandate of the new Constitu- 
 tion, all the permanent school funds defined in the new 
 instrument of government were consolidated and wiser 
 measures enacted for the safe and profitable investment of 
 the principal, and the equitable distribution of the pro- 
 ceeds arising from it. To-da)% as the result of the legisla- 
 tive provisions of 1852, for which Owen and his associates 
 upon the Educational Committee deserve the credit, In- 
 diana is blessed with a permanent school fund of nearly 
 eleven million dollars. Only three States — Texas, Illinois, 
 and Missouri — ^have a larger productive school fund. 
 
 It has been the custom for years to attribute to the 
 honored Caleb Mills the credit for the laws which really 
 formed the public-school system of Indiana. To detract 
 
 357
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 one Jot or tittle from the great amount of praise which has 
 been and will continue to be bestowed upon that eminent 
 educator for the part which he played in creating and 
 organizing the educational machinery of the common- 
 wealth would be neither just nor possible ; but if Mr. Mills 
 was the professional father of the Indiana educational sys- 
 tem, Eobert Dale Owen was its legislative ancestor, and 
 the two working together as educator and statesman were 
 the architects who laid broad and deep the foundation 
 of all that is worthy in the educational organization of the 
 Hoosier State. Both created and fostered an enthusiasm 
 for the free public school. One suggested a superb plan 
 for the organization of the schools of the State and the 
 other wrote that plan into enduring legislation. 
 
 Such were the contributions of Eobert Dale Owen to 
 the educational history of his adopted State. Through him 
 Eobert Owen and William Maclure labored and spoke in 
 convention hall and legislative assembly. Had they been 
 there, clothed in the flesh, they would have cried " Bravo ! " 
 to all of his efforts as delegate and legislator in the cause 
 of education. In him the spirit of humanity and the great 
 love which the founders of New Harmony bore for free 
 schools, which are after all the chief hope of those who earn 
 their living in the sweat of their brows, perpetuated itself 
 in the educational system of the commonwealth of Indiana. 
 
 The Constitution of 1850 and the School Law of 1853 
 are, through Eobert Dale Owen, the handiwork of Eobert 
 Owen and William Maclure. Though the educational ex- 
 periments of the Commune failed as signally as did the 
 social order, who dare say that the master of New Lanark 
 and the Father of American Geology lived in vain? 
 
 The School Law of 1852, with some important additions, 
 constitutes the school law of Indiana to-day. Temporarily 
 annulled by a decision of the Supreme Court, the provi- 
 sions of the Act of 1852 were incorporated into the School 
 Law of 1865. Into that law, some new features were in- 
 
 358
 
 ROBERT DALE OWEN 
 
 troduced, one of the most important being that of teachers' 
 institutes. The law of 1865 has been supplemented by 
 others, each one calculated to perfect the system and to 
 widen its scope. The power of taxation has been increased 
 and trustees have been empowered to issue bonds to pro- 
 cure funds for the erection of new and more commodious 
 buildings. Successive statutes have provided for the edu- 
 cation of colored children; for the important office of 
 county superintendent; for the present State text-book 
 law, and for the creation and support of an efficient State 
 Normal School. 
 
 The departures from precedent which marked the era 
 of Eobert Dale Owen's activity in Indiana legislation ex- 
 cited wide discussion and comment, much of it unfavorable, 
 but in succeeding years other States followed the example 
 of Indiana, not only in making the most generous provi- 
 sions for free schools, but in emancipating woman from 
 legal bondage. In the formation of public sentiment along 
 these lines Eobert Dale Owen was an active agent. As 
 writer and speaker his genius was equal to any attack upon 
 the laws for which he stood sponsor, and in the period of 
 discussion which followed the adoption of these advanced 
 measures he was the most conspicuous and brilliant figure. 
 Commenting on the legislation enacted through his in- 
 fluence, a contributor to the London Times said : " Indiana 
 has attained the highest civilization of any State in the 
 Union/' 
 
 In 1853 Mr. Owen was appointed, by President Pierce, 
 charge d'affaires at Naples, and at this post he remained 
 for nearly six years. During this period he followed his 
 father in becoming an advocate of spiritualism. " From 
 the first avowal of spiritualistic notions," to quote a biog- 
 rapher, " he led the numerous hosts of the new faith with 
 undisputed superiority. Into the work of propagating, 
 defending, and expurgating spiritualism he put the re- 
 mainder of his life. He attended spiritualistic conventions 
 
 359
 
 THE NE^Y HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 all over the country, shaped the doctrines, explored the 
 phenomena, and defended the honesty of his, the new 
 faith, and really converted it from a loose assemblage of 
 notions into a system and a religion. His works. Footfalls 
 on the Boundary of Another World, and The Debatable 
 Land Between this World and the N'ext, were widely read 
 and discussed, the first causing a literary sensation/' 
 
 Robert Dale Owen from his boyhood was opposed to 
 slavery. His keen sympathy with the oppressed of every 
 type and the radical notions concerning human equality 
 which he held in common with his illustrious father, 
 brought him at a tender age into an intense hatred of the 
 institution of human bondage. 
 
 In England slaves were exceedingly rare, and the 
 younger Owen saw but little of the commerce in the bodies 
 of black men. The New Moral World was projected upon 
 soil which the Ordinance of 1787 had forever dedicated 
 to human liberty. But there was no lack of opportunity 
 to observe the workings of the slave traffic. Robert Dale 
 Owen saw the negro on Indiana soil a fugitive from a 
 brutal master; a beast of burden on primitive flatboats 
 plying Western waters ; a human chattel in the slave mar- 
 ket at New Orleans; and joined with Frances Wright at 
 Nashoba in a noble but misguided effort to rescue him and 
 solve the slavery question by colonization. 
 
 Each succeeding contact with slavery in any of its 
 phases increased the already deep-seated antipathy of his 
 early years. Maintaining as he did the equality of all 
 men, irrespective of color or sex, to him slavery was an 
 intolerable injustice against which every fiber of his splen- 
 did young manhood cried out in protest. Realizing the 
 utter hopelessness of any save a peaceable resistance to the 
 traffic in human bodies then, like Lincoln he made a 
 solemn resolve that if an opportunity should ever come 
 he would strike a valiant blow against slavery. 
 
 There was a strange connection and resemblance be- 
 
 360
 
 THE OLD FORT— PRESENT CONDITION. 
 Headquarters United States Geological Survey under David Dale Owen.
 
 ROBERT DALE O^VEN 
 
 tween the life of the younger Owen and that of the mar- 
 tyred President. Though Owen was eight years the senior 
 of Lincoln, the two were contemporaries in public life for 
 over a third of a century. Lincoln was reared on Pigeon 
 Creek, Indiana, within less than fifty miles of the site 
 upon which the elder Owen sought to found a social order 
 that should achieve human equality. While the younger 
 Owen was being reared in luxury in a well-ordered English 
 household, Lincoln grew to young manhood, almost in 
 squalor, in a dilapidated frontier cabin. 
 
 While Robert Dale Owen, groT\Ti to man's estate, en- 
 tered with the enthusiasm of the true humanitarian into 
 his father's social and educational experiments, Lincoln, 
 spurred on by poverty, vigorously navigated with flatboat 
 and raft the Ohio and its tributaries. It is more than 
 probable that his craft, ascending the Wabash, touched at 
 the then flourishing port of Xew Harmony and that he 
 and Owen met, like ships that pass in the night, beneath 
 the classic shades of The New Moral World. 
 
 At approximately the same time both left the " Indiana 
 Pocket '' for wider fields of usefulness : Owen to enter 
 upon an editorial career in the metropolis of the country, 
 by which he sprang almost at once into national prominence 
 as the foremost advocate of " human equality irrespective 
 of color or sex''; Lincoln to rise by sheer force of hard 
 work and strength of personality from obscurity to ac- 
 knowledged leadership of the antislavery sentiment in the 
 Middle West. 
 
 There was much in common between the two men. 
 Both had deep-seated convictions of right and wrong. 
 Both were unswerving in their devotion to a principle. 
 Both were men of pure private life and irreproachable 
 public conduct. Both were singularly gifted with that fine 
 moral courage which would rather be right than be Presi- 
 dent. Both were misunderstood and maligned by their 
 contemporaries. Both in the fulness of time came into a 
 
 361
 
 TEE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 tardy recognition of the unselfishness and the vahie of the 
 services which each in his own place had rendered for the 
 betterment of men and the relief of the oppressed. 
 
 Hatred of the institution of human slavery was common 
 to the two men. Both had registered in early manhood a 
 resolution to fight it to the bitter end. Yet neither was an 
 Abolitionist as the term was used in their day. Neither be- 
 lieved that Congress had any constitutional right to inter- 
 fere with slavery in the Southern States. Neither coun- 
 tenanced the idea of the forcible emancipation of the 
 negro. Both pinned their hope to colonization, to com- 
 pensated emancipation, to an educated ballot, to constitu- 
 tional amendment. When the awful form of disunion 
 darkened the national threshold, both were willing to sub- 
 mit to slaver}^, if need be, in order to preserve our national 
 existence intact. With both the paramount object then 
 became " to save the Union and neither to save nor destroy 
 slavery." " If they could have saved the Union without 
 freeing any slaves, they would have done so. If they 
 could have saved it by freeing some and leaving others, 
 also they would have done that." It was not that they 
 hated slavery the less but that they loved the Union more. 
 
 By the Compromise Measures of 1850 Henry Clay post- 
 poned secession and the civil war for ten years. He 
 offered five propositions, all of which by separate bills 
 were enacted into laws: (1) to admit California as a free 
 State; (2) to apply the principle of Squatter Sovereignty 
 to New Mexico and Utah; (3) to purchase the claim of 
 Texas to a portion of New Mexico; (4) to abolish the 
 slave-trade but not slavery itself in the District of Colum- 
 bia; (5) to pass a more effective fugitive slave act. 
 
 The passage of the new Fugitive Slave Act aroused the 
 most intense excitement throughout the North. Memo- 
 rials poured in upon Congress from all the free States de- 
 manding the repeal of the law as " revolting to the moral 
 sense of the civilized world." Webster, who had upheld the 
 
 362
 
 ROBERT DALE OWEN 
 
 act, was denounced as a traitor to liberty. Fourteen North- 
 ern States practically nullified the new act of the National 
 Congress relating to runaway slaves by passing laws to 
 protect them. Underground railroads grew in number and 
 in zeal, while over all the Northland excited Abolition- 
 ists publicly counseled armed resistance to their Southern 
 brother seeking by due process of law to reclaim his dusky 
 but human chattel. 
 
 Within a month after the passage of Clay's Compromise 
 Measures the Indiana Constitutional Convention of 1850 
 assembled. Excitement over the new slavery legislation 
 was at fever heat. Eobert Dale Owen did not believe that 
 it lay within the real province of the convention or that 
 it was the part of wisdom for the delegates to assume any 
 attitude upon the Fugitive Slave Act or upon the conduct 
 of those who were resisting its enforcement. When the 
 introduction of a clumsily worded resolution made the 
 question of the Compromise Measures an issue before the 
 convention, Mr. Owen, recognizing that it would be nec- 
 essary for the delegates to take some action, lest the real 
 attitude of the State be misunderstood, with the readiness 
 and diplomacy which made him more than the peer of all 
 the members of that historical body, succeeded in secur- 
 ing the substitution of a resolution that breathed in every 
 line a spirit of loyalty to the Union and submission to the 
 law of the land. 
 
 The resolution declares that the common sentiment of 
 the people of Indiana sustains and indorses the general 
 features and intentions of the Compromise Measures and 
 recognizes in their success " an earnest of security and 
 perpetuity." After asserting the determination of " cer- 
 tain misguided individuals " to resist the fugitive slave 
 law, the resolution, rising to a lofty plane of civic duty, 
 maintains ''that whatever may be the opinions of in- 
 dividuals as to the wisdom or policy of any of the details 
 of the fugitive slave law, it is the duty of all good citizens 
 
 363
 
 THE NE^Y HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 to conform to its requisitions and to carry out, in good 
 faith, the conditions of that compromise on the subject 
 of slavery, which is coeval with the Federal Constitution." 
 
 The resolution mirrors the true attitude of Owen in the 
 sectional strife that preceded the war. He was a partizan 
 of neither the North nor the South, but of the Union. 
 Though as the bitter opponent of slavery he regretted some 
 features of the Compromise Measures before their enact- 
 ment, yet he sustained and indorsed their passage " as the 
 sole means of calming the wide-spread and pestiferous 
 agitation which pervaded the land.'' Though he believed 
 every phase of human bondage to be iniquitous, yet he 
 deplored and censured the acts by which overzealous 
 Abolitionists trampled upon the legal rights of the slave- 
 holder and endangered the safety and perpetuity of the 
 Union. 
 
 To the day on which Beauregard opened fire upon Ma- 
 jor Anderson and his gallant little band, Owen, out of his 
 great love for the Union, never abandoned hope that some 
 way and some how it would be peaceably preserved and 
 the threatened civil strife averted. After the six chief 
 States had declared themselves out of the Union, Virginia, 
 as the spokesman for seven border States, proposed certain 
 additional compromise measures, the acceptance of which 
 by the Northern States would be necessary in order to 
 retain their allegiance to the Stars and Stripes. On the 
 13th of February, 1861, Mr. Owen, by invitation, deliv- 
 ered before the Indiana Legislature a pathetic appeal to 
 the people of that commonwealth, urging them to support 
 by memorials and petitions to Congress the measures 
 whose enactment Virginia and her associates had de- 
 manded as a condition precedent to their continued loyalty 
 to the National Government. " Up and be doing, ere it be 
 too late ! Yours is the power. There are constitutional 
 means enough through which to make known your wishes 
 to those who^ if you but speak in numbers sufficient, must 
 
 304
 
 ROBERT DALE OWEN 
 
 regard them. Speak, then ! Memorialize. If you be- 
 lieve that in the Christian spirit of conciliation is our only 
 safety, say so. If you believe that by compromise only can 
 this Confederacy be held together, declare it. You have 
 been called on by one in authority to act for yourselves. 
 Answer the call ! For myself, while the sword remains 
 undrawn, while kindred blood remains unshed, never shall 
 I despair of the Eepublic. While there is PEACE there 
 is hope, for PEACE is the life of the Union." 
 
 The compromise proposals of the border States were 
 suddenly terminated by the attack on Fort Sumter. One 
 after the other all of them that dared joined fortunes 
 with the rebellion, and memorial and compromise became 
 alike fruitless. With the beginning of hostilities Mr. 
 Owen's attitude underwent a radical change. Till the first 
 gun was fired he had been essentially a man of peace, 
 hoping against hope that the Union might without force 
 of arms be preserved intact, even though slavery be per- 
 petuated. At once he became a strenuous advocate of the 
 war and of immediate emancipation as a measure of 
 belligerency. With enthusiasm he entered into the defense 
 of the Union cause. In southern Indiana, where sympathy 
 for the South ran high in some communities, he was the 
 most conspicuous and effective leader of the Union cause. 
 He was commissioned by Governor Morton to purchase 
 arms in Europe for the Indiana troops and performed his 
 task with signal ability. 
 
 War afforded Lincoln the opportunity to make the 
 emancipation of the negro a constitutional act. After the 
 preservation of the Union, the liberation of the slave lay 
 closest to the great heart of the President. Yet, because 
 his paramount wish and duty was to save the Union, he 
 hesitated to free the black man. He recognized that 
 slavery was the real tap-root of the civil war. " Without 
 slavery," he declared, " the rebellion never would have 
 existed; without slavery it could not continue." But he 
 
 365
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 feared lest a premature emancipation might alienate the 
 border States and " give fifty thousand bayonets " from 
 them " over to the rebels." 
 
 On the 25th of July, 1862, the President issued a sixty- 
 day notice calling upon the Southern soldiers to lay down 
 their arms. Lee's reply was the invasion of Maryland. On 
 September 17th he was repulsed at Antietam and retired 
 across the Potomac to Southern soil. That same day, 
 which was the sixth day previous to the expiration of the 
 sixty-day notice, Kobert Dale Owen penned a remarkable 
 letter to the Chief Executive urging him to terminate the 
 period of warning with the manumission of the negro. 
 Emancipation seemed to hang in the balance. The Great 
 Commoner apparently hesitated to take a course fraught 
 with so much of good or ill to the sacred cause of the Union. 
 Seizing the psychological moment, Owen through his let- 
 ter confirmed Lincoln in the wisdom of the act that lay 
 so close to his great heart. 
 
 With a diplomacy in keeping with the great mission 
 upon which it was sent, the epistle begins with an assertion 
 of the confidence of the writer in the one whom he pur- 
 posed to rouse to action. How accurately Owen anticipates 
 the true verdict of history ! 
 
 Harsh opinions have been formed of you ; even honest men 
 doubting the probity of your intentions. I do not share their 
 doubts. I believe you to be upright, single-hearted in your de- 
 sire to rescue the country in the hour of its utmost need, with- 
 out afterthought of the personal consequences to yourself. 
 
 Though from the beginning of the war an ardent ad- 
 vocate of the manumission of the slaves, Owen had not 
 been disposed to increase President Lincoln's burdens by 
 complaints concerning the seemingly slow progress toward 
 that end. Better than his radical associates he had under- 
 stood Lincoln's position and responsibility. Out of the 
 greatness of a kindred soul he declares : 
 
 366
 
 BO BERT DALE OWEN 
 
 If amid the multitude of contending counsel you have 
 hesitated and doubted; if, when a great measure suggested it- 
 self, you have shrunk from the vast responsibility, afraid to go 
 forward lest you go wrong, what wonder ? How few since the 
 foundation of the world have found themselves environed 
 with public perils so numerous, oppressed with responsibili- 
 ties so high and solemn as yourself! 
 
 Lincoln had undeniably been prudent in his conduct of 
 the war — too prudent in the judgment of many over- 
 anxious sons of the N"orthland. Did he possess the courage 
 necessary to liberate the negro? Anxiously the letter 
 argues that daring leadership is as essential as cautious 
 maneuver. " Wisdom, prudence, forethought, these are 
 essential. But not second to these is that noble courage 
 which adventures the right and leaves the consequences to 
 God. . . . There is a measure needing courage to 
 adopt and enforce it, which I believe to be of virtue suflB- 
 cient to redeem the nation in this its darkest hour, one 
 only. I know of no other to which we may rationally trust 
 for relief from impending dangers within and without.^' 
 
 In 1858, during his memorable debate with Douglas, 
 Lincoln, preferring to be right rather than to be senator, 
 proclaimed that " a house divided against itself can not 
 stand. I believe this Government can not endure perma- 
 nently half-slave and half-free. I do not expect the Union 
 to be dissolved. I do not expect the house to fall, but I 
 do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all the 
 one thing or the other." By these words, shrewd but sin- 
 cere, the Great Commoner built a platform and upon it 
 rode in triumph through the White House doors. Through 
 him as the concrete exponent of its attitude, Lincoln's 
 party advocated opposition to slavery because slavery and 
 freedom can not abide together, no interference with slav- 
 ery in the South but bitter resistance to the spread of the 
 institution lest freedom be overcome, and ultimate aboli- 
 tion of the system as the only terms of permanent peace. 
 
 367
 
 TEE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT | 
 
 i 
 I 
 
 Craftily Owen's letter appeals to these well-known con- i 
 
 victions of the President, and argues that war has strength- i 
 
 ened the logic of the position which the Chief Executive , 
 
 assumed in his senatorial contest with the " Little Giant " | 
 
 and has made slavery and the Union forever irreconcilable. | 
 
 " Can you look forward to the peace of our country ' 
 
 and imagine any state of things in which, with slavery still I 
 
 existing, we would be assured of permanent peace ? I can j 
 
 not. We can constitutionally extirpate slavery at this time, j 
 But if we fail to do this, then, unless we intend hereafter 
 
 to violate the Constitution, we shall have a fugitive slave ! 
 
 law in operation whenever the war is over. Shall the ! 
 
 North have sacrificed a hundred thousand lives and two '. 
 
 thousand millions of treasure to come to that at last? ; 
 
 Not even a guarantee of peace purchased at so enormous a j 
 
 cost ? After voluntary exertions on the part of our people i 
 
 to which the histor}^ of the world furnishes no parallel, is i 
 
 the old root of bitterness still to remain in the ground, ^ 
 
 to sprout and bear fruit in the future as it has borne fruit ; 
 
 in the past? These questions are addressed to you. For I 
 
 upon you and your action more than any other one thing j 
 
 does the answer depend." '\ 
 
 Declaring the institution of slavery to be not only > 
 
 morally wrong, but the one vulnerable point in the armor j 
 
 of the enemy, Owen maintains that the time has come when ! 
 it is constitutional for the Chief Executive to strike at it. 
 
 " But the time has come when it is constitutional to 
 redress it. The rebellion has made it so. Property in man, 
 always morally unjust, has become nationally dangerous. 
 Property that endangers the safety of a nation should not 
 be suffered to remain in the hands of its citizens. A chief 
 magistrate who permits it so to remain becomes responsible 
 for the consequences. For he has the right, under the law 
 and the Constitution, to take private property, with just 
 compensation offered, for public use, w^henever it is ap- 
 parent that public exigency demands such appropriation. 
 
 368
 
 no BERT DALE OWEN 
 
 Forgive what may seem curt speech if I say that, in my 
 judgment, a President with a just sense of duty has no 
 option in such a case." 
 
 Though convinced that Lincoln was unselfishly seeking 
 the salvation of the country " without afterthought of the 
 personal consequences to himself," Owen, in his over- 
 mastering desire to secure the immediate liberation of 
 the negro, does not neglect to hold up before the eyes of the 
 President the personal fame which, through the exercise of 
 his power as military dictator, he may reap by the aboli- 
 tion of slavery. 
 
 " It is within your power at this very moment not only 
 to consummate an act of enlightened statesmanship, but, 
 as the instrument of the Almighty, to restore to freedom a 
 race of men. If you are tempted by an imperishable name, 
 it is within your reach. We may look through ancient and 
 modern history, yet scarce find a sovereign to whom God 
 offered the privilege of bestowing on humanity a boon so 
 vast. Such an offer comes to no human being twice. It 
 is made to you to-day. How long it will remain open — 
 whether in three months or in one month from now it will 
 still be in your option to accept it — God, who reads the 
 hearts of men, alone knows." 
 
 Owen had purposely timed his written exhortation to 
 the President so that it might come into his hands near 
 the close of the sixty-day notice to the Confederates, which 
 terminated on the 23d of September, 1862. The Southern 
 States ignored the notice. No one expected them to do 
 otherwise. There was much speculation both north and 
 south of Mason and Dixon's line as to what measure, if 
 any, Lincoln would adopt at the close of the period of 
 warning in order to punish the Confederacy for the con- 
 tempt with which his proclamation had been received. 
 Owen, sharing in the general interest and anxiety, hopes 
 that the Great Commoner may make the Emancipation 
 Proclamation the weapon of punishment. 
 25 369
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 "The TWENTY-THIED OF SEPTEMBER ap- 
 proaches — the date when the sixty-day notice you have 
 given the rebels will expire — expire without other reply 
 to your warning than the invasion of Maryland and a 
 menace to Pennsylvania. Is it to rest there? Patiently 
 we have waited the time. Is nothing to follow ? Are our 
 enemies to boast that we speak brave words — and there 
 an end of it ? " 
 
 With a prophetic soul, born of his own intense convic- 
 tions upon all questions involving human rights, the 
 younger Owen, looking into the future, describes to the 
 Chief Executive the great day in the calendar which the 
 act of manumission would establish. His description of 
 Emancipation Day seems retrospective rather than pro- 
 spective. 
 
 " What a day, if you but will it, may that twenty-third 
 of September become! The very turning-point in the 
 nation's fate ! A day to the rebels of despair, to every loyal 
 heart of exultant rejoicing ! A day of which the anniver- 
 sary ^w^ill be celebrated with jubilee while the American 
 Union endures ! A day to be remembered not in our land 
 alone, but wherever humanity mourns over the wrongs of 
 the slaves or rejoices in their liberation ! You are the first 
 President to whom the opportunity was ever offered con- 
 stitutionally to inaugurate such a day. If you fail us now, 
 you may be the last.'' 
 
 Having demonstrated both the necessity and the pres- 
 ent legality of the act of emancipation, Owen concludes 
 his remarkable appeal to Lincoln by an eloquent exhorta- 
 tion so earnest as to be almost pathetic. How it must 
 have touched responsive heart-strings in the tender soul 
 of the Great Commoner ! 
 
 "Lift then the weight from the heart of this people. 
 Let us breathe free once more. Extirpate the blighting 
 curse, a living threat throughout long years past, that has 
 smitten at last with desolation a land to which God had 
 
 370
 
 BO BEET DALE OWEN 
 
 granted everything but wisdom and justice. Give back to 
 the nation its hope and faith in a future of peace and un- 
 disturbed prosperity. Fulfil — ^you can more than fulfil — 
 the brightest anticipations of those who, in the name of 
 human freedom, and in the face of threats that have 
 ripened into terrible realities since, fought the battle which 
 placed you where you now stand.^' 
 
 Some one has described this masterpiece of Eobert 
 Dale Owen^s as " an ever-enduring monument of dispas- 
 sionate, well-reasoned, perfectly poised deductions, at a 
 very critical time in the life of a great nation.^' To this 
 day the reader of his eloquent appeal finds himself stirred 
 by the simple power of this great paper. " Its perusal 
 thrilled me like a trumpet-call," said President Lincoln. 
 ^' It will be a source of satisfaction to you to know," wrote 
 Salmon P. Chase, Secretary of the Treasury, to Mr. Owen, 
 " that your letter to the President had more influence on 
 him than any other document which reached him on the 
 subject — I think I might say than all others put together. 
 I speak of that which I know from personal conference 
 with him." While it did not turn Abraham Lincoln to a 
 course upon which he had long been vaguely determined, 
 it strengthened him in his great purpose, and precipitated 
 the Preliminary Proclamation, which was issued five days 
 after the receipt of Mr. Owen's letter. After the lapse of 
 thirty years Providence had given to the two emigrants 
 from the Pocket an opportunity to strike the valiant blow 
 against human slavery which they had vowed. Gloriously 
 did they discharge that ancient resolution. 
 
 New England was the head and front of the anti- 
 slavery movement during ante-bellum da3^s. Before South 
 Carolina seceded, the Southern leaders proposed to recon- 
 struct the Union, leaving out the New England States. 
 " The South, abandoning her avowed intention to erect a 
 separate purely slaveholding Confederacy, is to consent 
 to receive into her fellowship a portion of the Northern 
 
 371
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 States. The Northern States in return are to abandon six 
 of their number: those six in which the opinions against 
 which the war is waged chiefly prevail." 
 
 When the entire North rose in arms after the firing on 
 Fort Sumter this plan of reconstruction was temporarily 
 abandoned. But when the congressional elections of 1862 
 seemed to result adversely to the administration ; when the 
 timid, discouraged by the prolongation of the struggle, 
 cried out for " Peace at any cost," and the disloyal, em- 
 boldened by the stubbornness of the Southern resistance, 
 gave increased encouragement and comfort to the enemy 
 in arms, the leaders of the Confederacy, their cause already 
 sinking, as a last desperate maneuver revived the scheme 
 of reconstruction and compromise which hostilities had in- 
 terrupted. Through secret emissaries the proposition to 
 reorganize the Union was carried to every Northern State 
 save the New England group, where it met with active sup- 
 port from the discouraged and the disloyal. 
 
 In Indiana the fall election of 1862 had placed all the 
 State offices, save that of governor and both branches of the 
 State Legislature, in the hands of the Peace Party. That 
 legislature passed resolutions opposing the further con- 
 tinuance of the war, refused to receive Governor Morton's 
 annual message, and sought to enact laws limiting his 
 power to manage the militia of the State, to prevent which 
 the Union members of the legislature retired to Madison, 
 Indiana, where they remained until the term closed by con- 
 stitutional limitation. Many members of the legislature, 
 some of them openly — most of them, however, secreth^ — 
 strongly favored the scheme of reconstruction of the 
 Union with New England left out: a few because its 
 adoption would aid the South; the rest because its adop- 
 tion would consummate the peace for which they clamored. 
 
 Alarmed by the evident strength of the reconstruction 
 sentiment in his native State, .Mr. Owen, though pre- 
 vented by his duties as head of the Freedman's Commis- 
 
 172
 
 D. D. OWEN,
 
 ROBERT DALE OWEN 
 
 sion from visiting the object of his solicitude, printed for 
 gratuitous distribution and circulated among its citizens a 
 pamphlet dated March 4, 1863, entitled The Future of 
 the Northwest, in which with unanswerable logic he de- 
 monstrates the folly of dismembering the North and ac- 
 cepting the slaveholders' project. In this pamphlet Mr. 
 Owen argues with irresistible force: 
 
 (1) That the Compromise plan for the reconstruction 
 of the Union was revived by the secessionists " as a specious 
 and daring device to uphold a sinking cause/' 
 
 (2) That the Compromise, if consummated, would 
 create an alliance much more advantageous to the slave- 
 holding States than either the old Union they were en- 
 deavoring to destroy or the present Confederacy which they 
 were seeking in vain to establish by force of arms. 
 
 (3) That Compromise would create an alliance com- 
 pletely dominated by slavery. " Look at it, I pray you, 
 not vaguely or hastily but carefully and in all its practical 
 details. In the Senate thirty Southern votes to twenty-two 
 Northern, in the House ninety Southern votes to one hun- 
 dred and thirteen Northern. One House hopelessly gone 
 while twelve votes changed would give a Southern majority 
 in the other. And when has Congress seen the day when 
 twice twelve votes could not have been had from Northern 
 representatives for any measure the South saw fit to pro- 
 pose ? " " Just North enough in the scheme to afford 
 protection and support to slavery, and not North enough 
 to exert over it the slightest influence or control." 
 
 The invitation extended to the citizens of Indiana by 
 the scheme of reconstruction was given on conditions, some 
 of them expressed and some implied. 
 
 (1) "The first was that throughout this slave empire 
 no man shall be allowed to deny the great physical, philo- 
 sophical, and moral truth upon which the new government 
 is founded ; namely, that slavery is the natural and moral 
 condition of the African negro." 
 
 373
 
 TEE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 (2) The second was . . . that the North before 
 it is admitted to Southern fellowship shall cast off six of 
 her States; thus curtailing her power and her possessions 
 by the surrender of nearly one-fifth of her population and 
 more than one-fifth of her wealth. 
 
 (3) The third was that slavery would be practised on 
 all the soil within the new alliance. " It is not more cer- 
 tain that the earth will continue to revolve around the sun, 
 than that the South, while slaveholding, will persevere, 
 whenever and wherever she obtains the political ascend- 
 ency, in asserting and enforcing by law what she regards 
 as her political rights in this matter." 
 
 (4) The fourth was that the new alliance shall shoul- 
 der the expense of the war which the proposed Compromise 
 sought to dishonorably terminate. " The Southern insur- 
 rection will have cost its authors a thousand millions at 
 the least. Can any man doubt that the North once en- 
 trapped into this base compact will be held to pay her full 
 share of that stupendous sum ? " 
 
 If Indiana accepted the proposed Compromise, the 
 commonwealth must not only submit to the domination of 
 the slaveholders, but she must repent every act committed 
 by her brave sons in defense of the Union. Owen puts it 
 thus : " If we take this step we must consent to repent- 
 ance as well as submission. Before the world our acts 
 must declare that from the first we were in the wrong and 
 the South in the right. Before the world our acts must 
 declare that a hundred thousand brave men have sunk 
 from the battle-field to the grave — all in a disgraceful 
 warfare, all in an iniquitous cause." 
 
 Declaring that the thinned ranks of a hundred In- 
 diana regiments at the front would never submit to a 
 compromise by which their achievements would be dis- 
 credited and their loyalty degraded, Owen closes with a 
 picture of the awful fate in store for the beloved common- 
 wealth to which " he owed honorable station and a debt of 
 
 374
 
 ROBERT DALE OWEN 
 
 gratitude/' should she out of either disloyalty or cowardice 
 accept the proposition of the slave States. " Let Indiana, 
 belying the courage she has shown on the battle-field, cast- 
 ing from her the last remnant of self-respect, false to her 
 constitutional obligations, blind to a future of abject ser- 
 vility, deaf alike to the warnings of revolutionary wisdom 
 and to the voice of civilization speaking to-day in her ears 
 — let Indiana, selling Freedom's birthright for less than 
 Esau's price, resolve to purchase Southern favor by North- 
 ern dismemberment and the world-wide contempt that 
 would follow it — but let her know, before she enters that 
 path of destruction, that her road will lie over the bodies 
 of her murdered sons, past prostrate cabins, past ruined 
 farms, through all the desolation that fire and sword can 
 work. Let her know that before she can link her fate to 
 a system that is as surely doomed to ultimate extinction as 
 the human body is finally destined to death, there will 
 be a war within her own borders to which all we have 
 yet endured will be but as the summer's gale, that scat- 
 ters a few branches' over the highway, compared to the 
 hurricane that plows its broad path of ruin, mile after 
 mile, leaving behind in its track a prostrate forest, har- 
 vest crops uprooted and human habitations overthrown." 
 Owen's pamphlet, circulated broadcast through Indiana 
 and the Northwest, exerted a wide influence, especially 
 in view of the fact that it came from one opposed polit- 
 ically to the party in power in all but the desire to pre- 
 serve the Union. 
 
 Near the close of the war the Freedman's Bureau was 
 established as a branch of the U. S. War Department 
 and Mr. Owen appointed as its secretary and real executive 
 o£5cer. This new bureau controlled all affairs " relating 
 to refugees and freedmen from any district embraced 
 within the territory covered by the operations of the army." 
 It provided work for the freedmen, established schools for 
 their education, and guarded their rights. Mr. Owen's 
 
 375
 
 THE NEW HARMONY MOVEMENT 
 
 labors in behalf of the negro while connected with the 
 bureau entitle him to the gratitude of the colored race. 
 
 Though he was the devoted friend of the black man, 
 Mr. Owen strenuously opposed the scheme to bestow im- 
 mediate suffrage upon the newly made f reedmen at the close 
 of the war. In the winter of 1865-66 Mr. Owen was in 
 Washington anxiously watching for legislation favorable for 
 the negro, and he prepared a fourteenth amendment to the 
 Constitution, providing for negro suffrage to begin July 4, 
 1876. Thaddeus Stevens, then chairman of the reconstruc- 
 tion committee, favored immediate negro suffrage, but he 
 was persuaded to adopt Mr. Owen's views, and presented his 
 amendment to the committee. It was adopted by the com- 
 mittee and ordered reported ; but as Mr. Fessenden was ill 
 with the varioloid it was deemed best to reconsider this 
 action and postpone the matter until he could be present. 
 In the meantime protest was made against the amendment, 
 and the result was that the fourteenth amendment was 
 adopted without any allusion to the question of suffrage, 
 and nothing was done about suffrage till the fifteenth 
 amendment was adopted several years later. Mr. Owen 
 told the story in an article entitled The Political Kesults 
 of the Varioloid. 
 
 Eobert Dale Owen died June 24, 1877. For a period 
 before his death " his mind was deranged by overwork — 
 deranged, but not obscured — for during several months' 
 residence in the hospital for the insane his mental powers 
 were incessantly active and brilliant, though touched by 
 grotesque shapes. Happily he regained his mental sound- 
 ness, but did not long survive, dying at the ripe age of 
 seventy-three." 
 
 " What was said of him in one of the newspapers,'' said 
 Mr. John H. Holliday, in a paper written some years ago, 
 " seems to me to hold good still : ' In scholarship, general 
 attainments, varied achievements; as author, statesman, 
 politician, and leader of a new religious faith, he was un- 
 
 376
 
 ROBERT DALE OWEN 
 
 questionably the most prominent man Indiana ever owned. 
 Others may fill now, or may have filled, a larger place in 
 public interest or curiosity for a time, but no other Hoosier 
 was ever so widely known, or so likel}^ to do the State credit 
 by being known, and no other has ever before held so 
 prominent a place so long, with a history so unspotted by 
 selfishness, duplicity, or injustice.' " 
 
 With the death of Robert Dale Owen the last of the 
 great figures conspicuous in the Xew Harmony commu- 
 nisms passed away, but the great movements to which they 
 had given origin and direction still sweep onward in an 
 ever-widening current. 
 
 377
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 SOURCES 
 
 ^^ The New Harmony Communities " was taken as a 
 research topic in 1893 by the author as a member of the 
 seminarium of political science at DePauw University, and 
 was followed during his senior college year under the direc- 
 tion of Colonel James Riley Weaver, Director of the semi- 
 narium, whose helpful suggestions have contributed mate- 
 rially to whatever success may have attended the effort to 
 complete a thorough study of the social experiments at 
 New Harmony. The initial work was done in the library of 
 the Working Men's Institute at New Harmony during the 
 summer of 1893, and a visit was made to the same library 
 in 1896. The secretary of the institute, Mr. Arthur Drans- 
 field^ has for years been collecting with commendable care 
 all the material obtainable with reference to the history 
 of the Rappite and Owenite experiments, sparing neither 
 trouble nor expense to make this collection complete. He 
 has cooperated with the writer in his search for data, has 
 made frequent corrections and suggestions, and under Mr. 
 Dransfield's supervision the collection of photographs which 
 form the basis for the illustrations in this volume was 
 made. Considerable work was done in the Indiana State 
 library at Indianapolis, where valuable material was found 
 and rendered available through the courtesy of the former 
 State librarian, Miss N. E. Ahem, and the present libra- 
 
 379
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 rian, Mr. TV. E. Henry. The paucity of material in the 
 Library of Congress at Washington served to emphasize the 
 fact that the story of the New Harmony experiments had 
 become a lost chapter in the history of American social 
 reform movements. Through the courtesy of the Librarian 
 of Congress, Mr. Herbert Putnam, and the librarian of 
 Yale University, Dr. A. VanName, the Macdonald manu- 
 script, which forms a part of the Yale collection, was tem- 
 porarily transferred to the Library of Congress and used 
 under the supervision of the manuscript division. The 
 Macdonald manuscript is a history of the earlier commu- 
 nistic experiments in America, and the familiarity of the 
 author with the Owenite communities rendered this mate- 
 rial especially valuable. 
 
 In the New Harmony library, one of the most interest- 
 ing book collections in the country, the files of the New 
 Harmony Gazette, a weekly paper published throughout 
 the lifetime of the Owenite experiment as the organ of the 
 movement, was found the most prolific source of informa- 
 tion. The scrap-books of Eichard Owen and Mrs. Arthur 
 Dransfield, the letters and papers of Josiah Warren, the 
 community account-books, and the letters, wills, and deeds 
 of William Maclure, were also found in the New Harmony 
 library. From Dr. Aaron Williams's book on " The Har- 
 monists,'^ the author has drawn liberally, this being the 
 only authoritative publication on the history of the Eapp- 
 ites. Acknowledgments are due to Mr. John Holliday, 
 of Indianapolis, who placed at the disposal of the writer 
 data collected in a study of the New Harmony communities 
 some years ago. 
 
 The chapter on Josiah Warren, as shown by the foot- 
 note, is the production of Mr. William Bailie, of Boston, 
 who has through several years prosecuted a study of the 
 life-work of the founder of the philosophy of individualism. 
 Mr. Charles A. Prosser, of New Albany, Indiana, col- 
 laborated in the preparation of the chapters bearing on the 
 
 380
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 educational phases and relations of the New Harmony 
 movement. 
 
 A list of the more important manuscript and book 
 sources is appended. No attempt has been made to cata- 
 logue the great mass of fragmentary material found in 
 magazines and newspaper articles: 
 
 The Harmonists, or The New Harmony Society, — Aaron Williams, 
 D. D., 1866. 
 
 History of American Socialisms. — John Humphrey Noyes, 1870. 
 
 History of New Harmony, Indiana: The Rappites. — Dr. J. Schnack 
 and Richard Owen. — Pamphlet, 1890. 
 
 Conmaunistic Societies of the United States. — Charles Nordhoff, 1875. 
 
 Two Years' Residence in the Settlement on the Enghsh Prairie in 
 the Illinois County, U. S. — John Woods, London. 1822. 
 
 Travels in North America. — Charles Lyell, F. R. S., 1845. 
 
 History of the English Settlement in Edwards County, Illinois. — 
 George Fowler, 1882. 
 
 American Communities. — ^William Alfred Hines, 1878. 
 
 A Journey in America. — Morris Birkbeck, London, 1818. 
 
 Brief Sketch of New Harmony. — Library Catalogue of Working 
 Men's Institute, 1845. 
 
 Visit to New Harmony. — ^William Herbert, London, 1825. 
 
 Life of Robert Owen. — Lloyd Jones, 1890. 
 
 Socialism, By a Socialist. — Charles P. Somerby, 1879. 
 
 History of Cooperation. — George Jacob Holyoke, 1878. 
 
 Speech at New Harmony, April 27, 1825. — Robert Owen. 
 
 Two Discourses on a New System of Society. — Delivered in the 
 Hall of the House of Representatives. — Robert Owen, Pitts- 
 burg, 1825. 
 
 Twenty-three Lectures on the Rational System of Society. — Deliv- 
 ered in Egj'^ptian Hall, Piccadilly. — Robert Owen, London, 1841. 
 
 Owen's Universal Revolution, With Supplement. — Robert Owen, 
 London, 1849. 
 
 Lectures on the New State of Society. — Robert Owen, London, 1842, 
 
 New Religion. — Lecture. — Robert Owen, London, 1830. 
 
 The Addresses of Robert Owen, as Published in the London Jour- 
 nal. — London, 1835. 
 
 The Report of the Committee of the Association for the Relief of 
 the Manufacturing and Laboring Poor to the Committee of the 
 House of Commons. — London, 1825. 
 
 381
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 New View of Society. — Lecture. — Robert Owen, London, 1842. 
 
 Social State of Man. — Robert Owen, London, 1842. 
 
 Manifesto of Robert Owen to Parliament. — London, 1840. 
 
 The Religious Creed of the New System. — Abram Combe, Edin- 
 burg, 1824. 
 
 The First Trumpet. — An Address to the Disciples of Robert Owen. 
 — ^William Cameron, London, 1832. 
 
 Life and Last Days of Robert Owen. — George Jacob Holyoke, 1871. 
 
 The Town of New Harmony. — Proceedings of a Meeting of the 
 Inhabitants held April 13, 1842. — Tract. 
 
 Memoir of William Maclure. — Samuel Geo. Morton, D. D., 1844. 
 
 Communism and Socialism. — Theodore D. Woolsey, 1888. 
 
 The Cooperative Movement in England. — Beatrice Potter, 1891. 
 
 The Cooperative Commonwealth. — Laurence Gronlund, 1890. 
 
 Richard Owen's Scrap-Book. 
 
 Letters and Papers of Josiah Warren, 
 
 New Harmony Community Account-Books. 
 
 Journal (MSS.) Proceedings of Meetings of Working Men's Institute. 
 
 Manuscript Copy of Community Dances. — Robert Fauntleroy 
 
 Scrap-Books of Mrs. A. Dransfield. 
 
 Letters, Wills, and Deeds of William Maclure. 
 
 The New Harmony Gazette. Vols. I, II, and III. — October 1, 1825, 
 to March 1, 1829. 
 
 The Disseminator. New Series, Vols. I and II. Published at New 
 Harmony, 1834-'35. — ^WilUam Maclure, Editor. 
 
 The Free Enquirer. Vols. I-VI, inclusive. Published at Baltimore 
 and New York. — Frances Wright, Robert Dale Owen, and Amos 
 Gilbert, Editors. 
 
 The Crisis. Vols. I and II, 1832-'34, London.— Robert Owen and 
 Robert Dale Owen, Editors. 
 
 The Beacon. Vol. Ill, Old Series, 1838. Vol. I, New Series, 1839.— 
 G. Vale, Editor. 
 
 The Disseminator. "Containing Hints to the Youth of the United 
 States." Old Series. Edited, Printed, and Published Semi- 
 monthly by the Pupils of the School of Industry, New Har- 
 mony. First issue, January 16, 1828. 
 
 The Indiana Statesman. May 13, 1842, to March 14, 1846. 
 
 The New Moral World. Vols. ItoVIL London, 1834- '40. Edited 
 by Robert Owen and Disciples. 
 
 The Cooperative Magazine and Monthly Herald. London, 1820. 
 
 Southwestern Sentinel. Vol. I, No. 1. EvansviUe, February 28, 
 1840. 
 
 382
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 Milleimial Gazette, London. — Robert Owen, Editor. 
 
 Practical Details of Equitable Commerce. — Josiah Warren, Evans- 
 viUe, 1835. 
 
 Equitable Commerce. — Josiah Warren, 1835. 
 
 Practical Application of the Elementary Principles of True Civiliza- 
 tion. — Josiah Warren, 1873. 
 
 A Few Days in Athens. — Frances Wright. 
 
 Autobiography of Raffinesque. — Constantine Raffinesque. 
 
 A Brief History of Socialism in America. — Frederic Heath, 1900. 
 
 A History of the People of the United States, Vol. V. — John B. 
 McMaster. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1900. 
 
 Cooperative Communities in the United States. — Rev. Alexander 
 Kent. Bulletin of the Department of Labor, 1901. 
 
 Education. — Joseph Neef, Philadelphia, 1808. 
 
 Neef 's Method of Teaching. — Joseph Neef, Philadelphia, 1813. 
 
 American Conchology, or Description of the Shells of North Amer- 
 ica. Illustrated by Colored Figures from Originals, Drawings 
 Executed from Nature. — Thomas Say, F. M. L, S. Engravings 
 drawn and colored by Mrs. Say and C. A. LeSueur. Engravings 
 by L. Lyon, C. Tiebout, and I. Walker. 
 
 Course of Popular Lectures. — Frances Wright. 
 
 Campbell and Owen Debate. Cincinnati, 1829. 
 
 Reise Durch Nord Amerika. — Alexander Philip MaximiUian. Co- 
 blentz, 1838, 1843. London, 1843. 
 
 Travels Through North America. — His Highness Bemhard, Duke 
 of Weimar, Saxe, and Eisenach, Philadelphia, 1828. 
 
 Method of Science Teaching in the Colleges and Universities of 
 North America. — C. S. RaflSnesque. 
 
 Self-Help a Hundred Years Ago, — History of Cooperation in Eng- 
 land. — George Jacob Holyoke. 
 
 A History of Socialism. — Thomas Kirkup, 1892. 
 
 Socialism, Utopian and Scientific. — Frederick Engels, 1892. 
 
 Working Class Movement in America. — Edward and Eleanor Marx 
 Aveling, 1892. 
 
 Socialism in England. — Sidney Webb. 
 
 Robert Owen and His Social Philosophy. — Sargent. 
 
 The Manufacturing Population of England. — Keel. 
 
 Stories of Indiana. — Chapters on New Harmony and Raflfinesque. — 
 Maurice Thompson. 
 
 History of American Education. — Richard Boone. 
 
 Pocahontas, A Drama; Hints on Public Architecture, 1840; Foot- 
 falls on the Boundary of Another World, 1859 ; Wrongs of Sla- 
 
 383
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 very: The Rights of Emancipation, 1864; Beyond the Breakers, 
 1870; The Debatable Land Between this World and the Next, 
 1871 ; Threading My Way, or Twenty-Seven Years of Autobi- 
 ography, 1874. — Robert Dale Owen. 
 
 United States Geological Reports. 1838-'59. — David Dale Owen. 
 
 Key to the Geology of the Globe. — Richard Owen. 
 
 American Entomology. — Thomas Say. 
 
 Account of the Doctrines of Charles Fourier. — Parke Godwin. 
 
 Recent American Socialisms. — Richard T. Ely. 
 
 Essay on Robert Owen. — Ralph Waldo Emerson. 
 
 Science Sketches. — David Starr Jordan. Chapter on Raffinesque- 
 
 Comparative Socialism. Chapter II, — ^Woodrow Wilson. 
 
 Letters and Lectures of Robert Dale Owen. — Richard D. Owen. 
 
 Twelve Months in New Harmonj\ — Paul Brown, 1827. 
 
 Higher Education of Women. — Lange. New York : D. Appleton & 
 Co., 1890. 
 
 Journal Indiana House of Representatives, Twenty-second Session, 
 1836-'37. 
 
 Journal Indiana House of Representatives, Twenty- third Session, 
 1837-'38. 
 
 Journal Indiana House of Representatives, Thirty-sixth Session, 
 1851-'52. 
 
 Debates Second Indiana Constitutional Convention, two volumes. 
 
 Journal Second Indiana Constitutional Convention, two volumes. 
 
 History of Woman Suffrage, three volumes. — E. C. Stanton, S. B. 
 Anthony, M. J. Gage, Rochester, N. Y., 1887. — Charles 
 Mann. 
 
 Education in Indiana, a monograph prepared by State Superintend- 
 ent F. A. Cotton for the Louisiana Purchase Exposition. — In- 
 dianapolis, W. B. Burford, 1904. 
 
 The History of Modern Education. — S. G. Williams. Syracuse, N. Y. 
 C. W. Bardeen, 1903. 
 
 Education in the United States. — Edited by Nicholas Murray Butler. 
 Albany, J. B. Lyon Co., 1900. 
 
 The V/rong of Slavery and the Right of Emancipation. — Robert 
 Dale Owen. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1864. 
 
 Maclure's Opinions on Various Subjects, three volumes. New Har- 
 mony Industrial Schools Press, 1834. 
 
 A Proper System of Education for the Schools of a Free People. — 
 Joseph Neef, 1807. 
 
 The Meaning of Education. — Nicholas Murray Butler. The Mac- 
 miUan Co., N. Y., 1901. 
 
 384
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 Pestalozzi: His Life and Work. De Guimps. — New York: D. Apple- 
 ton & Co., 1890. 
 Pestalozzi: His Life, Work, and Influence. Cincinnati, Ohio: Van 
 
 Antwerp, Bragg & Co., 1875. 
 A History of Education in Indiana. — R. G. Boone. New York: D. 
 
 Appleton & Co., 1892. 
 Indiana Libraries, 1904, Monograph by W. E. Henry, State Librarian 
 
 for Louisiana Purchase Exposition. 
 Pamphlet on the Maclure Libraries by Jacob Piatt Dunn, State 
 
 Libr*inan, 1893. 
 Quick's Educational Reformers. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 
 
 1890. 
 Education in the United States. — R. G. Boone. New York: D. 
 
 Appleton & Co., 1890. 
 School Law of Indiana, 1901. — F. L. Jones, ex-State Superintendent 
 
 of Public Instruction. 
 Johonnot's Principles and Practise of Teaching. New York: D. 
 
 Appleton & Co., 1883. 
 Thoughts. — Horace Mann. Boston: Lee, Shepard & Dillingham, 
 
 1872. 
 Synopsis Minutes Minerva Society. — Arthur Dransfield. 
 A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. — Mary Wollstonecraft. 
 
 New York: Scribner & Welford, 1890. 
 Scheme for the Reconstruction of the Union with New England 
 
 Left Out. — Pamphlet by Robert Dale Owen, 1863. New Har- 
 mony Library. 
 The Perils and Exigencies of the Present Crisis. — ^Address by R. D. 
 
 Owen to Citizens of Indiana, State House, Indianapolis, 1860. 
 
 26 385
 
 INDEX 
 
 COMPILED BY JENNIE M. ELROD 
 Reference Librarian, Indiana State Library 
 
 Abolition, See Slavery. 
 
 Adams, 17. S. constitution, 66. 
 
 Adams, John Quincy, Smithson 
 bequest, 339. 
 
 Agassiz, Prof., Pestalozzian move- 
 ment, 292. 
 
 Agriculture, Agricultural and pas- 
 toral society formed, 147; basis 
 of communism, 118; coopera- 
 tive association of Wainborough, 
 HI., 121; school for, 74; super- 
 intendent of, 113. 
 
 Aix-la-Chapelle, Owen presents 
 memorial, 57. 
 
 Alexandria, Leon absconds to, 33. 
 
 Alicante (Spain) agricultural 
 school, 74. 
 
 Allen, WilHam, accuses Owen of 
 infidelity, 51. 
 
 Amanaites, increase in value of 
 land, 38. 
 
 Amana society, family system in, 
 39; wealth, 39. 
 
 America, Rappites prosperity in, 
 13. 
 
 "American Conchology," printed 
 at New Harmony, 76. 
 
 American museum of natural his- 
 tory, D. D. Owen's geological 
 collection, 317; Maximilian col- 
 lection of birds, 316. 
 
 Americans, jealous of Rappites, 
 23; Owen's criticism of, 123. 
 
 Amusements, at New Harmony, 
 93, 99, 100, 125, 126, 129, 134- 
 136; intimacy not created by, 
 148; Paul Brown's criticism of, 
 139. 
 
 Andrews, Stephen Peari, disciple 
 of Warren's, 302. 
 
 Anthony, Siisan B., tribute to 
 Mary Owen, 203, 204; woman's 
 suffrage, 187, 188. 
 
 Arbitration, Owen recommends, 
 90; provided for at Feiba Peveh, 
 115, 116. 
 
 Arkansas, State geologist of, 319. 
 
 Arndt, 7. 
 
 Asylums, for aflSicted, 65. 
 
 Audubon, description of Raffin- 
 esque, 78; visited New Har- 
 mony, 320. 
 
 Ayre, Scotland, birthplace of 
 Maclure, 74. 
 
 Baboef, 45. 
 
 Bacon, teaching of, 221. 
 
 Baihe, WiUiam, Warren, chapter 
 on, 294. 
 
 Baker, R. L., Rapp's successor, 
 34. 
 
 Ballou, Adin, tribute to Owen, 308, 
 309. 
 
 Beal, 177. 
 
 Beaver county, Penn., village of 
 Economy in, 32. 
 
 Beizelites, reason for decline, 40. 
 
 Bennett, 177. 
 
 Bentham, Jeremy, guardian of 
 Frances and Camilla Wright, 
 193. 
 
 Bethel community, 33. 
 
 Bimeler, Joseph, founder of Zoar, 
 8. 
 
 Birds, collection of Prince Maxi- 
 milian von Neuweid, 316. 
 
 Birkbeck, Morris, colony planted 
 by, 128; descendants of, 177; 
 drowned, 177; Harmonic de- 
 scribed, 23, 24. 
 
 Blankenburg, Froebel's school at, 
 215 220. 
 
 Bloomington (Ind.), 158, 317. 
 
 Blue Springs community, 158, 177. 
 
 Boarding schools, centralization of 
 
 387
 
 INDEX 
 
 schools, 270-272; English, 218, 
 258; New Harmony, 93, 236, 
 243, 244, 246; provision for, in 
 Preliminary Society, 89; self- 
 supporting, 254, 269, 270, 281; 
 Spartan system of education, 
 267-269, 282, 283. 
 
 "Boat load of knowledge," 81, 
 104, 236. 
 
 Bodmer, 315. 
 
 Bolton, 177. 
 
 Bolton, Samuel, chemist, 319. 
 
 Bonaparte, Prince Charles Lucian, 
 Say edits publications, 76. 
 
 Boone, infant school, first, 286; 
 technical schools, early, 245. 
 
 Borrowdale and Atkinson, Owen's 
 partners, 48. 
 
 Boston, girls' schools in, 240. 
 
 Boston Women's Club, 196. 
 
 Botany, fossil, 318; researches of 
 Raffinesque, 78, 79. 
 
 Boutwell, George, Pestalozzian 
 movement, 292. 
 
 Braunberg, Baron. See Neuweid, 
 Prince Maximihan Alexander 
 Philipp. 
 
 Brentwood, Modern Times, later 
 name, 303. 
 
 Brook Farm, hfe in, 134; Modem 
 Times, unhke, 305; Nashoba 
 similar to, 195; New Harmony 
 compared to, 2, 3. 
 
 Brown, 177. 
 
 Brown, John, 197. 
 
 Brown, Paul, criticizes conditions 
 at New Harmony, 147-149, 157, 
 158; criticizes Owen, 184; New 
 Harmony, experiences at, 137- 
 140; New Harmony Gazette re- 
 fuses essays by, 149; opposes 
 New Harmony management, 
 145. 
 
 Buchanan, infant school at New 
 Lanark, 216, 217, 223; fore- 
 runner of Froebel, 286, 287. 
 
 Burkitt, Rev. John, 191. 
 
 Biu-t, C. W., New Harmony failure, 
 184. 
 
 Butler, Nicholas Murray, educa- 
 tion, meaning of, 276 ; education- 
 al period, 282 ; rehgious instruc- 
 tion in the pubhc schools, 228 . 
 
 Cabet, 2. 
 
 Campanella, 2. 
 
 Campbell, Alexander, criticism of 
 
 New Harmony, 82, 83; debate 
 with Owen, 307, 308. 
 
 Carnegie, Mr., Maclure compared 
 to, 322, 323. 
 
 CeUbacy, conmumism, rule of suc- 
 cessful, '39; Zoarites taught, 39. 
 See also Marriage. 
 
 Cemetery, Rappite, 28, 36. 
 
 Chappelsmith, John, 79; artist, 
 318. 
 
 Chappelsmith, Mrs. John, ento- 
 mologist, 318. 
 
 Character, how formed, 61, 106, 
 210-213; motto concerning, 210; 
 studies at New Harmony, 82. 
 
 Chase, Salmon P., Owen, R. D., 
 effect of letter to Lincoln, 371. 
 
 Child labor, age hmit, 119; in Eng- 
 land, 48; legislation, campaign 
 for 53, 55; Owen's speech, 54; 
 Peel's factory act, 48. 
 
 Children, age when received by 
 community, 132, 241 ; behavior, 
 119; belonged to community, 
 132; Brown criticizes New Har- 
 mony, 145, 149; Commimity of 
 Equality, members of, 108, 111; 
 dancing at New Harmony, 131; 
 education in one family, 154; 
 education of, 65, 66, 152, 259; 
 fear, effect upon, 258-260; lec- 
 tures for, 149; Lyell's impres- 
 sions of, at New Harmony, 321 ; 
 Maclure's educational methods, 
 Owen disapproves of, 167, 251- 
 253; mechanics' and farmers', 
 150; New Harmony schools, 
 ages prescribed, 238; New Har- 
 mony schools, tuition in, 239; 
 Owen's ideas as to treatment 
 of, 64, 66; Owen's schools, pur- 
 pose of, 213-216; parents, sel- 
 dom seen, 243, 246; poor, dis- 
 crimination against, 341; Pre- 
 Uminary society, provisions for, 
 89; pimishment of, 229-231; 
 reading of, 224; rehgious teach- 
 ing of, 226-228 ; school repubhc, 
 277-279; schools, centrahzation 
 of, 270-272; schools, self-sup- 
 porting, 254, 269, 270, 281; 
 Spartan system of education, 
 267-269, 282, 283; spiritual 
 inheritances, 284, 285; war, 
 teachings regarding, 90. 
 
 Choate, Senator, Smithson be- 
 quest, 339. 
 
 388
 
 INDEX 
 
 Church, inscription over door, 26 ; 
 New Harmony, 93, 101; of 
 Rappites, 16, 18, 36, 124. 
 
 Cincinnati, Owen-Campbell de- 
 bate, 307. 
 
 Claremont, community near, 301. 
 
 Clark, Amos, 156. 
 
 Clay, Henry, Compromise meas- 
 ure of 1850, 362, 363. 
 
 Cliftondale, Warren lived at, 305. 
 
 Clubs, dramatic, 5, 336, 337 ; wom- 
 an's, 5, 100, 196. 
 
 Coeducation, at New Harmony, 
 189, 239. 
 
 Colden, Cadwallader, Nashoba, 
 trustee of, 195. 
 
 Commerce, superintendent of, 113. 
 
 Communism, celibacy makes suc- 
 cessful, 39, 41; colonies, 143, 
 144; community near Cincin- 
 nati, 158; Commiinity of Equal- 
 ity, agreement, 12; Community 
 of Equality, organization, 104- 
 111; Cooperative, Raffinesque's 
 plan, 121, 122; Cooperative asso- 
 ciation of Wainborough, lU., 
 121 ; eariy Christian, 2 ; El Dora- 
 do of, 73 ; family Uf e opposed to, 
 40—42; government under, 67; 
 Jesus taught, 10; leadership 
 necessary, 40; life pleasant 
 under, 135; Maclviria, 112, 113; 
 Mexico, colonies in, 307; names 
 for towns, 121; New Harmony, 
 communities near, 169, 170, 172; 
 New Harmony, criticism of, 145; 
 New Harmony defeat, 158-163, 
 166, 173, 178-185; New Har- 
 mony, last evidence of, 174; 
 New Harmony, Owen's address 
 at opening, 83, 84; numbers 3 
 and 4, 157, 158; Owenite move- 
 ment, 177, 178; pretended at 
 New Harmony, 198; Prelimina- 
 ry society, 89-90, 159, 166, 167; 
 rehgious associations success- 
 ful, 37, 40; Zoar, 8. 
 
 Constantinople, Raffinesque, birth- 
 place of, 77. 
 
 Constitution, Cooperative asso- 
 ciation of Wainborough, lU., 
 121; educational provisions in 
 Indiana, 347, 351-357; Feiba 
 PeveU, 115, 116; Indiana, 25; 
 Macluria, 113; New Harmony 
 agricultural and pastoral society, 
 147; New Harmony Community 
 
 of EquaUty, 105-111, 113; Pre- 
 hminary Society of New Har- 
 mony, 84-90; U. S., 66. 
 
 Coolidge, J. K., superintendent, 
 113. 
 
 Cooperative Society, Valley Forge, 
 Pa., 177. 
 
 Cooper, 177. 
 
 Cooper, Dr., Smithson bequest, 
 338. 
 
 Cooper, John, New Harmony prop- 
 erty, 176. 
 
 Corydon, 25. 
 
 Costvune, worn at New Harmony, 
 125, 129. 
 
 Cotton, embargo on, 50; industry, 
 Owen's speech on, 54; manu- 
 facture, Owen's connection with, 
 47-55; Sea island, introduction 
 of, 47; tariff on, 53. 
 
 "Council of the Fathers, The," 
 Macluria, 113. 
 
 Course of study, Maclure's schools, 
 254, 255 ; New Harmony schools, 
 236-238, 240-244, 284, 285; 
 New Lanark schools, 223 ; sub- 
 jects to teach, 263, 264. 
 
 Cox, 177. 
 
 Cox, E. T., Indiana, State geolo- 
 gist of, 320. 
 
 Coxsackie, N. Y., community, 177; 
 
 . failure, 185. 
 
 Croghan, George, 7. 
 
 Cubberly, E. G., labor notes, 301. 
 
 Dale, David, manufacturer, 48. 
 Dale, Miss, married Robert Owen, 
 
 48, 49. 
 Dana, Charles A., New Harmony 
 
 failure, 183; socialism, rehgious 
 
 basis of, 40. 
 D'Arusmont, Phiquepal, at New 
 
 Harmony, 79; marriage, 80; R. 
 
 D. Owen's opinion of, 247; 
 
 teacher, 208. 
 Davis, Paulina W., tribute to 
 
 Frances Wright, 198, 199. 
 Debt, individual, 110, 111; Feiba 
 
 PeveU, 116; New Harmony to 
 
 Owen and Maclure, 75, 137-139; 
 
 147, 148. 
 De Garmo, Charles, teachers, 
 
 Umits of activity, 222. 
 Dickens, Charles, 82; attacks 
 
 "cramming system," 218. 
 Dickinson, Anna, 197. 
 Di vital invention, 122. 
 
 389
 
 INDEX 
 
 Dorsey, Mr., Owen's school sys- 
 tem, in charge of, 165, 252; 
 Owen's steward, 173. 
 
 Dransfield, 177. 
 
 Dransfield, Arthur, Hbrarian of 
 New Harmony Working Men's 
 library, 27, 328, 332. 
 
 Drawing, Maclnre's course of 
 study, 237. 
 
 Dreidoppel, 315. 
 
 Drinkwater, Mr., cotton mill, of 
 47. 
 
 Duclos, 177. 
 
 Dunn, Jacob P., Maclure estate, 
 324. 
 
 Duss, John, career of, 34, 35; 
 Economy (Pa.), trustee of, 34, 
 35; Rappite estate, 35. 
 
 Economy (Pa.), 24; last years of 
 the conununity, 34, 35; Leon's 
 followers withdraw from, 33; 
 Rapp buried at, 36; Rappites 
 build, 32; secession at, 32. 
 
 Edinburg, "Practical society" of, 
 112. 
 
 Education, centraUzation of 
 schools., 270-272; children, 151, 
 152, 154, 259 ; classical opposed, 
 279, 280, 287; Community of 
 Equality, 108; cranmaing sys- 
 tem attacked, 218; environment 
 a factor, 212; free and universal, 
 4, 264-267; Indiana, State Board 
 of, 357; infant, 64; interest, 
 value of, 260; lectures on, 149; 
 legislation for, in Indiana, 340- 
 359; love a principle in, 221; 
 Macliire's efforts after Owen's 
 defeat, 254; Maclure's interest 
 in, 74, 75, 234; Maclure's meth- 
 od, dissatisfaction over, 167, 
 251-253; meaning of, 273-277; 
 New Harmony Educational 
 Society, 251 ; New Harmony 
 schools, course of study in, 236- 
 238; New Harmony schools, 
 factors in, 79, 81 ; New Harmony 
 schools, superintendent of, 113; 
 New Harmony schools, to be 
 center of, 75, 99; New Lanark 
 Schools, subjects taught, 223; 
 R. D. Owen's creed, 342; Pesta- 
 lozzian movement, second, 292, 
 293; Rappite agreement on, 12; 
 reading, importance of, 224; re- 
 ligious element in, 226-228 ; self- 
 
 supporting schools, 254, 269, 
 270, 281 ; sexes, equal privileges 
 for, 4, 100, 239, 240, 287; Society 
 of, jealousy toward, 148; Society 
 of, opposes reorganization of the 
 community, 151; Spartan sys- 
 tem, 267-270, 282, 283. See 
 also Boarding schools; Infant 
 schools ; Kindergarten ; Pesta- 
 lozzi; Schools. 
 
 Edwards cotmty (111.), settlement 
 in, 17, 23, 30; slavery opposed 
 by settlement, 30. 
 
 Elderhorst, Dr., 4, 319. 
 
 Elliot, James, New Harmony 
 property, 176. 
 
 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 3; Owen 
 and sociaUsm, 309-311. 
 
 Engelman, George, visited New 
 Harmony, 320. 
 
 Engels, Frederick, tribute to 
 Robert Owen, 43, 46. 
 
 England, cooperation in, 5, 308; 
 Flower's arrival in, 57 ; industrial 
 revolution in, 43-52 ; labor legis- 
 lation, 55-57; labor trouble, 53; 
 New Lanark best community 
 in, 51 ; Sea island cotton intro- 
 duced, 47; slavery rare in, 360. 
 
 EngUsh Prairie, colony on the 
 Wabash river, 128. 
 
 Environment, importance at- 
 tached to, 61, 211, 212. 
 
 Equality, New Harmony commu- 
 nity of, 104-111; not agreeable 
 to all, 124, 126, 129, 130; of 
 labor not a success, 119, 120. 
 
 Equity, stores, 296, 297, 300; vil- 
 lage in Tuscarav/as co. (O.), 
 298; village of Modern Times, 
 302-305; village of Utopia, 301, 
 302; villages did not fail like 
 New Harmony, 305. 
 
 Evans, 177. 
 
 Evans, Frederick W., political 
 movement organized, 337. 
 
 Evans, George H., political move- 
 ment organized, 337. 
 
 Factories, child labor in, 48; con- 
 ditions in English, 47-54; legiS' 
 lation, 53-56; Owen as super- 
 intendent, 47, 48; Peel's factory 
 act, 48. 
 
 Family, Amana society, 39; chil- 
 dren surrendered under Spar- 
 tan system, 267-269, 282, 283; 
 
 390
 
 INDEX 
 
 Owen's theory regarding, 41, 
 67; socialism opposed to, ^0-42. 
 
 "Father of American geology," 
 74, 322, 335. 
 
 "Father of American zoology,'* 
 75. 
 
 Fauntleroy, 177, 182. 
 
 Fauntleroy, Robert Henry, mar- 
 riage, 319; scientist, 319. 
 
 Fear, effect of, 259, 260; punish- 
 ment, which produces, 258. 
 
 Feiba Peveli, conditions of secur- 
 ing land, 144; formation of, 114- 
 116; last report of, 174; name, 
 meaning of, 114, 115; Owen's 
 retrospect of, 143, 144; Saxe- 
 Weimar visits, 127, 128; success 
 of, 162. 
 
 Fellenberg, Emmanuel, Owen 
 visits, 57; respected, 124; 
 school of, 80, 215, 336. 
 
 Fessenden, Mr., negro suffrage, 
 376. 
 
 Fish, Lesueur's classification, 77; 
 Lesueur's writings on, 318; New 
 Harmony, abundance at, 97. 
 
 Fiske, John, infancy and institu- 
 tional life, 282. 
 
 Flint and Palmer, Owen's con- 
 nection with, 46. 
 
 Florida, natural history of, 75. 
 
 Flower, Edward, England, return 
 to, 30; slavery opposed, 30. 
 
 Flower, George, Rappite colony 
 described, 17, 18; trustee of 
 Nashoba, 195. 
 
 Flower, Richard, Edwards co. 
 (111.), settlement in, 30; Har- 
 monist property, sale of, 29, 30, 
 31, 58; slavery opposed, 30. 
 
 Flower, Sarah, wrote hymn, 30. 
 
 Forrestville (Ind.), conununity, 
 177. 
 
 Fort. See Granary. 
 
 Fourier, 2; communism learned 
 from Owenism, 3, 310; idealist, 
 45; teachings criticised, 65. 
 
 Franke, 7. 
 
 Frankhn community, Owen plan 
 used, 144, 177. 
 
 Franklin, Dr., three hours of labor, 
 38. 
 
 Free Enquirer, advocate of wom- 
 en's rights, 197, 201; editors, 
 196, 337 ; free schools urged, 266, 
 341, 342; political movement 
 outcome of, 337. 
 
 Free love, Oneida Perfectionists 
 taught, 41 ; Owens did not be- 
 lieve in, 189, 191, 202. 
 
 Freedman's Bureau, branch of U. 
 S. War Department, 375; R. D. 
 Owen connected with, 372, 375. 
 
 Fretageot, 177. 
 
 Fretageot, Achilles E., 256. 
 
 Fretageot, Marie D., came to New 
 Harmony, 79 ; Saxe- Weimar's 
 account of,^^ 131-132; teacher, 
 236. 
 
 Friends, Society of. See Quakers. 
 
 Froebel, kindergarten, not the 
 founder of, 188, 189, 287; meth- 
 ods compared to Owen's, 217- 
 223; methods, religious element 
 in, 226. 
 
 Gabriel's Rock, description of, 20, 
 21. 
 
 Gage, Matilda Joslyn, woman's 
 suffrage, 187, 188. 
 
 Games, in New Lanark schools, 
 223. 
 
 Garrison, 197. 
 
 Geology, Maclure's work in, 74; 
 "Father of American," 74; D. 
 D. Owen's researches, 316, 317, 
 319; State geologists, 319; 
 Troost's studies, 79 ; U. S. Geo- 
 logical survey, 4, 316, 317. 
 
 Gerhardt, 7. 
 
 German communists, Harmonie, 
 life at, 28, 29; houses of, still 
 stand, 1, 17; language barrier, 
 39; paved way for Owen's ex- 
 periment, 6; prepared for com- 
 munism, 38, 39. 
 
 Germany, immigration from, 8, 
 9, 23; literature destroyed Pie- 
 tistic fervor, 8; religion in, 7, 
 8, 11. 
 
 Gex, 177. 
 
 Girls. See Women. 
 
 Glasgow, factory owners, meeting 
 of, 53 ; R. D. Owen, birthplace of, 
 336. 
 
 Godwin, Parke, social reformers 
 divided, 2. 
 
 Government, Community of 
 Equality, 108-111; Macluria, 
 113; Modern Times, 304, 305; 
 New Harmony community No. 
 1, 151 ; New Harmony schools, 
 247-250, 257, 258, 288; of com- 
 munities, 67; Preliminary So- 
 
 391
 
 INDEX 
 
 ciety of New Harmony, 84-90; 
 rational, 66, 67; school at New 
 Lanark, 229-231 ; self govern- 
 ment of schools, 277-279; sub- 
 
 , mission to state, 106. 
 
 Granary, built like a fort, 17; de- 
 scription of, 97; underground 
 passage to, 19. 
 
 Grant, 177. 
 
 Gray, John Edward, compared 
 to Say, 76. 
 
 Great Britain. See England. 
 
 Greek, study of, opposed, 279-281. 
 
 Greeley, Horace, New Harmony 
 failure, reason for, 183; social- 
 ism, basis of, 40. 
 
 Green county (Ohio), Owenite 
 conmiunity in, 101. 
 
 Greenbree, Matilda, marriage of, 
 191, 192. 
 
 Greenwood, Mr., R. D. Owen's 
 story about, 136, 137. 
 
 Greenwood, Miles, story about his 
 father, 136. 
 
 Griscom, Mr., New Lanark, 51, 52. 
 
 G5Tnnastics, in Maclure's course 
 of study, 238. 
 
 Hahn, Michael, Pietism, leader of, 
 9; relation to Rapp, 9. 
 
 Haller, 11. 
 
 Hamilton, E. H., criticises Owen, 
 184. 
 
 Hamilton, G. W., New Harmony 
 failure, 184. 
 
 Hanus, Paul, education, aim of, 
 276. 
 
 Happiness, Commvmity of Equal- 
 ity, object of, 105; conditions 
 which would produce, 62, 65; 
 New Harmony communism, ob- 
 ject of, 85. 
 
 Harmonie, buildings, 16-18; com- 
 fort in, 18, 19; dedication of, 7; 
 descriptions of, 15, 16, 18, 25- 
 29 ; end foreseen, 36 ; evidence of 
 German thrift, 16; financial suc- 
 cess, 23, 27, 28; manners and 
 customs in, 21-23; sale effected, 
 31, 58; sale, reasons for, 28, 31; 
 successful communism, 37, 38, 
 39. 
 
 Harmonists. See Rappites. 
 
 Harmony. See Harmonie. 
 
 Harrington, 2. 
 
 Harris, W. T., kindergarten intro- 
 fiuced in public schools, 287. 
 
 Haverstraw, N. Y., community, 
 177 ; failure, cause of, 185. 
 
 Hawthorne, Brook Farm experi- 
 ment, 195. 
 
 Henderson (Kentucky), home of 
 Audubon, 78. 
 
 Henrici, Jacob, successor to Rapp, 
 34. 
 
 Herbert, WiUiam, Rappite church, 
 18. 
 
 Hemhutters, cooperative labor, 37. 
 
 Heywoods, Warren Uves with, 305. 
 
 Hoffwyl (Switzerland), Owen's 
 sons in school at, 80, 215, 336; 
 Owen visits, 57, 215. 
 
 Holidays, observed by Rappites, 
 22. 
 
 HolUday, John, Harmonie, 25; 
 Richard Owen, letter from, 156; 
 R. D. Owen's autobiography, 
 134; R. D. Owen in Constitu- 
 tional Convention, 340; R. D. 
 Owen, tribute to, 376, 377. 
 
 Holstein, Duke of, visits New 
 Lanark, 232. 
 
 Holyoke, George Jacob, New Har- 
 mony failure, reasons for, 184. 
 
 Houses, community, 17 ; New Har- 
 mony commtinity, 127; Rappite, 
 still stand, 1. 
 
 Hovey, A. P., Maclure Ubrary 
 fund, administrator of, 325. 
 
 Hudson river, FrankMn commun- 
 ity on, 144. 
 
 Hugo, 177. 
 
 Hurst, Philosophy and literature 
 in Germany, 8. 
 
 Huxley, T. H., tribute to Owen's 
 infant school system, 220, 221. 
 
 Huygens, Mr., 131. 
 
 Illinois, geological surveys, 316, 
 318, 319; Maclure libraries in, 
 327; school funds, 357; State 
 geologist of, 319. 
 
 Illiteracy, at New Harmony, 330; 
 in Indiana, 351. 
 
 Imagination, cultivation of, 262, 
 263. 
 
 Indiana, commvmistic colonies in, 
 177, 178; constitution, framing 
 of, 25; Education, State Board 
 of, created, 357; geological sur- 
 vey, 316; illiteracy in, 330, 351; 
 land, value of, 38; laws, sub- 
 mission to, recommended, 106; 
 
 393
 
 INDEX 
 
 legislation for women, 204-208 ; 
 legislature of 1862, 372; libra- 
 ries, Maclure, 325-327, 333, 334; 
 libraries, township, 333, 357; 
 Lincoln reared in, 361 ; mounds 
 in, 77, 318; R. D. Owen in poli- 
 tics of, 337; pioneers in, 16-18; 
 Rappite community, 15, 16; 
 rebellion, conditions during, 365, 
 372-375; school fund, 354, 357; 
 school legislation, 290; 340-359; 
 slavery legislation, 363; Union 
 reconstruction, southern plan 
 for, 372-375; State geologists, 
 319, 320; Superintendent of 
 Public Instruction, 355; surplus 
 revenue fund, 344-347; wealth 
 in, 28. 
 
 Indiana Constitutional convention, 
 25; free schools, fight for, 340, 
 347, 351-354; R. D. Owen's 
 tribute to woman, 190; slavery 
 question in, 363; women, prop- 
 erty rights of, 205-207. 
 
 Indiana State University, Owen 
 geological collection, 317; Rich- 
 ard Owen professor in, 319. 
 
 Indianapolis, capital located, 25. 
 
 Indians, burying ground at Har- 
 monie, 28; Gabriel's Rock at- 
 tributed to, 20; mounds de- 
 scribed, 77, 318. 
 
 Individualism, origin of, 5. 
 
 Infant schools, age admission to, 
 216, 238; games used at New 
 Lanark, 222, 223; first, 214, 286; 
 New Harmony, 4, 238, 241 ; New 
 Lanark, 214-223; purpose of, 
 218; Spartan system for, 267- 
 269, 282, 283; teachings in, 219- 
 223. <See aZso Boarding schools; 
 Education; Kindergarten; Pes- 
 talozzi; Schools. 
 
 InfideUty, at New Harmony, 82, 
 83, 101; Owen charged with, 51. 
 See also ReUgion. 
 
 Inventions, divital, byRaffinesque, 
 122; Owen's, 132. 
 
 Iowa, Amana society in, 39. 
 
 Iverdun, Pestalozzi's school at, 
 79. 
 
 Jackson, President, friend of 
 Owen's, 308. 
 
 Jacobi, leadership in communism, 
 40; marriage sacrificed to com- 
 munism, 41. 
 
 Jardins des Plantes, Lesueur's con- 
 nection with, 77. 
 
 Jefferson, Thomas, U. S. consti- 
 tution, opinion of, 66. 
 
 Jennings, R. L., Community of 
 Equahty constitution, 105; 
 Sax e- Weimar's account of, 125. 
 
 Jennings, Robert, Nashoba, trus- 
 tee of, 195. 
 
 Johnson, 177. 
 
 Jones, partner of Owen's, 46. 
 
 Jones, Lloyd, tribute to Owen, 
 311-313. 
 
 Jordan, Dr., RaflSnesque, 77-79. 
 
 Just, Baron, visits New Lanark, 
 232. 
 
 Keil, Dr., Philipsburg colony, 33. 
 
 KeUy, Abby, 197. 
 
 Kendal (Ohio), community, 177.. 
 
 Kent, D\ike of, Owen acquitted 
 of infidehty charge, 51. 
 
 Kentucky, State geologist of, 319. 
 
 Kindergarten, methods of Froebel 
 and Owen compared, 216-223; 
 Owen foimder of, 214, 215, 218- 
 220, 286, 287; part of the pubUc 
 school system, 287; a prepara- 
 tory school, 219; purpose of, 
 217; teachings of criticised, 58. 
 See also Boarding schools; Edu- 
 cation; Infant schools; Pesta- 
 lozzi; Schools. 
 
 Kingsle}', J. S., tribute to Say, 76. 
 
 Labor, cooperative, 5, 38, 43, 185, 
 301, 308, 312; factory, 44-52; 
 "labor notes," 5, 296, 297, 301; 
 motive necessary, 118; not 
 equally shared, 120; occupa- 
 tional communities, 144; riots, 
 53 ; shorter hours advocated, 54. 
 See also Child labor. 
 
 Laboring class, condition in Eng- 
 land, 44-52; legislation for, 55, 
 56, 212; Maclure's regard for, 
 324, 325; New Lanark mills, 
 49-52; Owen's speech concern- 
 ing, 53, 54; Peel's factory act, 
 48; riots of, 53. 
 
 Lafayette, Gen., 193; solitary con- 
 finement cruel, 200; trustee of 
 Nashoba, 195. 
 
 Land, disposal of, at New Har- 
 mony, 175, 176; dissatisfaction 
 among societies over, 154; for 
 Mechanics society, 147, 148; 
 
 393
 
 INDEX 
 
 for School society and Pastoral 
 society, 148 ; secured by Macluria 
 and Feiba Peveli, 144; terms 
 upon which Owen granted, 183. 
 
 Lane, Charles, family Ufe, 41, 42. 
 
 Languages, in Maclure's course of 
 study, 238; opposition to classi- 
 cal education, 279-281, 287, 288. 
 
 Latin, study of, opposed, 279-281. 
 
 Latitude, Whitwell's scheme for 
 geographical names, 114, 115. 
 
 Law, concerning slavery, 362, 363 ; 
 in New Harmony Community 
 of Equality, 108; labor legisla- 
 tion, 56; libraries, in Indiana, 
 333, 357 ; liquor traffic, prohibi- 
 tion of, 5 ; Peel's f actory^act, 48 ; 
 school legislation in Indiana, 
 340-359 ; women, legislation for, 
 5, 186, 200, 204-208. 
 
 Lee, Gen., invasion of Maryland, 
 366. 
 
 Lentz, Jonathan, mission to New 
 Harmony, 36. 
 
 Leon, Count Maximilian de, ab- 
 sconds, 33; death of, 33; mar- 
 riage permitted by, 33; Philips- 
 burg colony, 33 ; secession among 
 Rappites, causes, 32, 33. 
 
 Leonard, L. R., New Harmony 
 failure, 184. 
 
 Lesquereux, Leo, 4; fossil botanist, 
 318. 
 
 Lesueur, Charles Albert, 4, 314; 
 accompanies Prince Maximilian 
 von Neuweid, 315; curator at 
 Havre, 318; engraving by, 76; 
 painter, 337; Saxe- Weimar de- 
 scribes, 132, 133 ; scientific work, 
 318; sketch of, 77; teaches draw- 
 ing, 242. 
 
 Lewis, Warner W., 124; Commun- 
 ity of Equality, 105; secretary 
 of New Harmony, 113. 
 
 Liberty Land Co., purchased Rap- 
 pite estate, 35. 
 
 Libraries, local historical collec- 
 tions for, 332; Maclure, disap- 
 pearance of, 333, 334; Maclure, 
 established by, 5, 256, 322-328, 
 330-334; Maclure gifts, effect 
 of, 289, 333, 334; Maclure, list 
 of, 325-327; A. Maclure, 321; 
 New Harmony Workingmen's, 
 1, 36, 76, 256, 323, 327-332; 
 township, in Indiana, 333, 357. 
 
 Lichtenberger, 177. 
 
 Lincoln, Abraham, 5; Indiana, 
 reared in, 361 ; hatred of slavery, 
 362; R. D. Owen compared to, 
 360-362; R. D. Owen's letter 
 to, 366-371 ; sixty day notice 
 to the south, 366, 369. 
 
 Linton, Edward, cares for Warren, 
 306; Modern Times, success of, 
 303; tribute to Warren, 304. 
 
 Liquor traffic. See Temperance'. 
 
 Literature, Pietistic fervor de- 
 stroyed by, 8, 9; superintend- 
 ent of, 113. 
 
 Locofoco party, 337. 
 
 London, attempt to establish 
 colony in, 232. 
 
 Long, expedition to Rocky Moun. 
 tains, 75. 
 
 Long Island, Modern Times site 
 of, 302. 
 
 Longitude, Whitwell's scheme for 
 geographical names, 114, 115. 
 
 Lundy, 197. 
 
 Lycoming county (Penn.), 11. 
 
 Lyell, Sir Charles, 4; New Har- 
 mony, impressions of, 320, 321. 
 
 Lyon, L., engraver, 76. 
 
 Lyon, Sidney, geologist, 319. 
 
 Lyons, 177. 
 
 McDonald, Capt., presents com- 
 munity model, 101, 102. 
 
 Macdonald, A. J., American com- 
 munities, 177; New Harmony 
 community failure, 178-183; 
 Owen, Maclure quarrel, cause of, 
 165. 
 
 McDonald, Donald, Community 
 of Equality constitution, 105, 
 112; Macluria, 113; sketch of, 
 112. 
 
 Machinery, crusades against, 53;. 
 labor saving, 56 ; supplants man- 
 ual labor, 44. 
 
 Maclure, Alexander, 318, 321 ; W. 
 Maclure's will, executor of, 325. 
 
 Maclure, Mary, W. Maclure's will, 
 executor of, 325. 
 
 Maclure, Wilham, agricultural 
 school, 74; centralization of 
 schools, 270-272; classical edu- 
 cation opposed, 279-281 ; col- 
 lection of, 4, 317; communistic 
 failure, charged to, 252, 253; 
 death of, 323; education, free 
 and universal advocated, 264- 
 267; education, impetus to, 314. 
 
 394
 
 INDEX 
 
 educational efforts at New Har- 
 mony, 236, 254-256; estate, 
 324 ; fails to do educational work 
 guaranteed to Owen, 251, 252; 
 hatred of non-productive class, 
 324; in Mexico, 255, 322; in- 
 vestments at New Harmony, 75 ; 
 libraries, 5, 256, 289, 322-328, 
 333, 334 ; manual training, cham- 
 pion of, 4, 242, 261; Nashoba, 
 trustee of, 195; natural science 
 as a study, 262; New Lanark, 
 visit to, 232 ; " Opinions on var- 
 ious subjects," 234; Owen, 
 opinions in common, 233, 244; 
 Owen, quarrel with, 163-165; 
 Pestalozzian school in Pennsyl- 
 vania, 235; Pestalozzian system, 
 introduced by, 3, 235, 287; 
 Pestalozzian system, opinion of, 
 234, 235, 283, 284; Philadelphia 
 Academy of Natural Science, 4, 
 74; philanthropy, effect of, 334, 
 335 ; punishment, 258-260 ; Rapp 
 mansion, 124; reUgion, opposi- 
 tion to, 257; Saxe-Weimar 
 visits, 129, 130, 131; schools, 
 course of study, 236-238; 
 schools, withdraws support 
 from, 255 ; security for sums due, 
 129; self-supporting scheme for 
 schools, 254, 269, 270, 284; 
 sketch of, 73-75; Spartan sys- 
 tem, 267-269, 282, 283; will, 
 324, 325; Workingmen's Insti- 
 tute and Library, 256, 323. 
 
 Maclure's Seminary, announce- 
 ment of, 254. 
 
 Macluria, breaks up, 151, 162, 163; 
 estabUshment of, 113; failure, 
 cause of, 185; government, 113; 
 land, conditions of securing, 
 144; Owen's retrospect of, 142, 
 143; Saxe-Weimar visits, 127, 
 128 ; success of community Nvun- 
 ber 2, 120; women, treatment 
 of, 113. 
 
 McNamee, Dr., conducts Saxe- 
 Weimar, 127. 
 
 Madison, opinion of U. S. constitu- 
 tion, 66. 
 
 Madison, Union members of In- 
 diana legislature retire to, 372. 
 
 Maidlow, James, New Harmony 
 property, 176. 
 
 Manchester, hterary society, 48; 
 Owen's business in, 47-49. 
 
 Mann, Horace, 351 ; in Pestalozzian 
 movement, 292. 
 
 Manual training, colonies for poor, 
 56; criticism of, 139; first school, 
 244 ; in Maclure's course of study, 
 238; Maclure's schools after the 
 community failure, 254, 255; 
 school at New Harmony, 4, 241- 
 244; self-supporting scheme, 
 242, 254, 269, 270, 281 ; value of, 
 261; Warren's experiments in 
 teaching, 298. 
 
 Manvifacturing, buildings for, 16, 
 17; legislation governing, 55, 
 56; market for, 38; New Har- 
 mony, 94-96; Owen's career 
 in, 47-56 ; success of New Lanark 
 mills, 50-52; superintendent of, 
 113; woolen factory, 13. 
 
 Marriage, agreement concerning, 
 12; civil contract for, 191, 192, 
 202; evils of, 146; Leon permits, 
 33; New Harmony, first at, 100; 
 not practiced, 13; Owen's 48, 
 49; Owen's ideas on, 132, 190, 
 191 ; R. D. Owen's opinion of, 
 201 ; Rappites renounce, 10; sac- 
 rificed for communism, 40-42; 
 successor to Rapp a married 
 man, 34; Zoarites permit, 39. 
 See also Celibacy. 
 
 Mason, Dr., Warren's musical no- 
 tation, 300. 
 
 Mason, LoweU, Pestalozzian move- 
 ment, 292. 
 
 Masons, lodge at New Harmony, 
 99, 100. 
 
 Massachusetts, wealth in, 28. 
 
 Mathematics, in Maclure's course 
 of study, 237. 
 
 Maximihan, Prince Alexander 
 PhiUpp. See Neuweid, Prince 
 Maximihan Alexander Phihpp. 
 
 Maximilian, Prince John, visits 
 New Lanark, 232. 
 
 Mechanics society, land secured, 
 147, 148; trouble in, 149. 
 
 Meek, Rev., performs marriage 
 ceremony, 100. 
 
 Meek, F. B., 4; paleontologist, 318. 
 
 " Mental independence. Declara- 
 tion of," 146; importance of, 
 153, 155. 
 
 Metcalf , Kate, nursed Warren, 306. 
 
 Mexico, communistic colonization 
 of, 307 ; Maclure in, 255, 322. 
 
 Mills, Caleb, credit for Indiana 
 
 395
 
 INDEX 
 
 school system, 357, 358; school 
 reorganization in Indiana, 351. 
 
 MiUtia, New Harmony, 99 ; Owen's 
 suggestions for, 90. 
 
 Missouri, Bethel community in, 
 33; Lesueur examines mines in, 
 133; School funds, 357. 
 
 Minerva society, 196. 
 
 Mississippi river, 20, 315; trade on, 
 31. 
 
 Modern Times, name changed, 303 ; 
 village of, 302-306. 
 
 Monetary systems, divital inven- 
 tion of Raffinesque, 122; Owen 
 inveighs against, 64. 
 
 Monroe, opinion of U. S. constitu- 
 tion, 66. 
 
 Moore, 2. 
 
 Moravians, cooperative labor, 37; 
 New Harmony conamunity 
 housed hke, 127; religious basis 
 of society of, 2. 
 
 Morf, Pestalozzi's method, 225. 
 
 Morton, Gov., legislature refuses 
 to receive message of, 372 ; R. D. 
 Owen commissioned to purchase 
 arms, 365. 
 
 Miiller,, Bernhard. See Leon, 
 Count Maximilian de. 
 
 Mumford, 177. 
 
 Murphy, 177. 
 
 Murphy, Dr., New Harmony 
 Workingmen's Ubrary, gifts to, 
 329, 330; sketch of, 329. 
 
 Musevmi, containing collection of 
 Say and Maclure, 4, 317; exempt 
 from taxation, 320. 
 
 Music, among the Rappites, 22; 
 concert described by Saxe- 
 Weimar, 125; in Maclure 's 
 course of study, 237; orchestra 
 leader, 35; Owen's suggestions 
 on, 91; Warren's Mathematical 
 notation, 300; weekly concerts, 
 135, 139. 
 
 Names (geographical), suggested 
 for cooperative communities, 
 121; Whitewell's scheme for, 
 114, 115. 
 
 Nashoba (Tenn.), community, 177, 
 360 ; failure, cause of, 184 ; sketch 
 of, 194-196; similar to Brook 
 Farm, 195. 
 
 Nashoba Gazette, 196. 
 
 National Woman Suffrage Asso- 
 ciation, 198. 
 
 Natural history. See Zoology. 
 
 " Nearer, my God, to thee," author 
 of, 30. 
 
 Neef, 177. 
 
 Neef, Joseph, assisted by daughters 
 and son, 241; atheism causes 
 failure of school, 235; author, 3, 
 290, 291; classical education 
 opposed, 279-281 ; education, 
 meaning of, 273 ; education, plan 
 of, 272-274; goes to New Har- 
 mony, 79; R. D. Owen's de- 
 scription of, 247; Pestalozzi 
 recommends, 234, 235 ; Pestaloz- 
 zian system, introduction of, 
 3, 79, 80, 235; Pestalozzian sys- 
 tem ranked too high, 283, 284; 
 principal of New Harmony 
 school, 241 ; schools in Pennsyl- 
 vania, 235 ; self-governed schools, 
 277, 278; teaching renounced, 
 235. 
 
 Neef, Mrs. Joseph, conducts infant 
 school at New Harmony, 241; 
 sketch of, 241. 
 
 Negroes, emancipation proclama- 
 tion, 371 ; Freedman's Bureau for 
 372, 375; R. D. Owen urges 
 emancipation of, 366-371; re- 
 strictions as to membership at 
 New Harmony, 85; slavery of, 
 360; suffrage of, 376. 
 
 Neuhoff, Pestalozzi's school at, 
 219. 
 
 Neuweid, Prince Maximilian Alex- 
 ander PhiUpp, 4; birds, collec- 
 tion of, 316; scientific research 
 in America, 314, 315. 
 
 New England, anti-slavery move- 
 ment in, 371 ; effort to recon- 
 struct the Union omitting, 371- 
 375; Pestalozzian movement in, 
 292, 293; schools, 240. 
 
 New Harmony, abohtion move- 
 ment at, 5, 188; age at which 
 children were received, 238; 
 anarchy, 113; Brown's exper- 
 iences in, 137, 140; character 
 of members, 82, 83; commun- 
 ities near, 169, 170, 172; com- 
 munity failure explained, 178- 
 185; commvmity instituted, 72, 
 81 ; community Number 1, plans 
 for, 151; Community of Equal- 
 ity, 104-111 ; compared to Brook 
 Farm, 2, 3; costume worn, 125; 
 crowded condition, 116; debt 
 
 396
 
 INDEX 
 
 to Owen and Maclure, 138; de- 
 feat acknowledged, 159-161; 
 description of, in New Harmony 
 Gazette, 93-102; dissatisfaction 
 at, 145, 157, 158; division at- 
 tempted, 119, 120; education 
 at, 79, 80; educational experi- 
 ments, acceptable features of, 
 285-293; estate passes to in- 
 dividuals, 176; experiences of a 
 pupU in the schools, 245, 246; 
 experiment causes discussion, 
 82; financial trouble between 
 Owen and Maclure, 163-165; 
 grades of membership in, 138; 
 granary, 18; illiteracy at, 330; 
 improvement after reorganiza- 
 tion, 151-153; in American his- 
 tory, 3; influence of, 314; jeal- 
 ousy among societies of, 154; 
 labor not equally shared, 120, 
 121; Lesueur at, 77; Ubrary at, 
 1, 226, 323, 327-332, 334; light 
 upon the venture, 60-68 ; Lyell's 
 impressions of, 320, 321 ; Mac- 
 lure's educational efforts after 
 the failure of the conmivmity, 
 254, 255; Maclure's educational 
 work, dissatisfaction with, 167, 
 252, 253 ; Maclure's investments, 
 75; members, 119; members ex- 
 pelled, 157, 168; museum site, 
 4; Owen assumes directorship, 
 113; Owen attributes failure to 
 Maclure, 252, 253; Owen starts 
 separate school system, 165, 
 252; Owen's address at opening 
 of, 83, 84; Owen's reasons for 
 failure, 166-173; Owen's retro- 
 spect of, 141-143, 154, 155; 
 R. D. Owen's account of, 134- 
 137; plans explained, 70-72; 
 Preliminary society of, 84-91, 
 104, 159, 166, 167; present ap- 
 pearance of, 1; purchased by 
 Owen, 58 ; Raffinesque a visitor, 
 77-79; Rappite cemetery, 28; 
 Say's work at, 76, 77; scientific 
 center in America, 4, 314-321; 
 schools of, 233-293; schools of, 
 objectionable featiires of, 281- 
 285; schools, Owen's gift to, 173; 
 schools, results of, 288-293; 
 schools, tuition in, 239; state 
 geologists from, 319, 320; super- 
 intendent elected, 113; Time 
 Store at, 299, 300; U. S. Geologi- 
 
 cal survey, headquarters of, 
 4, 316, 317; visit of the Duke of 
 Saxe- Weimar, 123-133; War- 
 ren's reasons for failure, 295, 
 296; women, status at, 188, 189. 
 
 New Harmony Agricultural and 
 Pastoral society, 147. 
 
 New Harmony and Nashoba 
 Gazette. See New Harmony 
 Gazette. 
 
 New Harmony Educational So- 
 ciety, biU for, 251; legislature 
 refuses to incorporate, 251. 
 
 New Harmony Gazette, defeat of 
 the community acknowledged, 
 158-162; descriptions of New 
 Harmony in, 92-102, 118-120; 
 editors, 135, 196; estabhshed, 
 92; motto of, 210; moved to 
 New York, 196; New Harmony 
 after reorganization, 151-155; 
 refuses to pubhsh essays by 
 Paul Brown, 149; title changed, 
 196. 
 
 New Harmony Thespian Society, 
 dramatic club, 5, 336, 337. 
 
 New Lanark, Flower visits, 31; 
 home of Miss Dale, 48; labor- 
 ing classes, condition of, 50; 
 Maclure visits, 232 ; miUs closed, 
 50 ; Owen's purchase of the mills, 
 49; Owen's work, results of, 51, 
 52; schools at, 213-233; schools 
 at New Harmony coimterpart 
 of those at, 238. 
 
 " New moral world," Owen's teach- 
 ings in, 59-68. 
 
 New Moral World. See New Har- 
 mony. 
 
 New Orleans, Rappite trade in, 
 31. 
 
 New York, communistic colonies 
 m, 177, 178. 
 
 Newton, England, Owen's birth- 
 place, 46; Owen's death occurs 
 at, 312. 
 
 Nicholas, Grand Duke, asks Owen 
 to come to Russia, 232. 
 
 Nineteenth century, women in, 
 186. 
 
 Nordhoff, Economy, 33; Har- 
 monic, sale of, 31. 
 
 Norwood, J. C, geologist, 320. 
 
 Noyes, John Humphrey, 40, 41, 
 184, 309; Nashoba community, 
 195; tribute to Frances Wfight, 
 197. 
 
 397
 
 INDEX 
 
 Ohio, communistic colonies in, 
 177, 178. 
 
 Oneida Perfectionists, 40; free 
 love, 41. 
 
 Orbiston community, nucleus of, 
 112; successful, 143. 
 
 Orphans Manual Training School, 
 254. 
 
 Owen,' 177. 
 
 Owen, David Dale, 4; death of, 
 319; factor in education at New 
 Harmony, 80; Gabriel's Rock, 
 20; scientific work, 314, 316, 
 317, 319; State geologist, 319; 
 U. S. geologist, 316, 339. 
 
 Owen, Jane Dale, marriage, 319. 
 
 Owen, Mary, tribute to, 202-204. 
 
 Owen, Richard Dale, death of, 
 319; dishonest persons at New 
 Harmony, 156; factor in educa- 
 tion at New Harmony, 80; free 
 schools, 266; geological work, 
 318; State geologist of Indiana, 
 319. 
 
 Owen, Robert, birth, 46; Brown's 
 criticism of, 137-140; Campbell, 
 debate with, 307; communistic 
 failure charged to Maclure, 252, 
 253; conmaunistic failure ex- 
 plained, 178-185; communistic 
 test at New Harmony, 2; com- 
 mtmity Number 1, 150, 151; 
 Conununity of Equahty estab- 
 lished, 104-111; compared to 
 Pestalozzi, 215; criticised, 145; 
 death of, 312; "Declaration of 
 Mental Independence ", 146; de- 
 feat confessed, 174, 175; direc- 
 torship assimied, 113; education 
 free and universal advocated 
 264-267; England, career in 
 46-52; England, return to, 307 
 environment, belief in, 210- 
 212; estate deeded to sons, 176 
 failure of, 6; farewell address 
 166-173; financial losses, 176 
 Fourier, forerunner of, 3; free 
 love, not a believer in, 189, 191 
 Glasgow, speech at, 53, 54 
 Harmonic purchased, 31, 58 
 Huxley's tribute to, 220; infant 
 schools, 4; infidelity, charged 
 with, 51; inventions of, 132, 
 190, 191 ; kindergarten, founder 
 of, 214, 215, 218-221; labor 
 legislation secured, 55, 56; "la- 
 bor notes," 5; land contracts. 
 
 147, 148; last years, 308-313; 
 leaves New Harmony, 173; 
 Maclure, opinions in common 
 with, 233, 234; Maclure's educa- 
 tional work, dissatisfaction with, 
 167, 251, 252; marriage, 48, 49; 
 marriage, love, ideas on, 132; 
 medal from Saxony, 232 ; Mexico, 
 communities planned for, 307; 
 Nashoba, trustee of, 195; New 
 Harmony, address at opening 
 of, 83, 84; New Harmony, de- 
 feat at, 158-162; New Harmony, 
 return to, 104; New Harmony 
 scheme, 69-72; New Lanark, 
 results at, 49-52; New Lanark, 
 return to, 91 ; " New Moral 
 World," 59-68; not an educator 
 in modern sense, 213; Owenism, 
 outgrowth of, 177, 178; Pariia- 
 ment, defeated for, 57; perma- 
 nent community, retrospect of, 
 141-143, 154, 155; Pestalozzian 
 system, introduction of, 3; 
 Pestalozzi's methods adopted 
 at New Lanark, 225; private 
 life, 189 ; purpose, 211 ; Rappites, 
 character of, 27; religion ac- 
 cepted, 311; religion omitted 
 from educational methods, 226- 
 227; religious principles, 57, 
 227, 257; religious views attract 
 followers, 82, 83 ; religious views 
 cause defection, 112; Saxe- 
 Weimar's impressions of, 123- 
 133; school system, estabhshes 
 separate, 165, 252; schools at 
 New Harmony, gift to, 173; 
 "social system," birthplace of 
 great movements, 3-6; sums 
 due, security for, 129; Taylor, 
 land sale to, 1 56 ; veto power of, 
 119. 
 Owen, Robert Dale, "An outline 
 of the system of education at 
 New Harmony," 213; arms, 
 commissioned to purchase, 365; 
 autobiography, 134; birth of, 
 336; Congress, member of, 338, 
 339; creed of, 342; death of, 
 376; discipline, methods of, 
 247-250; editor, 135, 196, 337; 
 Fellenberg's school, student in, 
 57, 80, 124, 189, 336; gift of 
 Indiana women to, 208; Har- 
 monic, chooses, 58; Harmonic, 
 description of, 28, 29; home 
 
 398
 
 INDEX 
 
 life, 202-204; Indiana constitu- 
 tional convention, member of, 
 190, 205-207, 340, 347, 351- 
 354, 363; Indiana legislature, 
 member of, 204-208, 340, 344- 
 347, 355-359; Indiana school 
 system, father of 290, 357, 358; 
 institutional development, 314; 
 library law, sponsor for, 333; 
 Lincoln, comparison with, 360- 
 362; Lincoln, letter to, 366-371; 
 marriage of, 201, 202; marriage, 
 sacredness of, 201 ; mind de- 
 ranged, 376; Naples, charge 
 d'affaires at, 359; Nashoba, 
 trustee of, 195, 196; negro 
 suffrage, opposed, 376; New 
 Harmony, account of, 134-137; 
 New Harmony defeat, 158-162, 
 182, 185; New Harmony, factor 
 in education at, 80; New Har- 
 mony, goes to, 80, 81, 104; 
 New Harmony schools, 246- 
 251; reading, children's, 224; 
 school government at New 
 Lanark, 229-231 ; schools, free, 
 advocated, 4, 266, 290, 340- 
 359; slavery opposed, 5, 188, 
 360-376 ; Smithsonian institu- 
 tion, 4, 338, 339 ; Southern recon- 
 struction of the Union opposed 
 373-375; spiritualism accepted, 
 359, 360; spiritualism, books on, 
 360; tribute to, 376, 377; War- 
 ren's plans, interest in, 297; 
 woman, tribute to, 190; women, 
 legal rights of, 5, 187, 204-208. 
 
 Owen, Rosamond Dale, tributes 
 to father and mother, 202-204. 
 
 Owen, WiUiam, commerce, super- 
 intendent of, 113; Community 
 of EquaUty constitution, 105; 
 editor, 196; education at New 
 Harmony, factor in, 80; New 
 Harmony defeat, 158-162. 
 
 Owenism, communities the out- 
 growth of, 177, 178; exposition 
 in constitution of "Preliminary 
 Society," 85-90; forerunner of 
 Fouerierism, 3; New Harmony 
 promised land of, 1. 
 
 Owenites, communities important, 
 6; religion opposed, 5. 
 
 Owensville, 315. 
 
 Page, David, Pestalozzian move- 
 ment, 292. 
 
 Palmer, Elizabeth S., marriage 
 of, 100. 
 
 Parhament, Owen stands for, 57. 
 
 Parry, C. C, western flora, 319. 
 
 Parvin, 177. 
 
 Parvin, Eliza E., marriage of, 191, 
 192. 
 
 Peabody, Miss, cooperative labor, 
 37; kindergarten of, 287. 
 
 Peaceful Revolutionist, Warren's 
 periodical, 298; type and press 
 for, 298. 
 
 Pears, Thomas, Conununity of 
 Equahty constitutional conven- 
 tion, 105. 
 
 Peel, Sir Robert, factory bill, 48, 
 56. 
 
 Pelham, 177. 
 
 Pelham, W., Owen, opinion of, 84, 
 
 Pelham, W. C, New Harmony 
 property, 176. 
 
 Pennsylvania, botanical research 
 in, 78; communistic colonies in, 
 177, 178; Rappites return to, 
 32. 
 
 Perouse, Lesueur accompanied, 
 133. 
 
 Pestalozzi, education, meaning of, 
 273, 274; infant school, 219; 
 Maclure visits, 74, 235 ; Maclure's 
 opinion of, 234, 235; methods, 
 225 ; methods at New Harmony, 
 256, 257; methods, religious 
 element in, 226 ; Owen a follower 
 of, 215, 216; Owen compared to, 
 215; second movement, 292, 
 293 ; self-supporting schools, 
 269; system introduced in 
 America, 3, 74, 75, 79, 235, 287, 
 291, 292; system, rated too high, 
 283, 284. See also Boarding 
 schools ; Education ; Infant 
 schools; Kindergarten; Schools. 
 
 Philadelphia, birthplace of Say, 
 75; Maclure resided in, 73; 
 Pestalozzian school near, 235; 
 Raffinesque in, 78, 79; school 
 for girls, 240. 
 
 PhiUpsburg, Leon community at, 
 33. 
 
 Philosophers, teachings of, 65. 
 
 Phiquepal, M., teaches farming, 
 242.- 
 
 Pierce, President, R. D. Owen 
 sent to Naples, 359. 
 
 Pietism, leaders of, 9; Puritanism, 
 prototype of, 7. 
 
 399
 
 INDEX 
 
 Pioneers, in Indiana, 16, 17, 18. 
 
 Pittsburg, 27, 315. 
 
 Plato, 2; teachings criticised, 65. 
 
 "Pocahontas," R. D. Owen's 
 play, 336. 
 
 Politics, R. D. Owen in Indiana, 
 337; working man's party, 337. 
 
 Poor, colonies for, 56. 
 
 "Practical society," of Edinburg, 
 112. 
 
 Pratt, John, Owen's idea of so- 
 ciety, 183. 
 
 Preliminary Society of New Har- 
 mony. See New Harmony. 
 
 Price, Dr. Philip M., Community 
 of Equality, 105; marriage of, 
 191, 192. 
 
 Price, Dr. WiUiam, superintend- 
 ent, 113. 
 
 Princeton (Ind.), 315; Macliu-e 
 hbrary, 334. 
 
 Princeton road, community on, 
 162. 
 
 Printing, in New Harmony schools, 
 243; Warren's inventions for, 
 298-300. 
 
 Property, community Niimber 1, 
 151 ; Community of Equality 
 held in common, 105-107; Har- 
 monic, value at, 23, 28; in- 
 dividual not held by Rappites, 
 19; Maclure's estate, 324; mar- 
 ried women's, 189, 200, 201, 
 204-208; New Harmony, in- 
 dividuals get, 176; Owen com- 
 munities might not divide, 144; 
 Owen's losses, 176; private, 
 evils of, 146; private, to be aban- 
 doned, 66; taxed for Indiana 
 schools, 356. 
 
 Providence, high school for boys 
 and girls, 240. 
 
 Public instruction. Superintend- 
 ent of, office created in Indiana, 
 355. 
 
 Punishment, corporal forbidden, 
 248; in New Harmony schools, 
 257, 258 ; in New Lanark school, 
 229-231; Owen's paper on, 312; 
 R. D. Owen's mode of disciphne, 
 247-250. 
 
 Puritanism, Pietism prototype of, 
 7. 
 
 Quakers, aid Owen, 51 ; civil mar- 
 riages of, 132; Say member of, 
 75. 
 
 Raffinesque, Constantine, 4; co- 
 operative association, 122; dlvi- 
 tal invention, 122; sketch of, 
 77-79. 
 
 Rapp, Frederick, 1 1 ; chose land 
 on Wabash river, 14; death of, 
 24; sketch of, 24, 25. 
 
 Rapp, George, brought before the 
 king, 11; community excites 
 wonder, 18; Community of 
 Equality agreement, 12; com- 
 munity site, 11; death of, 34; 
 garden, symbol of, 26; Har- 
 monic, reasons for sale, 31; 
 Harmonists allegiance to, 16; 
 leader, success as, 19, 20; mar- 
 riage renounced, 10; Rappite 
 leader, 7; F. Rapp's connection 
 with, 24, 25; religious freedom 
 sought, 9; religious views, 9-11; 
 residence, 17; revered as a 
 prophet, 13; sketch of, 9; suc- 
 cess of, 6; teachings of, 21. 
 
 Rappites, agreement, 12; build- 
 ings, 16, 17, 18; celibacy, cause 
 of success, 39; character of, 27; 
 churches of, 16, 18; communi- 
 cation with world, 18; commun- 
 ity, end of, 35; cooperative 
 labor, 37, 38; creed, not writ- 
 ten, 9; death rate, 16; dress of, 
 23; Economy, removal to, 32; 
 German peasants, 7; Harmony, 
 founders of, 2; importance of, 
 6; land, value of, 38; manners 
 and customs, 22-24; marriage 
 renovmced, 10, 12; Pennsyl- 
 vania site, 13; property, in- 
 dividual, not held, 19 ; property, 
 sale of, 14, 35; prosperity of, 
 12, 13; Rapp, love for, 19, 20; 
 F. Rapp's connection with, 24- 
 27; records not kept, 15; re- 
 hgion, 20; religious basis of so- 
 ciety, 2, 38; secession among, 
 32, 33; squatters feared, 17; 
 superstitions, 20, 72; wealth of, 
 27-29, 34, 35, 39; ZeUenople, 
 colony near, 11. 
 
 Reading, age at which children 
 should be taught, 224; impor- 
 tance of, 224. 
 
 Reformers, social, classes of, 2. 
 
 Religion, communistic experi- 
 ments, 37, 40; education, im- 
 portance in, 227, 228; evils of, 
 146; free-thinkers attracted to 
 
 400
 
 INDEX 
 
 New Harmony, 82, 83; Ger 
 many, state of, 7, 8; Macluria, 
 cause of formation, 112, 128 
 Macluria disrupted by, 151, 162 
 163; Mexico, toleration in, 307 
 New Harmony failure, 183 
 New Harmony, services at, 101 
 opposed at New Harmony, 5 
 Owen accepts, 311; Owen and 
 Macliire reject, 257; Owen- 
 Campbell, debate 307; Owen's, 
 57, 65, 66; Rappites, observ- 
 ances of, 21, 22, 24, 26; spirit- 
 ual inheritances of the race, 284, 
 285; teaching, omitted by Owen, 
 226-227. See also Infidelity; 
 Spiritualism. 
 
 Rensselaer Institute, compared to 
 New Harmony, 244, 245. 
 
 Republic, Plato's, 2. 
 
 Richardson, James, Nashoba, trus- 
 tee of, 195. 
 
 Riots, in 1811, 53. 
 
 Robinson, Mary, marriage of, 201, 
 202. See also Owen, Mary. 
 
 Robson, 177. 
 
 Robson, Robert, marriage of, 191, 
 192. 
 
 Rose, Ernestine L., woman's 
 rights advocated, 187; Frances 
 Wright, tribute to, 197, 198. 
 
 Runcie, Mrs. Constance Fauntle- 
 roy, Minerva society, founder 
 of, 196. 
 
 Rush, Richard, Smithson be- 
 quest, 338. 
 
 St. Louis, kindergarten in public 
 schools, 287. 
 
 St. Simon, 2; socialism advocated, 
 45. 
 
 Salmon, Alfred, marriage of, 100. 
 
 Sampson, 177. 
 
 Sampson, James, scientific col- 
 lection, 318. 
 
 Sargant, Owen's infant school 
 system, 220; Owen's reUgious 
 acceptance, 311 ; rehgion at New 
 Harmony, 183. 
 
 Satterfield, Mr. 46. 
 
 Saxe-Weimar, Duke of, Gabriel's 
 Rock, theory of, 21; New Har- 
 mony schools, 243, 244; New 
 Harmony visited, 123-133. 
 
 Saxony, presents medal to Owen 
 232. 
 
 Say, Thomas, 4, 314; collection of. 
 
 4, 317; New Harmony schools, 
 in charge of, 251, 255; Saxe- 
 Weimar 's impressions of, 126; 
 scientific work, 75, 76; sketch 
 of, 75, 77; teacher, 236, 242; 
 tributes to, 76, 77. 
 
 Say, Mrs. Thomas, draws plates 
 for Say's books, 76. 
 
 Schmidt, 131. 
 
 Schnack, Dr., New Harmony 
 family names, 177; New Har- 
 mony theatre, 36; D. D. Owen's 
 geological work, 317; owners 
 at New Harmony, 176; Prince 
 Maximihan von Neuweid's 
 book, 315; Rappites gave library 
 building, 36; scientists, 318. 
 
 Schnee, 177. 
 
 Schnee, Jacob, New Harmony 
 
 Eroperty, 176. 
 ool repubUc, Neef's scheme 
 for, 277-279. 
 
 Schoolcraft, H. R., Gabriel's 
 Rock, 20, 21. 
 
 Schools, centralization of, 270- 
 272; common school fund in 
 Indiana, 354, 357; common 
 school system at New Harmony, 
 4, 239; course of study at New 
 Harmony, 236-238; free, 264- 
 267, 287; free, legislation for 
 in Indiana, 265, 266, 340-359; 
 higher at New Harmony, 241, 
 242 ; in shoe factory, 1 50 ; Indiana, 
 347-351 ; industrial, 287 ; kinder- 
 garten in pubUc, 287 ; legislation 
 urged, 55; Maclure's beUef in, 
 234; Maclure's efforts after 
 Owen's defeat, 254, 255; mis- 
 sion of, 273-277 ; New Harmony, 
 91, 93; New Harmony, results 
 at, 288-293; New Lanark, 50, 
 51, 213-233; New Lanark, dif- 
 ficulties at, 231; Owen's gift 
 to New Harmony, 173; Owen's 
 system, 165, 252; Pestalozzi's, 
 234, 235; Preliminary society's 
 plans for, 89; punishment at 
 New Lanark, 229, 230; religious 
 prejudice against New Har- 
 mony, 101; reUgious teaching 
 in, 226-228; self-government of, 
 277-279 ; self-supporting scheme, 
 254, 269, 270; sleeping arrange- 
 ment at New Harmony, 243, 
 244, 246; Spartan system, 267- 
 269, 282, 283; subjects taught at 
 
 27 
 
 401
 
 INDEX 
 
 New Lanark, 223; surplus reve- 
 nue fund, 344-347; teacher in, 
 135; tuition at New Harmony, 
 239. See also Boarding schools; 
 Education ; Infant schools ; 
 Kindergartens ; Pestalozzi. 
 
 Science, at New Harmony, 314- 
 321; Lesueur's activity, 318; 
 Maclure's course of study, 237; 
 D. D. Owen's work, 316, 317, 
 319; researches in, by Prince 
 Maximilian von Neuweid, 314, 
 315; Sampson's collection, 318; 
 study of, 262 ; superintendent of, 
 113. 
 
 Sears, Barnas, Pestalozzian move- 
 ment, 292. 
 
 Separatists, asylum in Russian 
 Tartary, 8. 
 
 Shakers, land, value of, 38; near 
 Vincennes, 126; religious basis, 
 2, 40. 
 
 Shawneetown (111.), Rappite store, 
 31. 
 
 Sheldon, E. A., Pestalozzian move- 
 ment, 292. 
 
 Sicily, 78. 
 
 Silhman's Journal, 236, 238. 
 
 Sistare, Lucy, 81, 130; wife of Say, 
 76. 
 
 Slavery, abolition favored at New 
 Harmony, 5, 188; Compromise 
 of 1850, 362; emancipation 
 proclamation, 371 ; English, 360; 
 EngUsh colonists oppose, 30; 
 legislation in Indiana, 363; 
 Nashoba solution, 194-196; R. 
 D. Owen opposed, 360-376; 
 women oppose, 188. 
 
 Smith, F. W., New Harmony fail- 
 ure, 184. 
 
 Smithsonian institution, legisla- 
 tion, for 4, 338, 339. 
 
 Snelling, 177. 
 
 Social Science Association of 
 Birmingham, 312. 
 
 Socialism, advocated, 45. 
 
 Society, Owen's ideas for better- 
 ment of, 59-68. 
 
 Society for mutual instruction, 
 255; Ubraries modeled after, 
 289 ; results of, 256. 
 
 Soper, 177. 
 
 Sorosis, 196. 
 
 Spiritualism, books on, 360; R. D. 
 Owen accepts, 359, 360. 
 
 Squatters, 17, 27. 
 
 Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, woman's 
 suffrage, 187, 188. 
 
 Stanz, Pestalozzi's school at, 218, 
 219, 224. 
 
 Stevens, Thaddeus, negro suffrage, 
 376. 
 
 Stillwell, WilUam, 342. 
 
 Stocker, Jonathan, New Harmony 
 property, 176. 
 
 Stone, Lucy, 197. 
 
 Suffrage, Feiba Peveli, 115; negro, 
 376; women granted, in Com- 
 mvmity of Equality, 108; women 
 not granted, at Macluria, 113; 
 women, why demanded by, 
 186-188. 
 
 Sumter, Fort, 365, 372. 
 
 Sunday, Commtmity of Equality, 
 105; meetings on, 158; observ- 
 ance at New Harmony, 101, 
 129, 130; women's attendance 
 at meeting, 192. 
 
 Superstition, among Rappites, 19, 
 20, 24. 
 
 Tariff, on cotton, 53. 
 
 Taylor, William, Owen, dealings 
 with, 156, 182. 
 
 Teachers, training school for, 291. 
 
 Teaching, methods at New Har- 
 mony, 257; methods at New 
 Lanark, 51 ; methods in infant 
 school, 221, 222; object method, 
 224, 257; Pestalozzi's methods, 
 225. 
 
 Technical education. See Manual 
 training. 
 
 Temperance, distilling forbidden 
 at Macluria and Feiba Peveli, 
 144; not practiced at New Har- 
 mony, 179, 184; Owen forbids 
 distilling, 126, 144; prohibition, 
 5; Rappites practice, 12; Tay- 
 lor's distillery at New Har- 
 mony, 156, 182. 
 
 Tennessee, commvmistic colonies 
 in, 177, 178; Troost, State geolo- 
 gist of, 79, 319. 
 
 Terre Haute, site owned by George 
 Rapp, 38. 
 
 Texas, communistic colonies for, 
 307 ; school funds, 357. 
 
 Theatre, at New Harmony, 36. 
 
 Thrall, Mrs. Sarah Cox, pupil in 
 New Harmony schools, 245, 246. 
 
 "Threading my way," Harmonie, 
 28, 29; New Harmony, 134-137. 
 
 402
 
 INDEX 
 
 "Time store," 5; Cincinnati, 296; 
 New Harmony, 299, 300. 
 
 Tobacco, use forbidden the Rap- 
 pi tes, 12. 
 
 Transylvania imiversity, RaflSn- 
 esque professor in, 78. 
 
 Troost, Gerard, 4, 314; brought 
 to New Harmony, 79; Saxe- 
 Weimar meets, 133; State geolo- 
 gist of Tennessee, 79, 319; 
 teaches chemistry, 242. 
 
 Tuscarawas county (Ohio), village 
 of Equity in, 298; Zoar society 
 in, 8, 39. 
 
 Twigg, 177. 
 
 Typography, Warren's inventions, 
 298, 299. 
 
 United States, Compromise of 
 1850, 362, 363; constitution of, 
 66; cotton, embargo on, 50; 
 England, relations with, 308, 
 311, 312; industrial schools, 
 244, 245; Maclure's geological 
 research, 74; Owen comes to, 
 58 ; pubUc schools, 240 ; rebeUion, 
 365-375; rehgious freedom in, 
 9; slavery in, 360-376; wealth 
 in, 28 ; woman's clubs, 5. 
 
 United States Geological s\irvey. 
 See Geology. 
 
 Ure, Andrew, 80. 
 
 Utopia, Moore's, 2; proposed at 
 New Harmony, 72, 234; War- 
 ren's viUage in Ohio, 301, 302. 
 
 Valley Forge (Penn.), community 
 at, 129. 
 
 Van Buren, 245, 337. 
 
 Vincennes, 315; Rappite store in, 
 31; Shaker establishment near, 
 126. 
 
 Virginia, Miss, Saxe- Weimar's 
 story concerning, 129, 130, 131. 
 
 Virginia, Botanical research in, 
 78; compromise measure pro- 
 posed, 364. 
 
 Wabash river, 315; English Prairie 
 on, 128; New Harmony built on, 
 1; F. Rapp selects land on, 14; 
 Rappite conmiunity on, 15. 
 
 Wabash valley, 7; fertihty of, 15; 
 malaria, 16. 
 
 Wainborough (111.), constitution 
 of the Cooperative Association 
 of, 121 ; formed on Owen plan, 
 144. 
 
 Walker, Francis, 76. 
 
 Walker, James, 76. 
 
 War, contrary to the social system, 
 90. 
 
 Warren, 177. 
 
 Warren, Josiah, economic thought, 
 314; individuahsm, 5; labor ex- 
 change, 297 ; " Mathematical 
 notation," 300; Modern Times, 
 village of, 302-306; musical 
 leader, 135; pecvmiary affairs 
 at New Harmony, 183; printing 
 inventions, 248-300 ; publica- 
 tions of, 298, 300, 305; sketch 
 of, 294-306; "Time store," 5, 
 296, 297, 300; Tuscarawas covm- 
 ty (Ohio), village in, 298; Uto- 
 pia, 301. 
 
 Washington, Owen's addresses in, 
 69; R. D. Owen's geological 
 collection, 317. 
 
 Wattles, James O., Community of 
 Equality, 105. 
 
 Wayland, Professor, Smithson be- 
 quest, 338. 
 
 Wealth, Amana society's, 39 ; pro- 
 duction and distribution of, 63, 
 64; Rappites', 34, 35, 38, 39. 
 
 Weaving, New Harmony, 94. 
 
 Webb, Sidney, industrial revolu- 
 tion in England, 46. 
 
 Weimar, Count Bernhard of. See 
 Saxe- Weimar, Duke of. 
 
 West, 177. 
 
 Wheatcroft, 177. 
 
 Whitby, Camilla Wright, Nashoba, 
 trustee of, 196. 
 
 Whitby, John, Community of 
 EquaUty, 105. 
 
 Whitby, Richeson, Nashoba, trus- 
 tee, of, 195, 196. 
 
 Whittlesy, Charles, 318. 
 
 Whit well, Stedman, 131 ; com- 
 munity model, 101; geographi- 
 cal names, 114, 115. 
 
 Whitwell, Stewart, 113. 
 
 Widows, legal rights of, 205, 207, 
 208; succeeded to husband's 
 privileges at New Harmony, 
 189. 
 
 WiUiamsport (Ind.), Maclure U- 
 brary, 334. 
 
 Woman's Social Society, 196. 
 
 Women, clubs, 5, 100, 196; Com- 
 munity of Equality, privileges 
 in, 105; equal educational priv- 
 ileges for, 4, 100, 189, 239, 249, 
 
 403
 
 INDEX 
 
 288; equal rights, 65, 80, 189; 
 gift to R. D. Owen, 208; in the 
 nineteenth century, 186; legal 
 rights of, 5, 186, 204-208; 
 Macluria, rights at, 113; mar- 
 ried, rights of, 187, 189, 200, 
 201, 204-208; Owen's attitude 
 toward, 189-192; R. D. Owen's 
 tribute to, 190; sufifrage of, 4; 
 suffrage, why demanded, 186- 
 188. 
 
 Woods, John, Harmonie, 23, 24. 
 
 Workingmen's Institute and Li- 
 brary, 256; character of library, 
 330-332 ; historical collection 
 in, 331, 332; provisions for, 323, 
 327-330. 
 
 Worthen, O. H., State geologist 
 of Illinois, 319. 
 
 Wright, Camilla, 193; Nashoba, 
 trustee of, 195. 
 
 Wright, Frances, abolitionist, 5, 
 188, 360; at New Harmony, 80; 
 editor, 196, 197; founder of 
 
 woman's club, 5, 196; marriage 
 of, 80; Nashoba colony, 194- 
 196; sketch of, 192-197 ; studied 
 Rappites, 194; tributes to, 197- 
 199; woman's rights, advocate 
 of, 5, 80, 187, 197-199, 314. 
 
 Writing, in Maclure's course of 
 study, 237. 
 
 Wiirtemburg, peasants founded 
 Harmonie, 7; recruits from, 23; 
 religion in, 8. 
 
 Yellow Springs community, 101, 
 
 177; failure, 184. 
 Yverdun, Pestalozzi's school at, 
 
 234. 
 
 Zelienople (Penn.), Rappite colony 
 
 near, 11. 
 Zoar, conamunistic society, 8; de- 
 
 cUne of, 40 ; marriage permitted, 
 
 39. 
 Zoology, "Father of American," 
 
 75; Say's discoveries, 75, 76. 
 
 (1) 
 
 404
 
 science; religion, education. 
 
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