BROOK FARM AND HOPEDALE.

533

the influence of Owen's teachings was still felt in many minds. Among these

The Brook Farm Association

may be cited, organized near Boston, in 1841. This has been called "a child of Unitarianism," suggested originally by Rev. William E. Channing, D.D., who had been deeply impressed by the ideas of Owen and Fourier. According to Mr. Ralph Waldo Emerson,* "in the year 1840 Dr. Channing took counsel with Mr. George Ripley on the point if it were possible to bring cultivated, thoughtful people together and make a society that deserved the name. He early talked with Dr. John Collins Warren on the same thing, who admitted the wisdom of the purpose and undertook to make the experiment." Social gatherings for mutual conference followed, in which Emerson, Margaret Fuller, George Ripley, Frederick H. Hedge, Orestes A. Bronson, and others participated. Mr. Emerson proceeds:

I said the only result of the conversations which Dr. Channing had was to initiate the little quarterly called The Dial, but they had a further consequence in the creation of a society called the "Brook Farm," in 1841. Many of these persons who had compared their notes around in the libraries of each other upon speculative matters became impatient of speculation and wished to put it into practice. Mr. George Ripley, with some of his associates, established a society, of which the principle was that the members should be stockholders, and that while some deposited money others should be allowed to give their labor in different kinds as an equivalent for money. It contained very many and agreeable persons: Mr. George William Curtis, of New York, and his brother, of English Oxford, were members of the family; from the first also was Theodore Parker, etc., etc.

Miss Margaret Fuller, Hawthorne, Rev. William H. Channing, an eminent student of Socialism in France and England, and others. soon joined the company. After six or seven years the experiment failed and the farm was sold. Such was the end of the first romantic, religious, literary, socialistic, transcendental, Unitarian Community in New England. It was not a Fourierite community, and yet it was a transitional step, and, in some degree, "a propagative organ of Fourierism," through its periodical, The Harbinger, which scattered broadcast the seeds of Socialism.

The Hopedale and Northampton Communities.

In April, 1842, the Hopedale Community commenced operations in Milford, Mass., on the "Jones Farm." This movement was another anticipation of Fourierism put forth by Massachusetts. It

*See Lecture on the Brook Farm.

was similar in many respects to Brook Farm and, in its origin, nearly contemporaneous. They enlarged their possessions to about six hundred acres, and admitted new members until the community numbered 300. Their manufactures were known far and near, and eagerly sought for on account of their being exactly as represented. Every one had either to work in the factories or else till the soil. All lights had to be extinguished and every one at home at 9 o'clock. No dogs were permitted in the village, and nobody was allowed to smoke in the street. "As the Brook Farm was the blossom of Unitarianism, so Hopedale was the blossom of Universalism. Rev. Adin Ballou, the founder, was a relative of Rev. Hosea Ballou, and thus a scion of the royal family of Universalists." It was dissolved in 1858-a total failure. Cause-unwisdom, and "the old story of general depravity." "The timber he got together was not suitable for building a community."

"'*

In the same month that the Hopedale Community commenced its operations, Massachusetts, the mother of systems, reforms and revolutions, anticipated the advent of Fourierism and gave birth to another community at Northampton, the home of Jonathan Edwards. This was an infidel, or at least a Nothingarian, organization, and it lived four and a half years.*

Such were some of the connecting links between the Owen and the Fourier epochs in American Socialism. The date of the latter epoch has been fixed in 1842, when the columns of the New York Tribune were opened to the advocacy of Socialistic theories. The exposition of Fourierism in this country had commenced two years before with the publication of the Social Destiny of Man, by Albert Brisbane. Parke Godwin also was one of the earliest of the American expositors of Fourierism, publishing his Popular View of the Doctrines of Charles Fourier, in 1844. From March, 1842, to May, 1843, Mr. Brisbane, in a column devoted to him in the Tribune, beat the drum of Fourierism, and in the summer of 1843 "Phalanxes by the dozen were on the march for the new world of wealth and harmony." Not less than seventeen of these associations were organized in the year 1843, eleven more in 1844, seven more in 1845, one in 1846, one in 1847, one in 1848, one in 1849, and several more from 1850 to 1853-the latest date of any Socialist organization.

On the 5th of October, 1843, Brisbane started an independent Socialistic paper in New York city, called the Phalanx. It was published as a monthly about a year and a half, during which time

* For a fuller account of these communities see Noyes's History of American Socialisms, pp. 120-132, 154-160, and tract by Mr. Ballou in 1851, also a work on Socialism by Ballou.

'In

the subscription list of The Present, a magazine which started nearly at the same time as the Phalanx, edited by William H. Channing, and devoted to Socialistic ideas, was transferred to Brisbane. the course of a year after this, Brook Farm confessed Fourierism, changed its constitution, assumed the title of the Brook Farm Phalanx, and on the 14th of June, 1845, commenced publishing the Harbinger, as the successor of the Phalanx and the heir of its subscription list. . . . The concentrated genius of Unitarianism and Transcendentalism was at Brook Farm. It was the school that trained most of the writers who have created the newspaper and magazine literature of the present time. Their work on the Harbinger was their first drill. Fourierism was their first case in court. The Harbinger was published weekly and extended to seven and a half semi-annual volumes, five of which were edited and printed at Brook Farm and the last two and a half at New York, but by Brook Farm men. The issues at Brook Farm extend from June 14, 1845, to October 30, 1847, and at New York from November 6, 1847, to February 10, 1849. The Phalanx and Harbinger together cover a period of more than five years.'

Mr. Noyes estimated that 8,641 persons were connected with the 45 communities in the Owen and Fourier groups, the number generally ranging from 100 to 200 in each, but in exceptional cases only 15, and in one as many as 900. The amount of land held, but partially cultivated, was reported at 44,625 acres, an average of about 1,000 acres to each community, not including the extensive tract. owned by the New Harmony and McKean County settlements, the former alone comprising 30,000 acres. With such opportunities and means, involving an expenditure of several million dollars, an ample acreage of the best land in the United States, and the distribution of many tons of Socialistic literature, 45 communities of 8,641 persons, under the varying adjustments of two epochs of trial, utterly and disgracefully failed in their experiments. Europe nowhere presents such a list of magnificent experiments, under such favorable conditions, for testing the wild dreams of Socialism as is here given. These quickly succeeding failures were not less conspicuous than the ability and zeal with which the experiments were inaugurated. What a vindication of the conventional usages of Christian society!

* History of American Socialisms, by J. H. Noyes, p. 210.

OF

Section 1.-The Earliest Phases

F Mormonism grew out of popular superstitions for a time quite prevalent among the more ignorant classes, about one hundred years ago. In the year 1801 certain persons appeared in some parts of Vermont, mostly in Rutland County, claiming to possess "St. John's rod," by which roots and herbs could be found which would cure all manner of diseases, and also gold and silver in great abundance. These were claimed to be the rods referred to in Isaiah under which, in the latter day, God would cause his people to pass, when the "latter-day glory" would be revealed. The rods were also the seals with which one hundred and forty-four thousand were to be sealed (Rev. 7) as the servants of God. The lost tribes of Israel were to be gathered from among all nations by means of these rods: through this agency also vast numbers of the present inhabitants of this country who were Israelites, but had lost their pedigree, would be able to trace their Israelitish lineage, and be brought into the New Jerusalem soon to be built in this country. It was further claimed that these rods had power over all enchantments; that much gold and silver lay concealed in the earth, held under a spell of enchantment which these rods, in the hands of the right person, would dispel, and that it would be moved under the ground from place to place, and ultimately it would be collected in a common field, where "the latter-day saints" would take and use it in building the "Holy City." Some excellent, sincere people were hallucinated with the story; and in a number of instances young women in scanty apparel followed the rods all night over the rocks and snow. The whole scheme was finally traced to a gang of counterfeiters, with one Wingate at the head, who used it as a feint to

ORIGIN OF MORMONISM.

339

cover their nefarious operations. He was arrested, but escaped from the hands of justice.

About 1827 the world heard the first rumors of "Joe Smith and his "Golden Bible," found "while hunting for minerals" with his "rod." A few years later the Mormons commenced building in Ohio and sent out men to preach the doctrine of the "latter-day saints" and "glory," a new edition, evidently, of that proclaimed in Vermont thirty years before. Gentlemen of the highest respectability and excellent judicial talent, contemporary with both dates and familiar with all the localities, carefully traced the connection between the early Vermont delusion and the riper development of Mormonism at that time. They found that Smith's mother was from Rutland County, Vt., the scene of the aforementioned operations, and that Sidney Rigdon, Smith's high priest and revealer, was from the same locality where Wingate's counterfeiting operations had been carried on under the cloak of "latter-day glory" theories.

Section 2.-The Secondary Stages

of the Mormon development were easy and natural. In 1815 the Smith family moved to Palmyra, and a little later to Manchester, N. Y., where their reputation was bad. A high authority † says:

Avoiding honest labor, they employed themselves in digging for hidden treasures and similar visionary pursuits. They were intemperate and untruthful, and were commonly suspected of sheep-stealing and other offenses. Upward of sixty of the most respectable citizens of Wayne County testified in 1833, under oath, that the Smith family were of immoral, false, and fraudulent character, and that Joseph was the worst of them. These statements are not in general contradicted by the Mormons. . . . The Mormon writers say that Smith was very poorly educated. He could read with difficulty, wrote an imperfect hand, and had a very limited understanding of the elementary rules of arithmetic. The revelations, proclamations, letters, and other documents put forth by him in the subsequent part of his career were generally written by others.

According to his own account, Smith at about the age of fifteen years began to have visions. On the night of September 21, 1823, the Angel Moroni appeared to him three times, giving him much instruction and informing him that God had a work for him to do, and that a record written upon gold plates, giving an account of the ancient inhabitants of America and the dealings of God with them, was deposited in a particular place in the earth (a hill in Manchester, Ontario

* Rev. Laban Clark, D.D., founder of the Wesleyan University, Middletown, Conn., and Rev. Tobias Spicer, D.D., of Rutland, Vt. From Dr. Clark the author of this volume received a full written account of the Vermont transactions, with names, dates, etc., from which the above has been abbreviated.

Appleton's Cyclopedia. 1863. Article, "Mormons."