History of American Socialisms Part 52

Amount of raw silk manufactured, 4,664 lbs.

Iron cast at the foundry, 227,000 do.

Lumber manufactured at saw-mill, 305,000 feet.

Product of milk from the dairy, 31,143 gallons.

" " hay on the domain, 300 tons.

" " potatoes, 800 bushels.

" " strawberries, 740 do.

" " apples, 1,450 do.

" " grapes, 9,631 lbs.

Stock on the farm, 93 cattle and 25 horses. Amount of teaming done, valued at $6,260.

In addition to these, many branches of industry necessary for the convenience of the family are pursued, such as shoemaking, tailoring, dentistry, etc. The cash business of the Community during the year, as represented by its receipts and disburs.e.m.e.nts, was about $575,000.

Amount paid for hired labor $34,000. Family expenses (exclusive of domestic labor by the members, teaching, and work in the printing office), $41,533.43.

The amount of labor performed by the Community members during the year, was found to be approximately as follows:

Number. Amount of labor per day.

Able-bodied men. 80 7 hours " women. 84 6 " 40 min.

Invalid and aged men 6 3 " 40 "

Boys 4 3 " 40 "

Invalid and aged women 9 1 " 20 "

Girls 2 1 " 20 "

This is exclusive of care of children, school-teaching, printing and editing the _Circular_, and much head-work in all departments.

Taking 304 days for the working year, we have, as a product of the above figures, a total of 35,568 days' work at ten hours each.

Supposing this labor to be paid at the rate of $1.50 per day, the aggregate sum for the year would be $53,352.00. By comparing this with the amount of family expenses, $41,533.43, we find, at the given rate of wages, a surplus of profit amounting to $11,818.57, or 33 cents profit for each person per day. This represents the saving which ordinary unskilled labor would make by means of the mere economy of a.s.sociation. Were it possible for a skillful mechanic to live in co-operation with others, so that his wife and elder children could spend some time at productive labor, and his family could secure the economies of combined households, their wages at present rates would be more than double the cost of living. Labor in the Community being princ.i.p.ally of the higher cla.s.s, is proportionately rewarded, and in fact earns much more than $1.50 per day.

The entire financial history of the Community in brief is the following: It commenced business at its present location in 1848, but did not adopt the practice of taking annual inventories till 1857. Of the period between these dates we can give but a general account. The Community in the course of that period had five or six branches with common interests, scattered in several States. The "Property Register," kept from the beginning, shows that the amount of property brought in by the members of all the Communities, up to January 1, 1857, was $107,706.45. The amount held at Oneida at that date, as stated in the first regular inventory, was only $41,740. The branch Communities at Putney, Wallingford and elsewhere, at the same time had property valued at $25,532.22. So that the total a.s.sets of the a.s.sociated Communities were $67,272.22, or $40,434.23 less than the amount brought in by the members. In other words between the years 1848 and 1857, the a.s.sociated Communities sunk (in round numbers) $40,000. Various causes may be a.s.signed for this, such as inexperience, lack of established business, persecutions and extortions, the burning of the Community store, the sinking of the sloop Rebecca Ford in the Hudson River, the maintenance of an expensive printing family at Brooklyn, the publication of a free paper, etc.

In the course of several years previous to 1857, the Community abandoned the policy of working in scattered detachments, and concentrated its forces at Oneida and Wallingford. From the first of January 1857, when its capital was $41,740, to the present time, the progress of its money-matters is recorded in the following statistics, drawn from its annual inventories:

In 1857, net earnings, $5,470.11 " 1858, " " 1,763.60 " 1859, " " 10,278.38 " 1860, " " 15,611.03 " 1861, " " 5,877.89 " 1862, " " 9,859.78 " 1863, " " 44.755.30 " 1864, " " 61,382.62 " 1865, " " 12,382.81 " 1866, " " 13,198.74

Total net earnings in ten years, $180,580.26; being a yearly average income of $18,058.02, above all expenses. The succeeding inventories show the following result:

Net earnings in 1867, $21,416.02.

Net earnings in 1868, $55,100.83.

being an average for the last two years of over $38,000 per annum.

During the year 1869 the following steps forward have been taken: 1, an entire wing has been added to the brick Mansion House, for the use of the children; 2, apparatus for heating the whole by steam has been introduced; 3, a building has been erected for an Academy, and systematic home-education has commenced; 4, silk-weaving has been introduced at Willow Place; 5, the manufacture of silk-twist has been established at Wallingford; 6, the Communities at Oneida and Wallingford have been more thoroughly consolidated than heretofore; 7, this book on _American Socialisms_ has been prepared at Oneida and printed at Wallingford.

FOOTNOTES:

[C] We observe that the account of the Oneida Community given in the Supplement to Chambers' Encyclopaedia, begins thus: "_Perfectionists_ or _Bible Communists_; popularly known as Free Lovers or preachers of Free Love." The whole article, covering several pages, is very careless in its geographical and other details, and not altogether reliable in its statements of the doctrines and morals of the Communists. As materials that get into Encyclopaedias may be presumed to be crystallizing for final history, it is to be hoped that the Messrs. Chambers will at least get this article corrected by some intelligent American, for future editions.

CHAPTER XLVII.

REVIEW AND RESULTS.

Looking back now over the entire course of this history, we discover a remarkable similarity in the symptoms that manifested themselves in the transitory Communities, and almost entire unanimity in the witnesses who testify as to the causes of their failure. GENERAL DEPRAVITY, all say, is the villain of the whole story.

In the first place Macdonald himself, after "seeing stern reality,"

confesses that in his previous hopes of Socialism he "had imagined mankind better than they are."

Then Owen, accounting for the failure at New Harmony, says, "he wanted honesty, and he got dishonesty; he wanted temperance, and instead he was continually troubled with the intemperate; he wanted cleanliness, and he found dirt," and so on.

The Yellow Spring Community, though composed of "a very superior cla.s.s," found in the short s.p.a.ce of three months, that "self-love was a spirit that would not be exorcised. Individual happiness was the law of nature, and it could not be obliterated; and before a single year had pa.s.sed, this law had scattered the members of that society which had come together so earnestly and under such favorable circ.u.mstances, back into the selfish world from which they came."

The trustees of the Nashoba Community, in abandoning Frances Wright's original plan of common property, acknowledge their conviction that such a system can not succeed "without the members composing it are superior beings. That which produces in the world only common-place jealousies and every-day squabbles, is sufficient to destroy a Community."

The spokesman of the Haverstraw Community at first attributes their failure to the "dishonesty of the managers;" but afterward settles down into the more general complaint that they lacked "men and women of skillful industry, sober and honest, with a knowledge of themselves and a disposition to command and be commanded," and intimates that "the sole occupation of the men and women they had, was parade and talk."

The historian of the c.o.xsackie Community says "they had many persons engaged in talking and law-making, who did not work at any useful employment. The consequences were, that after struggling on for between one and two years, the experiment came to an end. There were few good men to steer things right."

Warren found that the friction that spoiled his experiments was "the want of common honesty."

Ballou complained that "the timber he got together was not suitable for building a Community. The men and women that joined him were very enthusiastic and commenced with great zeal; their devotion to the cause seemed to be sincere; but they did not know themselves."

At the meetings that dissolved the Northampton Community, "some spoke of the want of that harmony and brotherly feeling, which were indispensable to success; others spoke of the unwillingness to make sacrifices on the part of some of the members; also of the lack of industry and the right appropriation of time."

Collins lived in a quarrel with a rival during nearly the whole life of his Community, and finally gave up the experiment from "a conviction that the theory of Communism could not be carried out in practice; that the attempt was premature, the time had not yet arrived, and the necessary conditions did not yet exist." His experience led him to the conclusion that "there is floating upon the surface of society, a body of restless, disappointed, jealous, indolent spirits, disgusted with our present social system, not because it enchains the ma.s.ses to poverty, ignorance, vice, and endless servitude; but because they can not render it subservient to their private ends. Experience shows that this cla.s.s stands ready to mount every new movement that promises ease, abundance, and individual freedom; and that when such an enterprise refuses to interpret license for freedom, and insists that every member shall make their strength, skill and talent, subservient to the movement, then the cry of tyranny and oppression is raised against those who advocate such industry and self-denial; then the enterprise must become a scape-goat, to bear the fickleness, indolence, selfishness, and envy of this cla.s.s."

The testimony in regard to the Sylvania a.s.sociation is, that "young men wasted the good things at the commencement of the experiment; and besides victuals, dry-goods supplied by the a.s.sociation were unequally obtained. Idle and greedy people find their way into such attempts, and soon show forth their character by burdening others with too much labor, and, in times of scarcity, supplying themselves with more than their allowance of various necessaries, instead of taking less."

The failure of the One Mentian Community is attributed to "ignorance and disagreements," and that of the Social Reform Unity to "lack of wisdom and general preparation."

The Leraysville Phalanx went to pieces in a grumble about the management.

Of the Clarkson a.s.sociation a writer in the _Phalanx_ says that they were "ignorant of Fourier's principles, and without plan or purpose, save to fly from the ills they had already experienced in civilization. Thus they a.s.sembled together such elements of discord, as naturally in a short time led to their dissolution."

The Sodus Bay Socialists quarreled about religion, and when they broke up, some decamped in the night, with as much of the common property as they could lay hands on. Whereupon Macdonald sententiously remarks--"The fact that mankind do not like to have their faults and failings made public, will probably account for the difficulty in obtaining particulars of such experiments."

The Bloomfield a.s.sociation went to wreck in a quarrel about land-t.i.tles.

Of the Jefferson County a.s.sociation, Macdonald says, "After a few months, disagreements became general. Their means were totally inadequate; they were too ignorant of the principles of a.s.sociation; were too much crowded together, and had too many idlers among them.

There was bad management on the part of the officers, and some were suspected of dishonesty."

The Moorhouse Union appears to have been almost wholly a gathering of worthless adventurers.

Mr. Moore, in his _Post Mortem_ on the Marlboro a.s.sociation, very delicately observes that "the failure of the experiment may be traced to the fact that the minds of its originators were not h.o.m.ogeneous."

Macdonald, after studying the Prairie Home Community, says, "From all I saw I judged that it was too loosely put together, and that the members had not entire confidence in each other."