The Communistic Societies of the United States Part 30

Let us sing, brothers, sing."

This was presently followed by another song peculiar to the Oneida people. A man sang, looking at a woman near him:

"I love you, O my sister, But the love of G.o.d is better; Yes, the love of G.o.d is better-- O the love of G.o.d is best."

To this she replied:

"I love you, O my brother, But the love of G.o.d is better; Yes, the love of G.o.d is better-- O the love of G.o.d is best."

Then came the chorus, in which a number of voices joined:

"Yes, the love of G.o.d is better, O the love of G.o.d is better; Hallelujah, Hallelujah-- Yes, the love of G.o.d is best."

Soon after the meeting broke up; but there was more singing, later, in the private parlors, which I did not attend. Thus ended Sunday at the Oneida Community; and with this picture of their daily life I may conclude my account of these people.

THE AURORA AND BETHEL COMMUNES.

Twenty-nine miles south of Portland, on the Oregon and California Railroad, lies the village of Aurora, more commonly known along the road as "Dutchtown." As you approach it on the train, you will notice on an eminence to the left a large wooden church; in the deep ravine which is spanned by a railroad-bridge, a saw-mill; and, scattered irregularly over the neighboring country, a number of houses, most of them differing from usual village dwellings in the United States, mainly because of their uncommon size, and the entire absence of ornament. They are three stories high, sometimes nearly a hundred feet deep, and look like factories.

Opposite the railroad station, upon elevated ground, stands one of these houses, which is called the hotel, and is an excellent, clean country inn, famous all over Oregon for good living. When I mentioned to an acquaintance in Portland my purpose to spend some days at Aurora, he replied, "Oh, yes--Dutchtown; you'll feed better there than any where else in the state;" and on further inquiry I found that I might expect to see there also the best orchards in Oregon, the most ingenious expedients for drying fruits, and an excellent system of agriculture.

Beyond these practical points, and the further statement that "these Dutch are a queer people," information about them is not general among Oregonians. The inn, or "hotel," however, at Aurora, is used as a summer resort by residents of Portland; the Aurora band is employed at festivities in Portland; the pleasure-grounds of the community are opened to Sunday-school and other picnics from the city in summer and fall; and at the State Agricultural Fair, held at Salem, the Aurora Community controls and manages the restaurant, and owns the buildings in which food is prepared and sold. In these ways it comes into direct communication with the outside world.

I found the hotel a plainly furnished but scrupulously neat and clean house, at which I was received with very little ceremony. Nor did any one volunteer to guide me about or give me information concerning the society: curiosity does not seem to be a vice of the place. A note of introduction to that member of the society who acts as its purchasing agent, with which fortunately I was provided, secured me his attention after I had found him. He was just then at work as a carpenter, putting up a small house for a newly married couple.

The Aurora Commune is an offshoot of a society formed upon the same principles in Bethel, Shelby County, Missouri. Dr. Keil, the President of Aurora, was the founder of Bethel, and still rules both communities.

He removed from Missouri to Oregon because he imagined that there would be a larger field for his efforts in a new state; and also, I imagine, because of an innate restlessness of disposition.

Dr. Keil is a Prussian, born in 1811; and was a man-milliner in Germany.

He became a mystic, and he seems to have dealt also in magnetism, and used this as a curative agent for diseases. After living for some time in New York, he came to Pittsburgh, where he gave himself out as a physician, and showed, it is said, some knowledge of botany. He professed also to be the owner of a mysterious volume, written with human blood, and containing receipts for medicines which enabled him, as he professed, to cure various diseases. Presently he became a Methodist, and thereupon burned this book with certain awe-inspiring formalities.

He seems to have been a fanatic in religious matters, for he soon left the Methodists to form a sect of his own; and it is related that he gathered a number of Germans about him, to whom he gave himself out as a being to be wors.h.i.+ped, and later as one of the two witnesses in the Book of Revelation; and in this capacity he gave public notice that on a certain day, after a fast of forty days, he would be slain in the presence of his followers.

While he was thus engaged in forming a following for himself among the ignorant and simple-minded Germans, the rogue who called himself Count Leon came over and joined Rapp's colony at Economy; and when Leon, after quarreling with Rapp and removing to Phillipsburg, ran away from there to Louisiana, Keil managed to secure some of Leon's people as his adherents, and thereupon began to plan a communistic settlement, somewhat upon the plan of Rapp's, but with the celibate principle left out. In the year 1844, his followers, among whom were by good luck some of the seceders from Economy, began a settlement in accordance with these plans in Missouri. They were all either Germans or "Pennsylvania Dutch," and people of limited means. It is probable that Keil had nothing, for he appears for some years previously to have followed no regular business or profession. They removed to Bethel, a point forty-eight miles from Hannibal, in Missouri, and thirty-six miles from Quincy; and began in very humble style. Not all the colonists came out at once. He took with him at first two families and a number of young people. These broke ground in the new settlement, and others followed as they sold their property at home.

Shelby County, Missouri, was then a new country. The colonists took up four sections, or two thousand five hundred and sixty acres of land, to which they added from time to time until they possessed four thousand acres. Upon a part of this estate they gradually established a distillery, grist-mill, sawmill, carding machinery, a woolen-mill, and all the mechanical trades needed by the farmers in their neighborhood, and thus they made a town. As soon as they were able they set up a general store, and a post-office was of course established by the government. Among their first buildings was a church; for Dr. Keil was their spiritual as well as temporal head.

At Bethel they prospered; and there four hundred of these Communists still live. I shall give an account of them later.

Keil's ideas grew with the increasing wealth of the people; and his unrestful spirit longed for a new and broader field of labor. He imagined that on the Pacific coast he might found a larger communistic society upon a broader domain; and he did not find it difficult to persuade his people that the attempt ought to be made.

In 1855, accordingly, Dr. Keil set out with ten or twelve families, eighty persons in all, across the plains, carrying along household utensils and some cattle. A few families started later, and crossed the Isthmus; and all gathered at Shoalwater Bay, north of the mouth of the Columbia River, and in Was.h.i.+ngton Territory. There a few families belonging to Aurora still live, managing farms of the community; but in June, 1856, the main body of the society removed to Aurora, and began there, with tedious and severe labor, a clearing among the firs.

The upper part of the Willamette Valley is a broad, open plain, easy to till, and inviting to the farmer. Dr. Keil and his companions avoided this plain: they chose to settle in a region pretty densely grown over with timber. I asked him why he did so. He replied that, meaning to establish a sawmill, they wished to use the trees cut down in clearing the land to make into lumber for houses and fences. There was at that time no railroad, and lumber in the open prairie was expensive. "The end proved that we were right," said he; "for, though we had hard work at first, and got ahead slowly, we were soon able to buy out the prairie farmers, who had got into debt and were s.h.i.+ftless, while we prudent Germans were building our place." He added a characteristic story of their early days--that when they first settled at Aurora, having no fruit of their own, he used to buy summer apples for his people from the nearest farmers for a dollar a bushel. These were eaten in the families; but he taught them to save the apple-parings, and make them into vinegar, which he then sold to the wives of his American farming neighbors at a dollar and a half per gallon.

In order to make intelligible the means as well as the ways of their success, I must here explain what are the social principles to which they agree, and in accordance with which they have worked since 1844.

They are remarkable chiefly for their simplicity. Dr. Keil teaches, and they hold that--

1st. All government should be parental, to imitate, as they say, the parental government of G.o.d.

2d. That therefore societies should be formed upon the model of the family, having all interests and all property absolutely in common; all the members laboring faithfully for the general welfare and support, and drawing the means of living from the general treasury.

3d. That, however, neither religion nor the harmony of nature teaches community in any thing further than property and labor. Hence the family life is strictly maintained; and the Aurora Communists marry and are given in marriage, and raise and train children precisely as do their neighbors the Pike farmers. They reject absolutely all s.e.xual irregularities, and inculcate marriage and support the family relation as religious duties, as the outside world does. Each family has its own house, or separate apartments in one of the large buildings.

4th. Dr. Keil, who is not only their president, but also their preacher, holds the fundamental truth of Christianity to be, "Love one another,"

and interprets this in so broad and literal a sense as requires a community of goods and effects. His sermons are exhortations and ill.u.s.trations of this principle, and warnings against "selfishness" and praise of self-sacrifice. Service is held in a very commodious and well-built church twice a month, and after the Lutheran style: opening with singing, prayer, and reading of the Scriptures; after which the president preaches from a chosen text.

To me he spoke with some vehemence against sects and creeds as anti-Christian. Sunday is usually a day of recreation and quiet amus.e.m.e.nt, with music and visiting among the people.

5th. The children of the community are sent to school, there being at Aurora a common or free school, in which an old man, a member of the society, who bears a remarkable resemblance to the late Horace Greeley, is teacher. The school is supported as other free schools of the state are; but it is open all the year round, which is not the case generally with country schools. They aim to teach only the rudimentary studies-- reading, writing, and arithmetic.

6th. The system of government is as simple as possible. Dr. Keil, the founder, is president of the community, and autocrat. He has for his advisers four of the older members, who are selected by himself. In the management of affairs he consults these, whose opinions, I imagine, usually agree with his. When any vitally important change or experiment is contemplated, the matter is discussed by the whole community, and nothing is done then without a general a.s.sent.

7th. Every man is expected to labor for the general good, but there are no established hours of work, nor is any one compelled to labor at any special pursuit.

8th. Plain living and rigid economy are inculcated as duties from each to the whole; and to labor regularly, and to waste nothing, are important parts of the "whole duty of man."

9th. Each workshop has its foreman, who comes, it would seem, by natural selection. That is to say, here, as elsewhere, the fittest man comes to the front. But it is a principle of their polity that men shall not be confined to one kind of labor. If brickmakers are needed, and shoemakers are not busy, the shoe shop is closed, and the shoemakers go out and make brick. During the spring and summer months a large proportion of the people are engaged in the cultivation of crops. After harvest these are drawn into the town, and find winter employment in the saw-mill and the different shops. It is to accommodate these temporary sojourners that the large houses are built. Here they have apartments allotted to them, and the young people board with the different families, the young girls being employed chiefly in household duties.

These are the extremely simple principles and practical rules which guide the Aurora Community. Their further application I will show in detail hereafter. I wish first to show the dollar-and-cent results.

Coming to Aurora in 1856, they have held together, with some outside gains, and some additions from the Bethel Society, until there are now nearly four hundred people in the settlement, who own about eighteen thousand acres of land, scattered over several counties. They have established a sawmill, a tan-yard, and cabinet-maker's, blacksmith's, wagon-maker's, tailor's, shoemaker's, carpenter's, and tin shops. Also a grist-mill, carding machinery, some looms for weaving wool; drying houses for fruit; and there is a supply store for the community, a drug store kept by the doctor of the society, and a general country store, at which the neighboring farmers, not Communists, deal for cash.

They have besides the most extensive orchards in the state, in which are apples, pears of all kinds, plums, prunes, which do admirably here, and all the commoner large and small fruits. There is also a large vegetable garden, for the use of those who have none at their houses. The orchards are in fine order, and were laden with fruit when I saw them in June, 1873. Near the orchard is a large, neatly kept house, in which the people gather during the fruit-harvest to prepare it for market, and to pare that which is to be dried. Beyond the orchard is a public ground of a dozen acres, for Sunday a.s.semblies; and here, too, are houses for eating and dancing, with a kitchen and bake-ovens commodious enough to cook a meal for the whole settlement, or for a large picnic party.

Thus far they have brought their affairs in seventeen years, without any peculiar religious belief, any interference with the marriage or family relation, without a peculiar dress, or any other habit to mark them as Separatists, or "Come-outers," to use a New England phrase. It must be admitted also that they have achieved thus much without long or exhausting or enforced labor.

Their living is extremely plain. The houses and apartments are without carpets; the women wear calico on Sunday as well as during the week, and the sun-bonnet is their head-covering. The men wear ready-made clothing of no particular style. Cleanliness is, so far as I saw, a conspicuous virtue of the society. Dr. Keil, the president, was the only person with whom I came in contact who was not very neat. He is a snuff-taker; and he walked over the orchard with me in an untidy pair of carpet slippers.

They appear to be people of few ceremonies. On a Sunday I attended a wedding; the marriage took place in the school-house, and was witnessed by a small congregation of young people, friends of the bride and groom.

The young girls came to the wedding in clean calico dresses and sun-bonnets; and I noticed that even the bride wore only a very plain woolen dress, with a bit of bright ribbon around her neck. The ceremony was performed by the schoolmaster, who is also a justice of the peace; when it was over, the company quietly and somewhat shyly walked up to congratulate the newly married, some of the young women kissing the bride. Then there was an immediate adjournment to the house of the bride's father, a mile off in the country. I was hospitably invited to go to the feast; and found a small log cabin, with kitchen and bedroom below, and a loft above, standing near a deep ravine, and with a neat garden and small orchard back of it.

In front a bower had been formed of the boughs of evergreens, beneath which were two or three tables, which were presently spread with a plain but wholesome and bountiful feast, to which the strangers present and the older people were first invited to sit down, the younger ones waiting on the table, and with laughter and joking taking their places afterward. Meantime the village band played; after dinner we all walked into the garden, and in a pretty little summer-house discussed orchards, bees, and other country living, and by and by returned to the village.

The young people were to have some dancing, and altogether it was a very pretty, rather quiet country wedding. It struck me that the young women were undersized, and did not look robust or strong; there were no rosy cheeks, and there was a very subdued air upon all the congregation. The poor little bride looked pale and scared; but the bridegroom, a stout young fellow, looked proud and happy, as was proper. Dr. Keil was not present, but drove out in a very plain country wagon as the weddingers entered the schoolroom.

The community occasionally employs outside laborers; and when a man or woman applies to join the society, he or she is at first employed at wages, and at some trade. "We will employ and pay you as long as we need your labor," the council says in such a case; "if after a while you are thoroughly satisfied that this is the best life, and if we approve of you, we will take you in." It is not necessary that the new-comer should bring money with him; but if he has means, he is required to put them into the common treasury, for he _must_ believe that "all selfish acc.u.mulation is wrong, contrary to G.o.d's law and to natural laws."

Occasionally, I was told, they have had as members idle or drunken men.

Such are admonished of their wrong courses; and if they are incorrigible, they always, I was a.s.sured, leave the place. "An idler or dissolute person has not the sympathies of our people; he has no connection with the industries of the society; as he does not work, he can hardly be so brazen as to ask for supplies. The practical result is that presently he disappears from among us."

"Do you have no disagreements from envy or jealousy among you," I asked Dr. Keil; who replied, "Very seldom now; the people have been too long and too thoroughly trained; they are too well satisfied of the wisdom of our plan of life; they are practiced in self-sacrifice, and know that selfishness is evil and the source of unhappiness. In the early days we used sometimes to have trouble. Thus a man would say, 'I brought money into the society, and this other man brought none; why should he have as much as I;' but my reply was, 'Here is your money--take it; it is not necessary; but while you remain, remember that you are no better than he.' Again, another might say, 'My labor brings one thousand dollars a year to the society, _his_ only two hundred and fifty;' but my answer was, 'Thank G.o.d that he made you so much abler, stronger, to help your brother; but take care lest your poorer brother do not some day have to help you, when you are crippled, or ill, or disabled.'"

The children who have in these years, since 1844, grown up in the community generally remain. I spoke with a number of men who had thus pa.s.sed all but their earliest years in the society, and who were content. Men sometimes return, repentant, after leaving the society.

"The boys and girls know that they can leave at any time; there is no compulsion upon any one; hence no one cares to go. But they generally see that this is the best place. We are as prosperous and as happy as any one; we have here all we need."

As all work for the common good, so all are supplied from the common stores. I asked the purchasing agent about the book-keeping of the place; he replied, "As there is no trading, few accounts are needed.

Much of what we raise is consumed on the place, and of what the people use no account is kept. Thus, if a family needs flour, it goes freely to the mill and gets what it requires. If b.u.t.ter, it goes to the store in the same way. We need only to keep account of what we sell of our own products, and of what we buy from abroad, and these accounts check each other. When we make money, we invest it in land." Further, I was told that tea, coffee, and sugar are roughly allowanced to each family.