The Communistic Societies of the United States Part 5

AT

ECONOMY, PA.

THE HARMONY SOCIETY.

I.--ECONOMY IN 1874.

Traveling from Cleveland to Pittsburgh by rail, you strike the Ohio River at Wellsville; and the railroad runs thence, for forty-eight miles, to Pittsburgh, along the river bank, and through the edge of a country rich in coal, oil, potters' clay, limestone, and iron, and supporting a number of important manufactures.

To a traveler in search of the Rappist or Harmony settlement at Economy, the names of the towns along here seem to tell of the overshadowing influence of these communists; for, pa.s.sing Liverpool, you come to Freedom, Jethro (whose houses are both heated and lighted with gas from a natural spring near by), Industry, and Beaver; you smile at the sign of the "Golden Rule Distillery;" and you wonder at the broken fences, unpainted houses, and tangled and weed-covered grounds, and that general air of dilapidation which curses a country producing petroleum and bituminous coal.

Presently, however, you strike into what is evidently a large and well-kept estate: high and solid fences; fields without weeds, and with clean culture or smooth and rich gra.s.s; and if you ask the conductor, he will tell you that for some miles here the land is owned by the "Economites;" and that the town or village of Economy lies among these neatly kept fields, but out of sight of the railroad on the top of the steep bluff.

Economy has, in truth, one of the loveliest situations on the Ohio River. It stands in the midst of a rich plain, with swelling hills behind, protecting it from cold winds in winter; a magnificent reach of the river in view below; and tall hills on the opposite sh.o.r.e to give a picturesque outlook. The town begins on the edge of the bluff; and under the shade-trees planted there benches are arranged, where doubtless the Harmonists take their comfort on summer evenings, in view of the river below them and of the village on the opposite sh.o.r.e. Streets proceed at right-angles with the river's course; and each street is lined with neat frame or brick houses, surrounding a square in such a manner that within each household has a sufficient garden. The broad streets have neat foot-pavements of brick; the houses, substantially built but unpretentious, are beautified by a singular arrangement of grape-vines, which are trained to espaliers fixed to cover the s.p.a.ce between the top of the lower and the bottom of the upper windows. This manner of training vines gives the town quite a peculiar look, as though the houses had been crowned with green.

As you walk through the silent streets, and pa.s.s the large a.s.sembly Hall, the church, and the hotel, it will occur to you that these people had, when they founded their place, the advantage of a sensible architect, for, while there is not the least pretense, all the building is singularly solid and honest; and in the larger houses the roof-lines have been broken and managed with considerable skill, so as to produce a very pleasing and satisfactory effect. Moreover, the color of the bricks used in building has chanced to be deep and good, which is no slight advantage to the place.

Neatness and a Sunday quiet are the prevailing characteristics of Economy. Once it was a busy place, for it had cotton, silk, and woolen factories, a brewery, and other industries; but the most important of these have now ceased; and as you walk along the quiet, shady streets, you meet only occasionally some stout, little old man, in a short light-blue jacket and a tall and very broad-brimmed hat, looking amazingly like Hendrick Hudson's men in the play of Rip Van Winkle; or some comfortable-looking dame, in Norman cap and stuff gown; whose polite "good-day" to you, in German or English as it may happen, is not unmixed with surprise at sight of a strange face; for, as you will presently discover at the hotel, visitors are not nowadays frequent in Economy.

[Ill.u.s.tration: a.s.sEMBLY HALL--ECONOMY]

[Ill.u.s.tration: CHURCH AT ECONOMY]

The hotel is one of the largest houses in the place; it is of two stories, with s.p.a.cious bed-chambers, high ceilings, roomy fire-places, large halls, and a really fine dining-room, all scrupulously clean. It was once, before the days of railroads, a favorite stopping-place on one of the main stage routes out of Pittsburgh; in the well-built stable and barns opposite there was room for twenty or thirty horses; the dining-room would seat a hundred people; and here during many years was a favorite winter as well as summer resort for Pittsburghers, and an important source of income to the Economists.

When I for the first time entered the sitting-room on a chilly December morning, the venerable but active landlord was dusting chairs and tables, and looked up in some amazement at the intrusion of a traveler.

"I can stay here, I suppose," said I, by way of introduction; and was answered: "That depends upon how long you want to stay. We don't take people to board here." My a.s.surance that I meant to remain but two or three days, and that I had been recommended by Mr. Henrici, the head of the society, secured me a room; and the warning, as I went out for a walk, that I must be in by half-past eleven, promptly, to dine; and by half-past four for supper, because other people had to eat after me, and ought not to be kept waiting by reason of my carelessness. "For which reason," added the landlord, "it would be well for you to come in and be at hand a quarter of an hour before the times I have mentioned." When I had dined and supped and slept, I saw what a loss to Pittsburghers was the closing of the Economy hotel; for the Harmonists live well, and are substantial eaters in their German fas.h.i.+on. Nor was any ceremony omitted because of the fewness of guests; and old Joseph, the butler and head-waiter, who, as he told me, came to serve here fifty years ago, and is now seventy-eight years old, attended upon my meals arrayed in a scrupulously white ap.r.o.n, ordered the la.s.s who was his subordinate, and occasionally condescended to laugh at my jokes, as befitted his place, with as much precision and dignity as when, thirty or forty years ago, he used to serve a houseful of hungry travelers.

Later in the afternoon I discovered the meaning of my landlord's warnings as to punctuality, as well as the real use of the "Economy Hotel." As I sat before the fire in my own room after supper, I heard the door-bell ring with a frequency as though an uncommon number of travelers were applying for lodgings; and going down into the sitting-room about seven o'clock, I discovered there an extraordinary collection of persons ranged around the fire, and toasting their more or less dilapidated boots. These were men in all degrees of raggedness; men with one eye, or lame, or crippled--tramps, in fact, beggars for supper and a night's lodging. They sat there to the number of twenty, half naked many of them, and not a bit ashamed; with carpet-bags or without; with clean or dirty faces and clothes as it might happen; but all hungry, as I presently saw, when a table was drawn out, about which they gathered, giving their names to be taken down on a register, while to them came a Harmonist brother with a huge tray full of tins filled with coffee, and another with a still bigger tray of bread.

Thereupon these wanderers fell to, and having eaten as much bread and coffee as they could hold, they were consigned to a house a few doors away, peeping in at whose windows by and by, I saw a large, cheerful coal fire, and beds for the whole company. "You see, after you have eaten, the table must be cleared, and then _we_ eat; and then come these people, who have also to be fed, so that, unless we hurry, the women are belated with their work," explained the landlord of this curious inn to me.

"Is this, then, a constant occurrence?" I asked in some amazement; and was told that they feed here daily from fifteen to twenty-five such tramps, asking no questions, except that the person shall not have been a regular beggar from the society. A constant provision of coffee and bread is made for them, and the house set apart for their lodging has bed accommodations for twenty men. They are expected to wash at the stable next morning, and thereupon receive a breakfast of bread, meat, and coffee, and are suffered to go on their way. Occasionally the very dest.i.tute, if they seem to be deserving, receive also clothing.

"But are you not often imposed upon?" I asked.

"Yes, probably; but it is better to give to a dozen worthless ones than to refuse one deserving man the cup and loaf which we give," was the reply.

The tramps themselves took this benevolence apparently as a matter of course. They were quiet enough; some of them looked like decent men out of work, as indeed all professed to be going somewhere in search of employment. But many of them had the air of confirmed loafers, and some I should not have liked to meet alone on the road after dark.

Economy is the home of the "Harmony Society," better known to the outside world as the followers of Rapp. It is a town of about one hundred and twenty houses, very regularly built, well-drained, and paved; it has water led from a reservoir in the hills, and flowing into troughs conveniently placed in every street; abundant shade-trees; a church, an a.s.sembly hall, a store which supplies also to some extent the neighboring country; different factories, and a number of conveniences which villages of its size are too often without. Moreover, it contains a pleasant pleasure-garden, and is surrounded by fine, productive orchards and by well-tilled fields.

At present Economy is inhabited by all that remain of the society which was founded by George Rapp in 1805. These number one hundred and ten persons, most of whom are aged, and none, I think, under forty. Besides these, who are the owners of the place and of much property elsewhere, there are twenty-five or thirty children of various ages, adopted by the society and apprenticed to it, and an equal number living there with parents who are hired laborers; of these hired laborers, men and women, there are about one hundred. The whole population is German; and German is the language one commonly hears, and in which on Sunday wors.h.i.+p is carried on. Nevertheless all the people speak English also.

The Harmonists themselves are st.u.r.dy, healthy-looking men and women, most of them gray haired; with an air of vigorous independence; conspicuously kind and polite; well-fed and well-preserved. As I examined their faces on Sunday in church, they struck me as a remarkably healthy and well-satisfied collection of old men and women; by no means dull, and very decidedly masters of their lives. Their working dress has for its peculiarity the roundabout or jacket I have before mentioned; on Sunday they wear long coats. The women look very well indeed in their Norman caps; and their dress, wholesome and sensible, is not in any way odd or inappropriate. Indeed, when Miss Rapp, the granddaughter of the founder of the society, walked briskly into church on Sunday, her bright, kindly face was so well set off by the cap she wore that she seemed quite an admirable object to me; and I thought no head-dress in the world could so well become an elderly lady.

II.--HISTORICAL.

George Rapp, founder and until his death in 1847 head of the "Harmony Society," was born in October, 1757, at Iptingen in Wurtemberg. He was the son of a small farmer and vine-dresser, and received such a moderate common-school education as the child of parents in such circ.u.mstances would naturally receive at that time in South Germany. When he had been taught reading, writing, arithmetic, and geography, he left school and a.s.sisted his father on the farm, working as a weaver during the winter months. At the age of twenty-six he married a farmer's daughter, who bore him a son, John, and a daughter, Rosina, both of whom later became with him members of the society.

Rapp appears to have been from his early youth fond of reading, and of a reflective turn of mind. Books were probably not plentiful in his father's house, and he became a student of the Bible, and began presently to compare the condition of the people among whom he lived with the social order laid down and described in the New Testament. He became dissatisfied especially with the lifeless condition of the churches; and in the year 1787, when he was thirty, he had evidently found others who held with him, for he began to preach to a small congregation of friends in his own house on Sundays.

The clergy resented this interference with their office, and persecuted Rapp and his adherents; they were fined and imprisoned; and this proved to be, as usual, the best way to increase their numbers and to confirm their dislike of the prevailing order of things. They were denounced as "Separatists," and had the courage to accept the name.

Rapp taught his followers, I am told, that they were in all things to obey the laws, to be peaceable and quiet subjects, and to pay all their taxes, those to the Church as well as to the State. But he insisted on their right to believe what they pleased and to go to church where they thought it best. This was a tolerably impregnable platform.

In the course of six years, with the help of the persecutions of the clergy, Rapp had gathered around him not less than three hundred families; and had hearers and believers at a distance of twenty miles from his own house. He appears to have labored so industriously on the farm as to acc.u.mulate a little property, and in 1803 his adherents determined upon emigrating in a body to America, where they were sure of freedom to wors.h.i.+p G.o.d after their own desires.

Rapp sailed in that year for Baltimore, accompanied by his son John and two other persons. After looking about in Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, they concluded to buy five thousand acres of wild land about twenty-five miles north of Pittsburgh, in the valley of the Connoquenessing. Frederick (Reichert) Rapp, an adopted son of George Rapp, evidently a man of uncommon ability and administrative talent, had been left in charge in Germany; and had so far perfected the necessary arrangements for emigration that no time was lost in moving, as soon as Rapp gave notice that he had found a proper locality for settlement. On the 4th of July, 1804, the s.h.i.+p _Aurora_ from Amsterdam landed three hundred of Rapp's people in Baltimore; and six weeks later three hundred more were landed in Philadelphia. The remainder, coming in another s.h.i.+p, were drawn off by Haller, one of Rapp's traveling companions, to settle in Lycoming County, Pennsylvania.

The six hundred souls who thus remained to Rapp appear to have been mainly, and indeed with few exceptions, of the peasant and mechanic cla.s.s. There were among them, I have been told, a few of moderately good education, and presumably of somewhat higher social standing than the great body; there were a few who had considerable property, for emigrants in those days. All were thrifty, and few were dest.i.tute. It is probable that they had determined in Germany to establish a community of goods, in accordance with their understanding of the social theory of Jesus; but for the present each family retained its property.

Rapp met them on their arrival, and settled them in different parts of Maryland and Pennsylvania; withdrawing a certain number of the ablest mechanics and laborers to proceed with him to the newly purchased land, where he and they spent a toilsome fall and winter in preparing habitations for the remainder; and on the 15th of February, 1805, these, and such as they could so early in the season gather with them, formally and solemnly organized themselves into the "Harmony Society," agreeing to throw all their possessions into a common fund, to adopt a uniform and simple dress and style of house; to keep thenceforth all things in common; and to labor for the common good of the whole body. Later in the spring they were joined by fifty additional families; and thus they finally began with about one hundred and twenty-five families, or, as I am told, less than seven hundred and fifty men, women, and children.

Rapp was then forty-eight years of age. He was, according to the best accounts I have been able to gather, a man of robust frame and sound health, with great perseverance, enterprise, and executive ability, and remarkable common-sense. It was fortunate for the community that its members were all laboring men. In the first year they erected between forty and fifty log-houses, a church and school-house, grist-mill, barn, and some workshops, and cleared one hundred and fifty acres of land. In the following year they cleared four hundred acres more, and built a saw-mill, tannery, and storehouse, and planted a small vineyard. A distillery was also a part of this year's building; and it is odd to read that the Harmonists, who have aimed to do all things well, were famous among Western men for many years for the excellence of the whisky they made; of which, however, they always used very sparingly themselves. Among their crops in succeeding years were corn, wheat, rye, hemp, and flax; wool from merino sheep, which they were the first in that part of Pennsylvania to own; and poppies, from which they made sweet-oil. They did not rest until they had established also a woolen-mill. It was a principle with Rapp that the society should, as far as possible, produce and make every thing it used; and in the early days, I am told, they bought very little indeed of provisions or clothing, having then but small means.

Rapp was, with the help of his adopted son, the organizer of the community's labor, appointing foremen in each department; he planned their enterprises--but he was also their preacher and teacher; and he taught them that their main duty was to live a sincerely and rigidly religious life; that they were not to labor for wealth, or look forward anxiously for prosperity; that the coming of the Lord was near, and for this they were waiting, as his chosen ones separated from the world.

At this time they still lived in families, and encouraged, or at any rate did not discourage, marriage. Among the members who married between 1805 and 1807 was John Rapp, the founder's son, and the father of Miss Gertrude Rapp, who still lives at Economy; and there is no doubt that the elder Rapp performed the marriage ceremony. During the year 1807, however, a deep religious fervor pervaded the society; and a remarkable result of this "revival of religion" was the determination of most of the members to conform themselves more closely in several ways to what they believed to be the spirit and commands of Jesus. Among other matters, they were persuaded in their own minds that it was best to cease to live in the married state. I have been a.s.sured by older members of the society, who have, as they say, often heard the whole of this period described by those who were actors in it, that this determination to refrain from marriage and from married life originated among the younger members; and that, though "Father Rapp" was not averse to this growth of asceticism, he did not eagerly encourage it, but warned his people not to act rashly in so serious and difficult a matter, but to proceed with great caution, and determine nothing without careful counsel together. At the same time he, I am told, gave it as his own conviction that the unmarried is the higher and holier estate. In short, there is reason to believe that he managed in this matter, as he appears to have done in others, with great prudence and judgment. He himself, and his son, John Rapp, set an example which the remainder of the society quickly followed; thenceforth no more marriages were contracted in Harmony, and no more children were born.

A certain number of the younger people, feeling no vocation for a celibate life, at this time withdrew from the society. The remainder faithfully ceased from conjugal intercourse. Husbands and wives were not required to live in different houses, but occupied, as before, the same dwelling, with their children, only treating each other as brother and sister in Christ, and remembering the precept of the apostle: "This I say, brethren, the time is short; it remaineth that both they that have wives be as though they had none," etc. These are the words of one of the older members to the Reverend Dr. Aaron Williams, from whose interesting account of the Harmony Society I have taken a number of facts, being referred to it by Mr. Henrici, the present head of Economy.

The same person added: "The burden was easier to bear, because it became general throughout the whole community, and all bore their share alike."

Another member wrote in 1862: "Convinced of the truth and holiness of our purpose, we voluntarily and unanimously adopted celibacy, altogether from religious motives, in order to withdraw our love entirely from the l.u.s.ts of the flesh, which, with the help of G.o.d and much prayer and spiritual warfare, we have succeeded well in doing now for fifty years."

Surely so extraordinary a resolve was never before carried out with so simple and determined a spirit. Among most people it would have been thought necessary, or at least prudent, to separate families, and to adopt other safeguards against temptation; but the good Harmonists did and do nothing of the kind. "What kind of watch or safeguard did or do you keep over the intercourse of the s.e.xes," I asked in Economy, and received for reply, "None at all; it would be of no use. If you have to watch people, you had better give them up. We have always depended upon the strength of our religious convictions, and upon prayer and a Christian spirit."

"Do you believe the celibate life to be healthful?" I asked; and the reply was, "Decidedly so; almost all our people have lived to a hale old age. Father Rapp himself died at ninety; and no doubt many of our members would have lived longer than they did, had it not been for the hards.h.i.+ps they suffered in Indiana, where we lived in a malarious region." I must add my own testimony that the Harmonists now living are almost without exception stout, well-built, hearty people, the women as well as the men.

At the same time that the celibate life was adopted, the community agreed to cease using tobacco in every form--a deprivation which these Germans must have felt almost as severely as the abandonment of conjugal joys.

The site of the Pennsylvania settlement proved to have been badly chosen in two respects. It had no water communication with the outer world; and it was unfavorable to the growth of the vine. In 1814, after proper discussion, the society determined to seek a more desirable spot; and purchased thirty thousand acres of land in Posey County, Indiana, in the Wabash valley. Thither one hundred persons proceeded in June 1814, to prepare a place for the remainder; and by the summer of 1815 the whole colony was in its new home, having sold six thousand acres of land, with all their valuable improvements, in their old home, for one hundred thousand dollars.

The price they received is said to have been, and no doubt was, very much below the real value of the property. It is impossible to sell off a large and expensively improved estate like theirs all at once. It is probably true that the machinery and buildings were worth all they received for the whole property; and it would not be an overestimate to give the real value of what they sold at one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. They had begun, ten years before, with one hundred and twenty-five families; as after the second year they had bred no children, and as they then lost some members who left on account of their aversion to a celibate life, it is probable that they had not increased in numbers. If they had property worth one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, they would then have been able to divide, at the end of ten years, at the rate of twelve hundred dollars to each head of a family--a considerable sum, if we remember that they began with probably less than five hundred dollars for each family; and had not only lived comfortably for the greater part of ten years, but enjoyed society, had a good school for their children, a church, and all the moral and civil safeguards created by and incident to a well-settled community or town.

Setting aside these safeguards and enjoyments of a thoroughly organized society, it seems to me doubtful if the same number of families, settling with narrow means at random in the wilderness, each independently of the others, could at that period, before railroads were built, have made as good a showing in mere pecuniary return in the same time. So far, then, the Harmony Society would seem to have made a pecuniary success--a fact of which they may have made but little account, but which is important to a general and independent consideration of communistic experiments.

On the Wabash they rapidly built up a town; but, possessing now both experience and some capital, they erected larger factories, and rapidly extended their business in every department. "Harmony," as they called the new town, became an important business centre for a considerable region. They sold their products and manufactured goods in branch stores as well as at Harmony; they increased in wealth; and, what was of greater importance to them, they received some large accessions of members from Germany--friends and relatives of the founders of the colony. In 1817 one hundred and thirty persons came over at one time from Wurtemberg. I was told that before they left Indiana they had increased to between seven and eight hundred members.

"Father Rapp" appears to have guided his people wisely. He continued to exhort them not to care overmuch for riches, but to use their wealth as having it not; and in 1818, "for the purpose of promoting greater harmony and equality between the original members and those who had come in recently," a notable thing was done at Rapp's suggestion. Originally a book had been kept, in which was written down what each member of the society had contributed to the common stock. This book was now brought out and by unanimous consent burned, so that no record should thenceforward show what any one had contributed.

In 1824 they removed once more. They sold the town of Harmony and twenty thousand acres of land to Robert Owen, who settled upon it his New Lanark colony when he took possession. Owen paid one hundred and fifty thousand dollars--not nearly the value of the property, it is said; but the Harmonists had suffered from fever and ague and unpleasant neighbors, and were determined to remove. They then bought the property they still hold at Economy, and in 1825 removed to this their new and final home. One of the older members told me that the first detachment which came up from Indiana consisted of ninety men, mechanics and farmers; and these "made the work fly." They laid out the town, cleared the timber from the streets and house places; and during some time completed a log-house every day. Many of these log-cabins are still standing, but are no longer used as residences. The first church, now used as a storehouse, was a log-house of uncommonly large dimensions.

I think it probable, from what I have heard from the older members, that when they were comfortably settled at Economy, the Harmony Society was for some years in its most flouris.h.i.+ng condition. All had come on together from Indiana; and all were satisfied with the beauty of the new home. Those who had suffered from malarious fevers here rapidly recovered. The vicinity to Pittsburgh, and cheap water communication, encouraged them in manufacturing. Economy lay upon the main stage-road, and was thus an important and presently a favorite stopping-place; the colonists found kindly neighbors; there was sufficient young blood in the community to give enterprise and strength; and "we sang songs every day, and had music every evening," said old Mr. Keppler to me, recounting the glories of those days. They erected woolen and cotton mills, a grist-mill and saw-mill; they planted orchards and vineyards; they began the culture of silk, and with such success that soon the Sunday dress of men as well as women was of silk, grown, reeled, spun, and woven by themselves.