The growth of industry through the early nineteenth century and the vagaries of the business cycle reduced many factory workers, especially in Britain and France, to a perpetual state of near poverty. Large populations permitted factory owners to keep wages low, and when demand for their products diminished, the owners shut their factories and turned out the workers. These conditions prompted Robert Owen, a compassionate factory owner in Wales, and Charles Fourier, a social philosopher in France, to propose, independently of one another, placing the ownership and control of the enterprise into the hands of the workers. They believed that these arrangements would eliminate poverty and lead to prosperity and world peace. In 1825 Mr. Owen came to the United States to promote his ideas. He addressed Congress, President James Monroe and President Elect John Quincy Adams. He spoke before audiences in various cities, and the newspapers reported his ideas. Between 1825 and 1827 reform minded enthusiasts founded 19 communities based upon Mr. Owen's idea of communal ownership, included one at New Harmony, Indiana for which Mr. Owen provided economic sponsorship. By 1828 they all has ceased operations or were about to end.
Mr. Fourier's ideas were brought to the United States by Albert Brisbane, who published a book in 1840 that explained how they could be adapted to conditions in America. As a result of the interest of Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, these ideas received much publicity in the Tribune, which had a national circulation. Within 10 years more than 40 communities – called Phalanxes – had been formed. Most failed within a year, and some endured for several years. The North American Phalanx, located in Monmouth County, New Jersey, operated for nearly 12 years. The communities based upon Mr. Fourier's ideas, unlike those based upon Mr. Owen's, believed in private property but communal ownership of the enterprise. The North American Phalanx was organized as a joint stock company. Members of the community bought stock, although shares were sold to others as well. The members of the community received wages for the labor they performed, and they paid for food and lodging. The company paid dividend of between 4 and 6 percent per annum on the shares. About ten years into the life of the North American Phalanx, the utopian enthusiasm of the community members seems to have waned. A visitor wrote that the community appeared very prosperous but complained that the members lacked religious enthusiasm, spent much of their earnings on worldly pleasures and were not educating their children. In 1854 a fire destroyed the community's flour and grist mills, saw mill, blacksmith shop, tin shop and business office. About 75 percent of the stock was owned by persons who were not members of the community, and they decided not to invest more money to rebuild. The company was dissolved in 1855.
Brook Farm in West Roxbury, Massachusetts, a communal project formulated by a group of New England intellectuals apparently independent of the ideas of Mr. Fourier, was organized 1841 as a venture through which the proceeds of each individual's labor would be used to enrich the intellectual life of all the members of the community. Its economic arrangements were similar to those employed at the North American Phalanx, and after operating for several it adopted Mr. Fourier's ideas. Brook Farm also suffered loss from a fire, and it closed in 1847 after six years of operations. The author Nathaniel Hawthorne was a member of the community, and his experience at Brook Farm informed his 1852 novel The Blithedale Romance.
The communities organized around the ideas of Mr. Owen and Mr. Fourier were largely agricultural. During the 1840s and 1850s several industrial ventures were organized based on ownership by the workers, but they did not have the capital to survive when competing businesses lowered the prices of their products below cost.
Several religious organizations gathered their members into communities and supported themselves by enterprises that benefitted the community as a whole. Although organized to fulfill religious purposes, these communities were economic collectives that supported themselves by the labors of their members, just like the communities formed according to the ideas of Mr. Owen and Mr. Fourier. The Shakers had a number of such communities. A German religious group under the leadership of Johann Conrad Beissel established the Ephrata Cloister in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania in 1732. The community included both celibate members and married members. Brother Beissel's charisma sustained the community and attracted new members, and upon his death in 1762 membership declined. The celibate membership eventually died off, but the community continued and remained in existence in 1860.
No comments:
Post a Comment