Chapter XII: Hopedale

This Community was another anticipation of Fourierism, put forth by Massachusetts. It was similar in many respects to Brook Farm, and in its origin nearly contemporaneous. It was intensely religious in its ideal. As Brook Farm was the blossom of Unitarianism, so Hopedale was the blossom of Universalism. Rev. Adin Ballou, the founder, was a relative of the Rev. Hosea Ballou, and thus a scion of the royal family of the Universalists. Milford, the site of the Community, was the scene of Dr. Whittemore's first ministerial labors.

Hopedale held on its way through the Fourier revival, solitary and independent, and consequently never attained so much public distinction as Brook Farm and other Associations that affiliated themselves to Fourierism; but considered by itself as a Yankee attempt to solve the socialistic problem, it deserves more attention than any of them. Our judgment of it, after some study, may be summed up thus: As it came nearest to being a religious community, so it commenced earlier, lasted longer, and was really more scientific and sensible than any of the other experiments of the Fourier epoch.

Brook Farm was talked about in 1840, but we find no evidence of its organization till the fall of 1841. Whereas Mr. Ballou's Community dates its first compact from January 1841; though it did not commence operations at Hopedale till April 1842.

The North American Phalanx is reputed to have outlived all the other Associations of the Fourier epoch; but we find, on close examination of dates, that Hopedale not only was born before it, but lived after it. The North American commenced in 1843, and dissolved in 1855. Hopedale commenced in 1841, and lasted certainly till 1856 or 1857. Ballou published an elaborate exposition of it in the winter of 1854-5, and at that time Hopedale was at its highest point of success and promise. We can not find the exact date of its dissolution, but it is reported to have attained its seventeenth year, which would carry it to 1858. Indeed it is said there is a shell of an organization there now, which has continued from the Community, having a President, Secretary, &c., and holding occasional meetings; but its principal function at present is the care of the village cemetery.

As to the theory and constitutional merits of the Hopedale Community, the reader shall judge for himself. Here is an exposition published in tract form by Mr. Ballou in 1851, outlining the scheme which was fully elaborated in his subsequent book:

"The Hopedale Community, originally called Fraternal Community,
No. 1, was formed at Mendon, Massachusetts, January 28, 1841, by
about thirty individuals from different parts of the State. In
the course of that year they purchased what was called the
'Jones Farm,' _alias_ 'The Dale,' in Milford. This estate they
named HOPEDALE--joining the word 'Hope' to its ancient
designation, as significant of the great things they hoped for
from a very humble and unpropitious beginning. About the first
of April 1842, a part of the members took possession of their
farm and commenced operations under as many disadvantages as can
well be imagined. Their present domain (December 1, 1851),
including all the lands purchased at different times, contains
about 500 acres. Their village consists of about thirty new
dwelling-houses, three mechanic shops, with water-power,
carpentering and other machinery, a small chapel, used also for
the purposes of education, and the old domicile, with the barns
and out-buildings much improved. There are now at Hopedale some
thirty-six families, besides single persons, youth and children,
making in all a population of about 175 souls.

"It is often asked, What are the peculiarities, and what the
advantages of the Hopedale Community? Its leading peculiarities
are the following:

"1. It is a church of Christ (so far as any human organization
of professed Christians, within a particular locality, have the
right to claim that title), based on a simple declaration of
faith in the religion of Jesus Christ, as he taught and
exemplified it, according to the scriptures of the New
Testament, and of acknowledged subjection to all the moral
obligations of that religion. No person can be a member, who
does not cordially assent to this comprehensive declaration.
Having given sufficient evidence of truthfulness in making such
a profession, each individual is left to judge for him or
herself, with entire freedom, what abstract doctrines are
taught, and also what external religious rites are enjoined in
the religion of Christ. No precise theological dogmas,
ordinances or ceremonies are prescribed or prohibited. In such
matters all the members are free, with mutual love and
toleration, to follow their own highest convictions of truth and
religious duty, answerable only to the great Head of the true
Church Universal. But in practical Christianity this church is
precise and strict. There its essentials are specific. It
insists on supreme love to God and man--that love which 'worketh
no ill' to friend or foe. It enjoins total abstinence from all
God-contemning words and deeds; all unchastity; all intoxicating
beverages; all oath-taking; all slave-holding and pro-slavery
compromises; all war and preparations for war; all capital and
other vindictive punishments; all insurrectionary, seditious,
mobocratic and personal violence against any government,
society, family or individual; all voluntary participation in
any anti-Christian government, under promise of unqualified
support--whether by doing military service, commencing actions
at law, holding office, voting, petitioning for penal laws,
aiding a legal posse by injurious force, or asking public
interference for protection which can be given only by such
force; all resistance of evil with evil; in fine, from all
things known to be sinful against God or human nature. This is
its acknowledged obligatory righteousness. It does not expect
immediate and exact perfection of its members, but holds up this
practical Christian standard, that all may do their utmost to
reach it, and at least be made sensible of their shortcomings.
Such are the peculiarities of the Hopedale Community as a
church.

"2. It is a Civil State, a miniature Christian Republic,
existing within, peaceably subject to, and tolerated by the
governments of Massachusetts and the United States, but
otherwise a commonwealth complete within itself. Those
governments tax and control its property, according to their own
laws, returning less to it than they exact from it. It makes
them no criminals to punish, no disorders to repress, no paupers
to support, no burdens to bear. It asks of them no corporate
powers, no military or penal protection. It has its own
Constitution, laws, regulations and municipal police; its own
Legislative, Judiciary and Executive authorities; its own
educational system of operations; its own methods of aid and
relief; its own moral and religious safeguards; its own fire
insurance and savings institutions; its own internal
arrangements for the holding of property, the management of
industry, and the raising of revenue; in fact, all the elements
and organic constituents of a Christian Republic, on a miniature
scale. There is no Red Republicanism in it, because it eschews
blood; yet it is the seedling of the true Democratic and Social
Republic, wherein neither caste, color, sex nor age stands
proscribed, but every human being shares justly in 'Liberty,
Equality and Fraternity.' Such is The Hopedale Community as a
Civil State.

"3. It is a universal religious, moral, philanthropic, and
social reform Association. It is a Missionary Society, for the
promulgation of New Testament Christianity, the reformation of
the nominal church, and the conversion of the world. It is a
moral suasion Temperance Society on the teetotal basis. It is a
moral power Anti-Slavery Society, radical and without
compromise. It is a Peace Society on the only impregnable
foundation of Christian non-resistance. It is a sound
theoretical and practical Woman's Rights Association. It is a
Charitable Society for the relief of suffering humanity, to the
extent of its humble ability. It is an Educational Society,
preparing to act an important part in the training of the young.
It is a socialistic Community, successfully actualizing, as well
as promulgating, practical Christian Socialism--the only kind of
Socialism likely to establish a true social state on earth. The
members of this Community are not under the necessity of
importing from abroad any of these valuable reforms, or of
keeping up a distinct organization for each of them, or of
transporting themselves to other places in search of
sympathizers. Their own Newcastle can furnish coal for
home-consumption, and some to supply the wants of its neighbors.
Such is the Hopedale Community as a Universal Reform Association
on Christian principles.

"_What are its Advantages?_

"1. It affords a theoretical and practical illustration of the
way whereby all human beings, willing to adopt it, may become
individually and socially happy. It clearly sets forth the
principles to be received, the righteousness to be exemplified,
and the social arrangements to be entered into, in order to this
happiness. It is in itself a capital school for self-correction
and improvement. No where else on earth is there a more
explicit, understandable, practicable system of ways and means
for those who really desire to enter into usefulness, peace and
rational enjoyment. This will one day be seen and acknowledged
by multitudes who now know nothing of it, or knowing, despise
it, or conceding its excellence, are unwilling to bow to its
wholesome requisitions. 'Yet the willing and the obedient shall
eat the good of the land.'

"2. It guarantees to all its members and dependents employment,
at least adequate to a comfortable subsistence; relief in want,
sickness or distress; decent opportunities for religious, moral
and intellectual culture; an orderly, well regulated
neighborhood; fraternal counsel, fellowship and protection under
all circumstances; and a suitable sphere of individual
enterprise and responsibility, in which each one may, by due
self-exertion, elevate himself to the highest point of his
capabilities.

"3. It solves the problem which has so long puzzled Socialists,
the harmonization of just individual freedom with social
co-operation. Here exists a system of arrangements, simple and
effective, under which all capital, industry, trade, talent,
skill and peculiar gifts may freely operate and co-operate, with
no restrictions other than those which Christian morality every
where rightfully imposes, constantly to the advantage of each
and all. All may thrive together as individuals and as a
Community, without degrading or impoverishing any. This
excellent system of arrangements in its present completeness is
the result of various and wisely improved experiences.

"4. It affords a peaceful and congenial home for all
conscientious persons, of whatsoever religious sect, class or
description heretofore, who now embrace practical Christianity,
substantially as this Community holds it, and can no longer
fellowship the popular religionists and politicians. Such need
sympathy, co-operation and fraternal association, without undue
interference in relation to non-essential peculiarities. Here
they may find what they need. Here they may give and receive
strength by rational, liberal Christian union.

"5. It affords a most desirable opportunity for those who mean
to be practical Christians in the use of property, talent, skill
or productive industry, to invest them. Here those goods and
gifts may all be so employed as to benefit their possessors to
the full extent of justice, while at the same time they afford
aid to the less favored, help build up a social state free from
the evils of irreligion, ignorance, poverty and vice, promote
the regeneration of the race, and thus resolve themselves into
treasure laid up where neither moth, nor rust, nor thieves can
reach them. Here property is preeminently safe, useful and
beneficent. It is Christianized. So, in a good degree, are
talent, skill, and productive industry.

"6. It affords small scope, place or encouragement for the
unprincipled, corrupt, supremely selfish, proud, ambitious,
miserly, sordid, quarrelsome, brutal, violent, lawless, fickle,
high-flying, loaferish, idle, vicious, envious and
mischief-making. It is no paradise for such; unless they
voluntarily make it first a moral penitentiary. Such will hasten
to more congenial localities; thus making room for the upright,
useful and peaceable.

"7. It affords a beginning, a specimen and a presage of a new
and glorious social Christendom--a grand confederation of
similar Communities--a world ultimately regenerated and
Edenized. All this shall be in the forthcoming future.

"The Hopedale Community was born in obscurity, cradled in
poverty, trained in adversity, and has grown to a promising
childhood, under the Divine guardianship, in spite of numberless
detriments. The bold predictions of many who despised its puny
infancy have proved false. The fears of timid and compassionate
friends that it would certainly fail have been put to rest. Even
the repeated desertion of professed friends, disheartened by
its imperfections, or alienated by too heavy trials of their
patience, has scarcely retarded its progress. God willed
otherwise. It has still many defects to outgrow, much impurity
to put away, and a great deal of improvement to make--moral,
intellectual and physical. But it will prevail and triumph. The
Most High will be glorified in making it the parent of a
numerous progeny of practical Christian Communities. Write,
saith the Spirit, and let this prediction be registered against
the time to come, for it shall be fulfilled."

In the large work subsequently published, Mr. Ballou goes over the whole ground of Socialism in a systematic and masterly manner. If the people of this country were not so bewitched with importations from England and France, that they can not look at home productions in this line, his scheme would command as much attention as Fourier's, and a great deal more than Owen's. The fact of practical failure is nothing against him in the comparison, as it is common to all of them.

For a specimen, take the following: Mr. Ballou finds all man's wants, rights and duties in seven spheres, viz.: 1, Individuality; 2, Connubiality; 3, Consanguinity; 4, Congeniality; 5, Federality; 6, Humanity; 7, Universality. These correspond very nearly to the series of spheres tabulated by Comtists. On the basis of this philosophy of human nature, Mr. Ballou proposes, not a mere monotony of Phalanxes or Communities, all alike, but an ascending series of four distinct kinds of Communities, viz.: 1, The Parochial Community, which is nearly the same as a common parish church; 2, The Rural Community, which is a social body occupying a distinct territorial domain, but not otherwise consolidated; 3, The Joint-stock Community, consolidating capital and labor, and paying dividends and wages; of which Hopedale itself was a specimen; and 4, The Common-stock Community, holding property in common and paying no dividends or wages; which is Communism proper. Mr. Ballou provides elaborate Constitutional forms for all of these social states, and shows their harmonious relation to each other. Then he builds them up into larger combinations, viz.: 1, Communal Municipalities, consisting of two or more Communities, making a town or city; 2, Communal States; 3, Communal Nations; and lastly, "the grand Fraternity of Nations, represented by Senators in the Supreme Unitary Council." Moreover he embroiders on all this an ascending series of categories for individual character. Citizens of the great Republic are expected to arrange themselves in seven Circles, viz.: 1, The Adoptive Circle, consisting of members whose connections with the world preclude their joining any integral Community; 2, The Unitive Circle, consisting of those who join in building up Rural and Joint-stock Communities; 3, The Preceptive Circle, consisting of persons devoted to teaching in any of its branches; 4, The Communistic Circle, consisting of members of common stock Communities; 5, The Expansive Circle, consisting of persons devoted to extending the Republic, by founding new Communities; 6, The Charitive Circle, consisting of working philanthropists; and 7, The Parentive Circle, consisting of the most worthy and reliable counselors--the fathers and mothers in Israel.

This is only a skeleton. In the book all is worked into harmonious beauty. All is founded on religion; all is deduced from the Bible. We confess that if it were our doom to attempt Community-building by paper programme, we should choose Adin Ballou's scheme in preference to any thing we have ever been able to find in the lucubrations of Fourier or Owen.

To give an idea of the high religious tone of Mr. Ballou and his Community, we quote the following passage from his preface:

"Let each class of dissenting socialists stand aloof from our
Republic and experiment to their heart's content on their own
wiser systems. It is their right to do so uninjured, at their
own cost. It is desirable that they should do so, in order that
it may be demonstrated as soon as possible which the true social
system is. When the radically defective have failed, there will
be a harmonious concentration of all the true and good around
the Practical Christian Standard. Meantime the author confides
this Cause calmly to the guidance, guardianship and benediction
of God, even that Heavenly Father who once manifested his divine
excellency in Jesus Christ, and who ever manifests himself
through the Christ-Spirit to all upright souls. He sincerely
believes the movement to have been originated and thus far
supervised by that Holy Spirit. He is confident that
well-appointed ministering angels have watched over it, and will
never cease to do so. This strong confidence has sustained him
from the beginning, under all temporary discouragements, and now
animates him with unwavering hopes for the future. The Hopedale
Community, the first constituent body of the new social order,
commenced the settlement of its Domain in the spring of 1842,
very small in numbers and pecuniary resources. Its disadvantages
were so multiform and obvious, that most Associationists of that
period regarded it as little better than a desperate
undertaking, alike contracted in its social platform, its funds,
and other fundamental requisites of success. Yet it has lived
and flourished, while its supposed superiors have nearly all
perished. Such was the will of God; such his promise to its
founders; such their trust in him; such the realization of their
hopes; and such the recompense of their persevering toils. And
such is the benignant Providence which will bear the Practical
Christian Republic onward through all its struggles to the
actualization of its sublime destiny. Its citizens 'seek first
the kingdom of God and his righteousness.' Therefore will all
things needful be added unto them. Let the future demonstrate
whether such a faith and such expectations are the dreams of a
shallow visionary, or the divinely inspired, well-grounded
assurances of a rightly balanced religious mind."

Let it not be thought that Ballou was a mere theorizer. Unlike Owen and Fourier, he worked as well as wrote. Originally a clergyman and a gentleman, he gave up his salary, and served in the ranks as a common laborer for his cause. In conversation with one who reported to us, he said, that often-times in the early days of Hopedale he would be so tired at his work in the ditch or on the mill-dam, that he would go to a neighboring haystack, and lie down on the sunny side of it, wishing that he might go to sleep and never wake again! Then he would recuperate and go back to his work. Nearly all the recreation he had in those days, was to go out occasionally into the neighborhood and preach a funeral sermon!

And this, by the way, is a fit occasion to say that in our opinion there ought to be a prohibitory duty on the importation of socialistic theories, that have not been worked out, as well as written out, by the inventors themselves. It is certainly cruel to set vast numbers of simple people agog with Utopian projects that will cost them their all, while the inventors and promulgators do nothing but write and talk. What kind of a theory of chemistry can a man write without a laboratory? What if Napoleon had written out a programme for the battle of Austerlitz, and then left one of his aids-de-camp to superintend the actual fighting?

It will be noticed that Mr. Ballou, in his expositions, carries his assurance that his system is all right, and his confidence of success, to the verge of presumption. In this he appears to have partaken of a spirit that is common to all the socialist inventors. Fourier, without a laboratory or an experiment, was as dogmatic and infallible as though he were an oracle of God; and Owen, after a hundred defeats, never doubted the perfection of his scheme, and never fairly confessed a failure. But in the end Ballou rises above these theorizers, even in this matter. Our informant says he manfully owns that Hopedale was a _total_ failure.

As to the causes of the catastrophe, his account is the old story of general depravity. 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.

The following details, given by Mr. Ballou, of the actual proceedings which brought Hopedale to its end, are very instructive in regard to the operation of the joint-stock principle.

Mr. Ballou was the first President of the Community; but was ultimately superseded by E.D. Draper. This gentleman came to Hopedale with great enthusiasm for the cause. He was not wealthy, but was a sharp, enterprising business man; and very soon became the managing spirit of the whole concern. He had a brother associated with him in business, who had no sympathy with the Community enterprise. With this brother Mr. Draper became deeply engaged in outside operations, which were very lucrative. They gained in wealth by these operations, while the inside interests were gradually falling into neglect and bad management. The result was that the Community sunk capital from year to year. Meanwhile Draper bought up three-fourths of the joint-stock, and so had the legal control in his own hands. At length he became dissatisfied with the way matters were tending, and went to Mr. Ballou and told him that "this thing must not go any further." Mr. Ballou asked him if that meant that the Community must come to an end. He replied, "Yes." "There was no other way," said Mr. Ballou, "but to submit to it." He then said to Mr. Draper that he had one condition to put to him; that was, that he should assume the responsibility of paying the debts. Mr. Draper consented; the debts were paid; and thus terminated the Hopedale experiment.