Chapter XXIII: The Clarkson Phalanx

This Association appears to have been the first and most important of the Confederated Phalanxes. Mr. John Greig (before referred to) is its historian, whose account we here present with few alterations:

"Our Association commenced at Clarkson on the shore of Lake
Ontario, in the county of Monroe, about thirty miles from
Rochester, in February 1844. We adopted a constitution and
bye-laws, but I am sorry to say that I have not a copy of them.
The reason why no copies have been preserved is, that after a
year's experience in the associative life, we all became so wise
(or smart, as the phrase is), that we thought we could make much
better constitutions, and ceased to value the old ones.

"We had no property qualifications. All male and female members
over eighteen years of age were voters upon all important
matters, excepting the investment and outlay of capital. No
religious or political tests were required. The chief principle
upon which we endeavored to found our Association, was to
establish justice and judgment in our little earth at Clarkson
domain, and as much further as possible.

"Our means were ample; but, as it proved, unavailable. The
beginning and ending of our troubles was this--and let all
readers consider it--we were without the pale and protection of
law, for want of incorporation. Consequently we could do no
business, could not buy or sell land or other property, could
not sue or be sued, could neither make ourselves responsible,
nor compel others to become so; and as a majority of us were
never able to adopt the dreamy abstractions of non-resistance
and no-law, we were unable to live and prosper in that kingdom
of smoke 'above the world.'

"The members, in different proportions, had placed in the hands
of trustees, after the manner of religious societies in this
State, ninety-five thousand dollars worth of choice landed
property, to be sold, turned into cash, and invested in Clarkson
domain. We purchased of a Mr. Richmond Church and others, over
two thousand acres of first-rate land, all on trust, excepting
twenty acres bought for cash. The rise in value of our large
purchase since our dispersion, has exceeded fifty thousand
dollars. We probably took on to the domain some ten thousand
dollars worth of goods and chattels.

"Our property was not considered common stock; we only
recognized a common cause. Our agreement gave capital to labor
for less than half of the world's present interest, and gave to
labor its full reward, according to merit, that is, skill,
strength, and time; establishing 'Do as you would be done by'
first; and attending to the questions of brotherhood afterward,
such as home for life, respect, comfort, and all needful or
desirable things to the old, the infant, the disabled, etc. This
was the extent of our Communism. Our company stock was divided
into twenty-five dollar shares. About one-third of the members
owned none at all at first, although their rights were
considered equal; and that point, be it said to the glory of the
domain, was never mooted and scarcely mentioned.

"We commenced our new life at Clarkson in March, April and May,
1844; building our temporary, and enlarging our established,
houses, and beginning to marshal our forces of toil. In April we
'numbered Israel,' and found we were four hundred and twenty
souls, as happy and joyous a family as ever thronged to an
Independence dinner. If, in our fiscal affairs we were not
Communists, in our moral and social feelings we were a house not
divided against itself.

"In relation to education, natural intelligence, and morality, I
candidly think we were a little above the average of common
citizens at large in the State, and no more. Trades and
occupations were multiform. Our doctor and minister were
academical scholars merely. We had one ripe merchant (a great
rogue, too), some first-rate mechanics of all the substantial
trades, and a noble lot of common farmers.

"As for religion, we had seventy-four praying Christians,
including all the sects in America, excepting Millerites and
Mormons. We had one Catholic family (Dr. Theller's), one
Presbyterian clergyman, and one Universalist. One of our first
trustees was a Quaker. We had one Atheist, several Deists, and
in short a general assortment; but of Nothingarians, none; for
being free for the first time in our lives, we spoke out, one
and all, and found that every body did believe something. All
the gospels were preached in harmony and good fellowship. We
early got up a committee on preaching the gospel, placing one of
each known denomination upon said committee, including a Deist,
who being a liberal soul, and no bigot in his infidelity, was
chosen chairman on the gospel; and allow him modestly to say, he
did acquit himself to the entire satisfaction of his more
fortunate brethren in the faith. One word about our Atheist--our
poor unfortunate Atheist; he was beloved by every soul on the
domain, and was an intimate friend of our orthodox minister. We
had no difficulties on the score of religion, and had we
remained, we should have been nearer to love to God and love to
man, than we are now, scattered as we are, broadcast over the
continent. For membership, we required a decent character--no
more. No oaths nor fines were required. Honorable pledges were
given and generally kept.

"Our domain was located at the mouth of Sandy Creek, on Lake
Ontario. It was a slightly rolling plain, and the best soil in
the world. On account of so much water (Lake, Bay and Creek), it
was rather unhealthy, but would improve in time by cultivation.
We had one good flour-mill, two saw-mills, one machine-shop,
some good farm buildings and barns, and about half a mile in
length of temporary rows of board buildings; a dry goods store
for a portion of the time, and over 400 acres of land, under
fair cultivation. At one period of our career, we had about four
hundred sheep, forty cows, twenty-five span of horses, twelve
yoke of oxen, swine, guinea fowls, barn fowls, geese, ducks,
bees, etc., etc., in great abundance. We cultivated several
acres of vegetable garden, reaped one hundred acres of wheat,
and had corn, potatoes, peas, etc., to a large amount--I should
think seventy-five acres. We had abundance of pasture, and must
have cut two hundred tons of hay. Of wild berries there must
have been gathered hundreds of bushels.

"Our regularly elected officers managed the receipts and
expenditures; and they were, I believe, honestly managed up to a
certain time.

"The four hundred and twenty members kept together until the
autumn of the first year, and then were forced to break up and
divide property, having but little to sustain themselves,
because our capital was wrongfully tied up, in the hands of
trustees: this course having been pursued by advice of certain
great lawyers, who, when our legal troubles commenced, appeared
in the courts against us. No purchasers could be found to buy
the lands in the hands of the trustees; so we had come to a dead
lock, and were obliged to break up or down, as the fact may be
estimated. The associates did not disagree at all save in one
thing, and that was, as to these bad property arrangements,
which compelled them to break up. They staid or went by lots
cast. Two hundred persons staid on the domain some four months
longer, and then, the hope of a legal foundation having entirely
died out, the whole matter was necessarily thrown into the court
of Chancery, and the lawyers, as usual, took the avails of the
hard earnings of the disappointed members.

"The regularly organized Association kept together nearly one
year. A remnant of the band remained after the court of chancery
had adjudged a transfer of the estate back into the hands of the
original owners. That remnant tried every little scheme and new
contrivance that imagination could devise (except Fourierism),
to stick together in a joint-stock capacity for a year longer or
so, and then broke and ran all over the world, proclaiming
Fourierism a failure. The Heavens may fall, and Fourier's
industrial science may fail; but it must be tried first; till
then it can not fail.

"In short the reason why the attempt at Clarkson failed, and the
only reason, was, that the founders missed the entrance door,
viz., a legal foundation; by which they would have made friends
with the old world, and begun the new in a constructive way,
obtaining the right men and plenty of the 'mammon of
unrighteousness.' They should have got incorporated under a
general law like our manufacturing law, and obtained a suitable
domain of at least 5760 acres of land or three miles square, and
should have built and furnished a sufficient portion of a
phalanstery to accommodate at least 400 persons, at the outset
of organization. I boldly pronounce all partial attempts, short
of such a beginning, a waste, and worse than a waste, of time
and brain, blood and muscle, soul and body.

JOHN GREIG."

A writer in the _Phalanx_ (July 1844), viewing things from a standpoint a little further off than Mr. Greig's, gave the following more probable account of the Clarkson failure:

"The original founders of this Association, no doubt actuated by
good motives, but lacking discretion, held out such a brilliant
prospect of comfort and pleasure in the very infancy of the
movement, that hundreds, without any correct appreciation of the
difficulties to be undergone by a pioneer band, rushed upon the
ground, expecting at once to realize the heaven they so ardently
desired, and which the eloquent words of the lecturers had
warranted them to hope for. Thus, ignorant of Association,
possessed, for the most part, of little capital, without
adequate shelter from the inclemency of the weather, or even a
sufficient store of the most common articles of food, without
plan, and I had almost said, without purpose, save to fly from
the ills they had already experienced in civilization, they
assembled together such elements of discord as naturally in a
short time led to their dissolution."

One feature of Mr. Greig's entertaining sketch deserves notice in passing, viz., his cheerful boast of the multiplicity of religions in the Clarkson Association, and the wonderful harmony that prevailed among them. The meaning of the boast undoubtedly is, that religious belief was so completely a secondary and insignificant matter, that it did not prevent peaceful family relations, even between the atheists and the orthodox. This kind of harmony is often spoken of in the accounts of other Associations, and seems to have been a general characteristic, or at least a _desideratum_, of the Owen and Fourier schools. It is this harmonious indifference, which we refer to when we speak of the Associations of those schools as _non-religious_.

The primary Massachusetts Communities, however, were hardly so free from religious limitations, though they issued from the sects commonly called liberal. The Brook Farmers, we have seen, covered the National Convention all over with the mantle of piety, insisting that they were at work as devout Christians, and that Fourierism, as they held it, was Christianity. And Hopedale was even more zealous for Christianity than Brook Farm. Collins's Community at Skaneateles, on the other hand, went clear over to exclusive anti-religion; and actually barred out by its original creed, all kinds of Christians, tolerating nobody but sound Atheists and Deists.

The Northampton Association, which we have termed Nothingarian, seems to have invented the happy medium of the Clarkson platform, and in that respect may be regarded as the prototype of the whole class of Fourier Associations. The mixture of religions, however, at Northampton, was not so harmonious as at Clarkson. The historian of the Northampton Community says: "The carrying out of different religious views was perhaps the occasion of more disagreement than any other subject; and this disagreement, operated to general disadvantage, as in consequence of it several valuable members withdrew." We shall meet with similar disagreements and disasters in the Sodus Bay Phalanx and other Associations, to be reported hereafter. So that it does not seem altogether safe to huddle a great variety of contradictory religions together in close Association, notwithstanding the apparent results in the Clarkson case. And it occurs, as a natural suggestion, that possibly the Clarkson Association did not last long enough to fairly test the results of a general mixture of religions.