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A CENTURY OF SOCIALISM

<» By C. C.

The present is' an opportune time, since the : Trades and Labour Conference has just been held/ and the reports ; of the forty-second meeting of. the British Trades Union Congress,' held at Ipswich, are to hand, to take a retrospective glance at the persistent ' failures that have baulked Socialistic enterprises during the- past 100 years. It is- delated -of Beau Brumniel, tihe exquisite, who died in a lunatic asylum in 1840, and whose word was law, during the days of bis ascendency, on all matters of dress and etiquette, that before "he could tie his'CTavat in a manner eatkfac- ' tory to Himself- his dressing-TOom- became littered with 'neckwear upon which he had unsuccessfully operated. " These ar« my failures," he ' Would say, pointing to the wreckage on the floor, if a visitor dropped in on him 1 •at such critical periods. Socialists must -make the same confession if they will but «all to mind the pages of history they l have assisted in making in their vain Attempts to set the- wrongs of the comHronity right by various methods, conceived, doubtless, with the best intentions', but proved in nearly every ' case to *be quite futile. In passing these failures in review it will be noticed that nearly all these efforts in which Englishspeaking communities are specially intefested have' taken place on American, soil. It was very .properly considered that a new country offered freer scope for these endeavours, and furnished an arena, removed as far as' desirable from antagonistic environments. Some of these new communities were inspired by religious ideals, and others by. communistic aims. The Shakers -made the first notable move in this direction, under the guidance of Ann Lee,- an - Englishwoman ' of humble birth, who profeessd to be led by divine revelation in the work she had taken in hand. The basic principle adopted was that of' a community of interest in all things, or, in : other words, that the body as a .whole should be primary owner of all means of production, ' that products should be distributed according to individual needs, but that all members must undertake useful work for the benefit of all. This community was started in 1774, and still exists as a flourishing body. The Rappites, 'came upon the §cene in. 1895, led by .George Rapp, the son of a email German' 'farmer, who, with about 300 followers, took 'up 30,000 acres of land in Indiana, and called their settlement Harmony. Here again the religious note predominated, for it was believed that/ Christ 'at His second advent would find that they were" living according to the Divine, will, and would be favoured accordingly. Each j member transferred all his property to Rapp, his heirs, administrators, and assigns, and, -in 1 consideration, received all tliat was necesjsary for their sustenance, and such care' and consolation as could be reasonably expected. That body still survives, but is not located on the original settlement, , for -in 1825 the English 'philanthropist** BJchard Owen, became the purchaser of J^^rmony for the purpose of carrying out, economic theories which. he^ and bis sympathisers dubbed Socialism. " Owen had ma4e : a large fortune as a mill owner, bburt r according to his creed, mankind had -been', crushed by the tyranny and oppression- connected with the private ownership of property, irrational religion, and the making of marriage relations sacramental. The economic basis of New Harmony was an effort to unite separate interests into one, doing away with divided money transactions, and substituting an exchange of products on the basis of labour ; given for equal' labqur. This was very much like the doctrine preached by Marx forty years later, and still promulgated by those who 'conjure up a capitalistic bugbear. Owen 1 showed the sincerity oi his convictions by putting £30,000 Into the Transatlaniic t experiment, which, however, was no, more successful than his others of a similar nature in Lanarkshire and Hampshire. The New Harmony settlement started well under the eye of Owen himself, < assisted by a Preliminary Committee. There was one general store for the distribution of necessaries ; the ihild-ren received education, meals, and clothing iree ; a public band performed nightly, to the strains of which the girls danced the winged hours of eventide away. but the managing committee talked too* much and worked too little, so much ' r;o that Owen had to take the reins into ' his own hands, and not till then did in- j dustry take %he place or oratory. The ' membership grew to 900, but jealousies sprang up while Owen was back in Eng- j land looking after his own interests. Ten | communities were started with New' Harmony as tihe centre, but eight of them j dragged out ah 1 existence for two years only. In the end Owen sold portions of the estate to individual members, who : worked ener,getically under the spjr of that hope of reward that sweetens labour, ' and finally the whole estate passed into the hands of -private individuals. j The next memorable move was made in 1842 by Fourier, the French Socialist, ' who recognised the rights of capital, but thought that labour should share in the profits made in every enterprise — a doctrine not only believed in but practised in the present day. Fourier started fifty ' of the experimental Phalanxes, as he called them, some of which lasted four years, another five, another «ix, and one survived for 12 years. The most famous of these was the Brook Farm Settlement, which had 115 members, including Balph Waldo ' Emerson, poet and essayist, as well as ' several other well known men of high culture. A college was started on the , settlement, supported by the labours of the members in common. Their ideals were lofty, for they declared that " the true life though its aims beyond the highest star, ' must always -remain redolent of the healthy earth, and the perfume of clover must linger about it." At Brook Farm bodily

and mental labour received the same reward, butt -it /was not long- before it was found that many members were deficient in industrial capacity and; experience. After £8000 had been spent in buildings and agricultural improvements, and a fire had destroyed the residential quarters, the venture came to grief. They had hitched their waggon to a star, but stuck in the mud for want of capital. ~-A f,ew persistent members hung on to it for a while and started a paper called The Harbinger, devoted, as one chronicler of the effort puts it, "to impassioned advocacy of princip^, of which, as practical men, they had done nothing but expose the fallacy." The W-nconsin Phalanx, on which 150 members were planted on 1800 acres of land, struggled along on communistic lines for six years, and at the end of that time it lapsed into an ordinary village community. The North American Phalanx, which was locked upon as the great test experiment, and on which the advocates of Socialism in America were prepared to " stake their all," was started in 1844. Every man was- to be "his own employer, and ' tfoe settlement passed through infancy to ita twelfth year, when a fire destroyed its principal building. Mr Horace Greely sympathetically and generously offered to reinstate it, but the members saw that the struggle on Fonrier's lines was hopeless, and the property was sold, " and> the socialised acres reverted to the ownership of unregenerate individualists," as Noyes, the - standard authority on these experiments, puts it.

-The Perfectionists, as they called themselves, made a settlement at Oneida, the distinguishing social feature of their creed being that the universalism of marriage was- destructive of the best interests of the community. Thejjulers did their best to prevent sexual proingacy, but as there was no permanent union between parents the difficulty of providing for the young Perfectionists was got over by children passing from the arms of the mother to the arms of the State. Tlie French also started a communistic settlement • at Icaria in 1849, and for a few years in the first burst of its enthusiasm it had the appearance of prosperity,* but to-day the settlement is run by a Limited Liability Company. Another communistic experiment, founded on strictly religious lines, dragged out an existence for fifty years, during whjch time the value of their estate so much increased that its affairs were wound up, and the 150 members received £200 each as a return for half a century of ; labour — a very hard-earned increment, surely. The purchaser, a neighbouring millowner, turned the settlement into a model village, in which 3000 employees take the place of a handful of Socialists.

To bring this record moTe down to date another Owen may w*th propriety bs put into the witness box. In 1883 Mr Albert K. Owen, who had been an enthusiastic Socialist for many years, and was familiar with past failures, "selected people, for 'the establishment of a Socialistic colony at Topolobaimpo, on the west coast of Mexico. Favoured by President Diaz, he was permitted to select a 'arge tract of the finest agricultural land on the shores of the finest harbour on the coast, where the temperature seldom rises about ~Bsdeg in summer, or drops to 6£deg in winter — a Garden of Eden that would grow three crops a year. To encourage the undertaking the Mexican Government exempted the selection (500 miles long and two miles wide) from taxes for 10 years. Mr Owen laid out a model city, with caravanserais where people could live and dine, and also private houses for those who preferred privacy to communistic living. Nothinj? was overlooked (writes v a recent visitor except a few fundamental qualiti^ of human nature. Two years after founding the colony, Owen went to London to get financial assistance for his railway, to connect the settlement w-'th main Irunk lines, and had nearly succeeded 5n doing so, but when the financiers found that the colony was a'Socialistic one they dropped it at once. Rival

parties sprang up in Tupololampo, and took their grievances into the Mexican law coirts. Owen left the community after spending his fortune, some of the

settlers started another colony close by, and the new Garden of Eden is waiting for capitalists to complete the buiiding of a beautiful city abandoned by the Socialists. The curious part of this story is that it is only thop-e communities founded on strictly religious bases that have shown the- elements of success In them. But this cays nothing more favourable for the religion of the settlers than can be said in favour of the mushroom growth of Dowie's Zion City or the splendia results following the Mormons at Salt Lake City. Behind the party was shrewd business acumen like that passessed by captains of industry in all communities. Amongst the Shakers, the elders direct the labour and maintain discipline, and hence their success, for in~ all industrial affairs there must be leaders to command and subordinates to obey. Moreover, these well-to-do people invest their riches outside theiT own borders, in oil wells, coal fields, and other likely speculations. They own one of the largest cutlery manufactories in the United States, where labour is engaged on the usual terms. In their own settlement they use hired labour when occasion requires* and even bring Chinese into requisition. They are willing to admit to visitors that these hired hands do moTe work in an hour than, their own members will do in six. If these facts carry their proper weight amongst the advocates of Socialism it is hard to believe that claims impossible of realisation will long continue to be ur,ged in the direction of capturing all the means i of production and the municipalisation of all industries. The rapid spread of the cooperative principle in trade indicates that the more intelligent sections of the workers see the follies Uiat have been committed in the past in .vain endeavours to find remedies for social evils by bringing into operation fanciful systems that aggravate

instead of cure tie diseases of the body politic

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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/OW19091117.2.282

Bibliographic details

Otago Witness, Issue 2905, 17 November 1909, Page 85

Word Count
2,003

A CENTURY OF SOCIALISM Otago Witness, Issue 2905, 17 November 1909, Page 85

A CENTURY OF SOCIALISM Otago Witness, Issue 2905, 17 November 1909, Page 85

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