SOURCE: "Fourierism and the Founding of Brook Farm," in The Boston Public Library Quarterly, Vol. 12, No. 2, April, 1960, pp. 79-88.

[In the following essay, Crowe argues that Fourier's socialist ideology influenced the development of Brook Farm from the community's inception in 1841.]

In the summer of 1843 a blaze of enthusiasm for the socialist ideas of Charles Fourier swept through the ranks of American reformers, and one hastily-formed phalanx after another began to appear in the backlands of Pennsylvania and New York. Late in the year when the New York Fourierists met in Boston with representatives of the Brook Farm, Northampton, and Hopedale communities, the Brook Farm delegation came out solidly in support of "scientific" socialism. The official conversion of Brook Farm to socialism came after the delegates returned to West Roxbury, filled with enthusiasm for Fourierist ideas. George Ripley, the community president, appointed a committee to draw up a new constitution in January 1844, and soon the community was rechristened a phalanx. While the leaders could hardly hope to furnish the required three hundred thousand dollars and the sixteen hundred and twenty members, they were determined to follow the gospel of Fourier to the fullest possible exten. in other respects.

Within the phalanx, all activities were to be organized in groups for specific tasks, such as plowing or shoemaking, and the groups were to be integrated into "series" in the broad divisions of industry, agriculture, domestic work, education, and recreation. This apparently rigid organization was to be created and sustained by thoroughly democratic techniques: group leaders were to be elected weekly and series leaders chosen every two months with the consent of the elected community councils; no man was to be forced into employment which was disagreeable to him, for there was to be complete freedom of work choice from hour to hour; and every member was to be guaranteed full educational rights and reasonable leisure as well as complete social security.

The Brook Farmers accepted these ideals without reservation, and surpassed Fourier in their concern for human equality. Numerically, skilled and unskilled laborers predominated, but former ministers, teachers, farmers, clerks, and businessmen were present, and all lived together in a remarkably harmonious social relationship. Long before the formulation of the Communist maxim, "From each according to his ability: to each according to his need," the Brook Farmers made this ideal a social reality. Inner cohesion together with able leadership and an urgent sense of mission soon made Brook Farm a center for the New England labor movement, as well as a political Mecca for American Fourierists.

The Brook Farm newspaper, The Harbinger, made the influence of the community felt in reform circles everywhere; John Orvis and John Allen barnstormed across New England preaching the doctrines of Fourier to anyone who would listen; Ripley and Lewis Ryckman carried the ideology of Brook Farm into the New England Workingmen's Association; and Ripley gave practical aid to the ten-hour movement, the coöperative movement, and a number of other reform drives. Above all, the belief that their efforts would provide the future social pattern for mankind gave the communitarians an exhilarating sense of being in the vanguard of historical development.

Obviously, Brook Farm during the Fourierist period was a very serious reform enterprise. Vastly different descriptions have been written about early community life as the scene of Hawthorne's barnyard labors, the antics of the "Transcendentalist heifer," Emerson's amusement at the dances where "clothespins fell merrily" to the floor from the pockets of dancing men, and, in general, the congenial Transcendentalist refuge for plain living and high thinking. Charm and vivacity were certainly a part of Brook Farm life, but was Emerson correct in describing the community as initially an escapist venture, no more than "a room at the Astor House reserved for the Transcendentalists"? The search for an answer to this question must begin with the writings and actions of the community's founder, George Ripley.

The ardent reformer of Brook Farm was not visible in the conservative young minister who began his career in 1826 at the Purchase Street Unitarian Church in Boston, but Ripley's private letters and published writings after 1834 are marked by a growing concern with reform in general and the welfare of the working classes in particular. As the misery created by the panic of 1837 increased and as the slums crept closer to the Purchase Street church, Ripley observed in his daily experience the growing evils of the industrial revolution. In 1840, disgusted by American society and disillusioned with his own church, he considered leaving the ministry and devoting his life to reform.

Despite an increasing awareness of social evils, Ripley did not become a militant social reformer overnight. As late as the spring of 1840 he qualified a favorable review of Edward Palmer's communistic denunciation of American society with the observation that "the heart must be set right" before plans for a general reformation of society could be seriously considered. For a time he thought of education as a key to reform and discussed with Emerson and Bronson Alcott the possibility of establishing a new and radically different kind of university. This was one of numerous projects considered during this time, for Ripley was, as James Freeman Clarke reported, "fermenting and effervescing to a high degree with . . . ideas."

By the fall of 1840 Ripley had resolved his doubts, and, rejecting Unitarianism, started a new life as a reformer. His farewell sermon began with an answer to the accusation that he had brought "politics" into the church. He insisted that the conscientious Christian must fight in the cause of social reform. The minister's responsibilities were especially heavy, for he was by the nature of his mission a man "hostile to all oppression of man by man" and constantly sympathetic to "the down-trodden and suffering poor." Ripley denounced the church-attending Philistines for denying Christian equality and failing to understand that the true Christian church was "a band of brothers who attach no importance whatever to the petty distinctions of birth, rank, wealth, and situation." He also advised his parishioners that if they and their kind had done their Christian duty there would be no oppression, slavery, war, executions, jails, violence, or ruthless business competition.

Even before the final parting from his church, Ripley was planning a reform community as an antidote for current social evils. The comments of many Boston intellectuals leave little room for doubt as to the seriousness of the West Roxbury venture. Samuel Osgood referred to Ripley's project as "a New Harmony," and Margaret Fuller revealed her conception of the community when she gave as her reason for refusing to join the Brook Farmers the belief that "we are not yet ripe to reconstruct society." Shortly after the community had been established, Osgood denounced "this cursed system of civilization" and praised Ripley for attempting to change it. Other sympathizers made similar remarks praising Ripley's reform efforts.

Those who are sometimes cited to suggest that Brook Farm was established as an educational experiment, a religious action, or a Transcendentalist escape into the wilderness that had little relevance to American society, when properly read often give evidence for the reformist nature of the community. John Humphrey Noyes, working on the mistaken notion that William Ellery Channing was indirectly responsible for the Brook Farm enterprise, did once describe the community as "a child of Unitarianism," but in A History of American Socialisms, he took Emerson to task for failing to understand fully Ripley's radical reform motives. Even Emerson, who was reluctant to praise and had privately referred to Brook Farm as "a Transcendentalist picnic," considered joining the community, admitted the seriousness and utility of Ripley's plans, and after refusing "painfully, slowly" and almost guiltily to join, took Bronson Alcott's family into his house as a substitute for the "bolder" venture. In later years Emerson paid tribute to Ripley's efforts to create a classless society by admitting that Brook Farm had been "a close union like that in a ship's cabin of persons in various conditions: clergymen, young collegians, merchants, mechanics, farmers' daughters . . . ."

Certainly Ripley's initial proposals for the new Jerusalem were quite specific. He wished to "insure a more natural union between intellectual and manual labor" by educating the worker and giving the intellectual physical labor to perform; to secure for workers "the fruits of their labor" which the capitalist in American society often plundered; to do away with class barriers; and to create a society of equals living in brotherly relation without poverty, ignorance, or social hatreds. The first community constitution did list several purposes, but obviously the central one was a determination

to establish the external relations of life on a basis of wisdom . . . to apply the principles of justice and love to our Social Organization . . . to substitute a system of brotherly co-operation for one of selfish competition . . . to institute an attractive, efficient and productive system of industry . . . to diminish the desire of excessive accumulation by making the acquisition of individual property subservient to upright and disinterested uses.

From the very beginning the community represented an attempt to create a model for the total reformation of society, and the goals of the Brook Farm Institute and the Brook Farm Phalanx were almost identical. Socialism did, however, bring some new patterns. Fourierism gave Brook Farmers a crusading spirit and a new sense of participation in a Providential movement which was world-wide in scope. The "Associationists" were stimulated intellectually by the possession of a cosmology and an infallible guide to "scientific" socialism. The Fourierist period was also characterized by flamboyant rites and symbols, plays and symbolic decorations, Fourier birthday celebrations, and the ritual devised for Christian socialism by the "religious associationists."

However, the early Brook Farmers had their costumes, rituals, and contempt for "civilizees," and the fact remains that the changes of 1844 were not really basic ones. From the beginning Brook Farm was intensely collectivistic and equalitarian. The rules of common and equal wages, diet, housing, leisure, and educational rights prevailed in 1841 as well as in 1844. While the formal structure of groups and series was lacking at first, organizational patterns were strikingly similar, and the same democratic attitudes existed permitting choice of employment and election of work leaders. Even Fourier's emphasis on social harmony and the integration of the individual personality was a cardinal principle in the early Brook Farm credo. J. T. Codman, perhaps the best reporter in that large and vocal company of former community members, stressed the continuity between the two phases of community history. "Integral education," "attractive industry," "honors according to usefulness," and "co-operative labor," Codman insisted, were accepted so readily because their essences had been a part of Brook Farm life long before the coming of Fourierism.

Surely the remarkable continuity between the "Transcendentalist" and the Fourierist periods requires an explanation. Was Brook Farm from the beginning a thinly veiled Fourierist Phalanx? Few scholars have been willing to consider this possibility, and a number of Ripley's contemporaries did not mention Fourier at all in discussing the origins of Brook Farm. John Humphrey Noyes was willing to concede only that "the beginnings of Fourierism may have secretly affected" the founders. One self-appointed propagandist for Brook Farm, Elizabeth Peabody, gave no credit to Fourier in her extensive accounts of the community. J. T. Codman admitted the striking similarity of Fourierist ideas to those advocated by Ripley in 1841, but he knew nothing of the circumstances surrounding the coming of Fourierism and, searching for an explanation, could only suggest that Ripley "had fallen unwittingly . . . on ideas that coincided with those of Charles Fourier. There was an agreement between them unknown at the start."

To make the matter more difficult, there were other possible sources for Ripley's communitarian ideas. In 1838 he visited the Shaker and Zoarite communities and was impressed by an air of common purpose, high community morale, and the lack of invidious distinctions which characterized life in these communities. This was an age of religious rebellion, and the "come-outer" impulse also played a part in the actions of the communitarians. Elizabeth Peabody, for whom Brook Farm meant "A Glimpse of Christ's Idea of Society," suggested that "in order to live a religious and moral life worthy of the name," the Brook Farmers felt it "necessary to come out in some degree from the world, and to form themselves into a community of property." Finally there was a vein of Locofocoism in Transcendentalist ideology which helped to create a climax of opinion favorable to communal experiments.

Undoubtedly, all these forces influenced Ripley and his associates, but an adequate explanation of the Brook Farm way cannot be constructed from these materials, and the suggestions of Fourierist influence are too strong to be ignored. Moreover, adequate evidence exists to prove that Ripley was familiar with Fourier's ideas from an early date. His introduction to the subject may have come through Emerson, who discussed Fourierist concepts on the lecture platform in 1838 and returned repeatedly to the subject afterwards in the Journals. Since Ripley attended Emerson's lectures faithfully and saw him both socially and at meetings of the Transcendentalist Club, the conjecture is a likely one. Concrete and undeniable testimony on Ripley's early knowledge of Fourierism can be found in the writings of Samuel Osgood, a Boston intellectual on the fringes of the Transcendentalist movement, and Orestes A. Brownson, one of Ripley's closest friends. In September 1840 Osgood reported that "the New Light Socialists" were discussing Fourierism in formulating their communitarian plans. This opinion was confirmed early in 1842 by Brownson.

At a meeting of the Trancendentalist Club late in the summer of 1840 Ripley vigorously defended the socialist ideal, and in the October 1840 issue of The Dial he reviewed favorably Albert Brisbane's The Social Destiny of Man, which was to become the Bible of the American Fourierists. Ripley described Fourier as one of the greatest thinkers of all time on social problems and their solutions. While he maintained that too many details of this plan were adjusted to the peculiarities of the French character, he freely admitted that the ultimate reorganization of society would have to begin with the foundations provided by Fourier. By 1843 Ripley's socialism was so orthodox that Albert Brisbane and Horace Greeley brought him, at a conference in Albany, New York, into the inner circle of leaders who planned the most ambitious project of American Fourierism, the North American Phalanx.

In 1847 Ripley boasted that the first meeting in New England to discuss Fourierism was held in his house on Bedford Street during the fall of 1840. He also provided in 1844 an explanation of his failure to publicize Fourierist ideas during the early phase of Brook Farm history: "It has been thought that a steady endeavor to embody these ideas more and more perfectly in life would give the best answer, both to the hopes of the friendly and the cavils of the sceptical, and furnish in its results the surest ground for any larger effort . . . [Meanwhile] every step has strengthened the faith with which we set out."

Thus there can be no doubt that Ripley was versed in Fourierism and that the concepts of the French socialists had an impact on the formation of the community. The extent of the early influence can be seen in the easy transformation of the Brook Farm Institute into the Brook Farm Phalanx without accusations, resignations, or a single public protest—indeed, so far as the historian can tell, without private objections. At the same time it is obvious that if the community had been established along strictly Fourierist lines, more would have been written about the fact by Ripley, Emerson, and J. S. Dwight, and the conversion of 1844 would have been pointless.

The early Fourierist influence was real enough, but its precise forms are difficult to single out, particularly because of the Transcendentalist background of most Brook Farmers. There are a number of instances in which an idea or communal pattern can be traced to either Fourierism or Transcendentalism. Both Fourier and Emerson, for example, shared a concern for the maximum development of human nature, and the Brook Farmers might have drawn their inspiration from either. In other cases Fourierist origins are more easily discerned. Emerson objected to the splintering of the individual personality by modern specialization, and Ripley's passion for uniting the thinker and the worker may have had roots in Transcendentalist ideology. Still, Fourier and the Brook Farmers went beyond this. They wished to overcome class divisions and to make society as well as the individual personality a harmonious whole. Fourier and Ripley sought more than the best circumstances for spontaneous living; and their social objectives of free choice of employment for every member of society, ample wages for workers, and universal social security were hardly central objects of concern for the most famous Transcendentalists. Emerson wished to celebrate the aesthetic virtues of common things, but the determination of Ripley to dignify manual labor cannot be traced plausibly to Transcendentalism. Both the author of the first Brook Farm constitution and Fourier used the phrase "attractive labor," and so similar were the two explanations of the doctrine that only the Fourierist jargon kept them from being identical.

The ideology of the Brook Farm leaders was from the beginning closer to Fourierism than to Transcendentalism, and the force of "Associationist" dogmas grew gradually until the reorganization of the community as a Phalanx took place in 1844. While the Fourierist influence was weaker in 1841 than in 1844, it did exist and had great significance in Ripley's plan "to improve the race of man" by building a socialist community which would be "a beacon light over this country and this age."