TRIED TO FIND THE IDEAL LIFE

Evening Star, Issue 23379, 23 September 1939, Page 3

TRIED TO FIND THE IDEAL LIFE

CURIOUS SOCIAL EXPERIMENT la the ’forties, when, the progress of the industrial revolution brought in its train not only national wealth and new avenues of life, but also, as inevitably, poverty and a lowered standard of living, men began to evolve those Utopian theories that laid the foundations of the present Labour movement. Robert Owen had pleaded futilely with Metternich and the Tsar of Russia that they should help him to work out his Utopian Socialist ideas and had failed to build successfully his model Communist “ New Harmony ” colony in America. Nevertheless, his theories and the theories of Cabet and Fourier had germinated in men’s minds; and among the humanitarians who saw in the growth of industry the enslavement of man semi-Socialist schemes took root. A FARMING COMMUNITY. Miss Katherine Burton’s ‘Paradise Planters,’ an absorbing book built somewhat upon the lines of an historical novel, tells the story of a social experiment tried out in America by George and Sophia Ripley, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Margaret Fuller, Isaac Hecker, and their supporters. Their ideas were at the same time reactionary and progressive. While they wanted a finer and freer life for man, they could see no way to achieve it but by reversion to the primitive agricultural state, run on equalitarian Communist lines. Basing their ideas upon Transcendentalist philosophy, they sot up a fanning community in New England. The experiment had, in their eyes, nothing to do with Socialism, a relatively new doctrine that they did not yet understand. This group of intellectual men and

women, gathering their supporter* about them, settled down harmoniously enough to * life for which they wet# utterly unfitted, Their natural talent*,' during the period of • went by the board. Even ydung Hawthorhe laid down his pen and took to homing potatoes. The colonists laboured cheerfully and far too hard during the day, and in the evening met for 1 prayers, fop music, and for cultural amusements. , Emerson took great iitetest in -theta, but was too cautious to commit himself at first. Boston was shocked .'And disapproving,, and fantastic Stories'>*tys# about the immorality at the' farm. Actually, life there- was moral in 'the extreme. The women, it is trite, won* bloomers; but Boston could have.found no other evidence of turpitude. SUCCESS—AND FAILURE, - To begin with, the project was a success. The produce was - easily marketable, and Brook Farm attracted a great number of visitors. The, colonists - wera ideally happy. Then, inevitably, things went Jess well. Arthur Brisbane introduced the ideas of Fourier and tha colonists adopted them until " financial distress and a disastrous fife at last brought the experiment to a close, Brisbane left Brook Farm and soon the whole experiment was no more than a living memory. . The reasons for its failure are easier to comprehend how than they wef* then. In the first place; history ha* shown repeatedly that it is useless trying to put the clock hick. Secondly, such , a movement, by , its' very fixture, could have no mass support. Thirdly, it ignored one of the first ideals of Socialist theory: that a man should do the work for which he is most fitted. The charming and faithful intellectuals happily hoeing spuds were doomed from the first to disappointment; but it was they that set the pace of progress arid their example that induced other men to seek better means for achieving for man a better way of life.