United States or Vatican City ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
And then it is only fair to believe that Hawthorne was interested in the experiment, and that though he was not a Transcendentalist, an Abolitionist, or a Fourierite, as his companions were in some degree or other likely to be, he was willing, as a generous and unoccupied young man, to lend a hand in any reasonable scheme for helping people to live together on better terms than the common.
Minot Pratt and one or two other skeptics left the Association, but the rest of the members unanimously voted to reorganize as a Fourierite Phalanx. When this was accomplished Mr. Brisbane made Brook Farm a sort of headquarters for the Socialistic propaganda, and enlisted several of the members as lecturers and teachers of humanitarian science.
Not merely the Brook Farm and Fourierite communities, but now the community generally has failed. But there is the moonshine still, serene, beneficent and unchanged. Thoreau was no pessimist. He complained neither of men nor of destiny he felt that he was getting out of life all that was his due. His remarks might be sharp and his words sarcastic, but in them there was no bitterness.
The Harbinger was established as the Fourierite organ in this country. Dr. Ripley and Mr. Dana were the editors, and it was a Brook Farm publication. There was, however, very little of Brook Farm news in its columns, and no advertising.
Well, poor man, he could not help it, if he were coarse, and an Abolitionist, and a Fourierite, and She was getting a little muddy now, she was conscious, so turned her mind back to the repose of her stocking. Margaret took it very quietly, seeing her father flaming so. But Margaret never had any opinions to express. She was not like the Parnells: they were noted for their clear judgment. Mrs.
Filled with enthusiasm, glorying in the great cause he stood for, self-sacrificing, giving himself absolutely to the redemption of humanity, he converted the Farmers to the Fourierite theories and induced them to put these theories to the test of actual experiment.
To put up the Phalanstery was the biggest job undertaken by the community and it taxed all available resources to the last dollar. When nearly finished it was set on fire and burned to ashes. This last loss bankrupted Brook Farm. There was no money left to go on with, and the socialistic organization at West Roxbury had to be abandoned. The Fourierite experiment was a failure.
Greeley began to print in his paper one column daily of matter on Fourierite topics, written by Albert Brisbane, and occasionally these theories were defended in his editorial columns, and he thereby gained a certain amount of obloquy from which he did not readily recover.
Pratt and his family left Brook Farm when the association was reorganized as a Fourierite Phalanx, and was succeeded by John Codman, who, under the new order, was made Chief of the Agricultural Series, a post which he filled with signal ability during the remaining years of the community's existence.
With that encouragement the Irishman started up an entirely new and narrow staircase, with landings no larger than a stair, a single door on each floor and windows which afforded glimpses of a melancholy paved courtyard and other stairways, all empty: one of those horrible modern houses, built by the dozen by contractors without a son, their greatest disadvantage consisting in the thinness of the partitions, which forces all the lodgers to live together as in a Fourierite community.
Word Of The Day