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Like the Rappists, they neither marry nor have any substitute for marriage, receiving all their children by adoption. They live in large families or communes, consisting of eighty or ninety members, in one big house, men and women together.
The societies which may thus be properly used as illustrations of successful communism in this country are the SHAKERS, established in the Eastern States in 1794, and in the West about 1808; the RAPPISTS, established in 1805; the BAUMELERS, or ZOARITES, established in 1817; the EBEN-EZERS, or AMANA Communists, established in 1844; the BETHEL Commune, established in 1844; the ONEIDA PERFECTIONISTS, established in 1848; the ICARIANS, who date from 1849; and the AURORA Commune, from 1852.
On the other hand, the Shakers, Rappists, Baumelers, Eben-Ezers, and Perfectionists have each a very positive and deeply rooted religious faith; but none of them can properly be called fanatics, except by a person who holds every body to be a fanatic, who believes differently from himself.
Their industries are similar to those of the Rappists and True Inspirationists, and are somewhat famed for the excellence of their products. The Shakers are nearly all Americans, like the Oneidans, next mentioned, and unlike all other communistic societies in the United States. The Perfectionists of Oneida and Wallingford are perhaps the most singular of all communists.
If, on the contrary, he believes in God, he finds hope and comfort in the social theory which Jesus propounded; and he will seek another way out, as did the Rappists, the Eben-Ezers, the Jansenists, the Zoarites, and not less the Shakers and the Perfectionists, each giving his own interpretation to that brief narrative of Luke in which he describes the primitive Christian Church: "And all that believed were together, and had all things in common; and sold their possessions and goods; and parted them to all men as every man had need."
None but the Oneida and Wallingford Communists favor a "liberal" or extended education; these, however, have sent a number of their young men to the Sheffield scientific school at New Haven. The Shakers and Rappists teach musical notation to the children; and all the communes, except of course Icaria, give pretty careful religious instruction to the young.
They are almost entirely self-supporting in the arts, working up their own products and living off the result. In medicine they are homopathists. The "Rappists" or Harmony Society at Economy, Pennsylvania, is composed of about one hundred members, being all that remain of a colony of six hundred who came from Germany in 1803.
Certainly there was not among the Shakers, the Rappists, the Baumelers, the Eben-Ezers, the Perfectionists, greater business ability or more powerful leadership? Greater wealth there was not, for most of the successful societies began poor. If education or intellectual culture are important forces, the unsuccessful societies had these, the successful ones had them not. Mr.
It is not unnatural that they should think so; but the success of those societies which maintain the family relation would seem to prove the Shakers mistaken. And it is useful to remember that even the Rappists were successful before they determined, under deep religious influences, to give up marriage, and adopt celibacy.
The Rappists, who sold out twice, were forced to submit to heavy loss each time. I do not doubt that several of the northern Shaker societies would have removed before this to a better soil and climate but for the difficulty of selling their possessions at a fair price. The removal from Eben-Ezer to Amana, however, required ten years.