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Updated: May 3, 2025
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.
Moreover, the Rappists have never used the "unitary home" or the common dining-hall; they have always lived in small "families," composed of men, women, and children. What is required I shall try to set forth in another chapter. The Eben-Ezers and the Perfectionists are the only communes which are at this time increasing in numbers.
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.
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.
The Eben-Ezers get the greater part of their accessions from among the brethren of their faith in Germany; and they live in Iowa in such rigorous seclusion, and so entirely conceal themselves and their faith and plan from the general public, that it is evident they do not wish to recruit their membership from the surrounding population.
At Economy the chiefs have always been appointed by the spiritual head, and for life; and the people, as among the Shakers and Eben-Ezers, trouble themselves but little about the management. The same is true of Zoar and Bethel, practically, though the Baumelers elect trustees. Aurora is still under the rule of its founder.
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."
As for me, I'm sure something else will turn up as soon as my work for Professor Carnes comes to an end. We Wares can look back over so many Eben-Ezers raised to mark some special time when Providence came to our rescue, that we have no right ever to be discouraged again.
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