The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1892-05-21

rty ffty years ago. DTooS arm drew It's
recruits from the best culture and refine
ment of Massachusetts,. They seemed to
have the same bee in their bonnets that
vexed the brains of the Essences. who
practiced community of goods, despised
riches, pleasure and glory among the
ancient Jews. The 100 persons at Brook
Farm included Charles A. Dana. the pres
ent cynical genius OF the New York Sun:
George William Curtis, the Pericles of the
| Mugwumps; A. Bronson Alcott, Nathaniel
Hawthorne and Henry D. Thoreau. The
farm included 200 acres of good land in
West Roxbury, Mass, eight miles from
Boston. The historian of this experiment
says:
The avowed object OF the association was to
realize the Christian ideal Of life, by making
such industrial, social and educational ar
raDgements as would promote economy, COM
bine leisure for study with heslthiul aud honest
toll, avert collisions of caste, equalizs refine
ulents, disuse courtesy. and sanctify life more
completely than Is possible in the Isolated
household mode Of living
After few years of picnic farming and
phiiandering the enterprise became
pecuniary failure and the farm finally be-
came the site of the town poorhouse.
fate that seemed poetic justice. Haw-
thorne, who finally became the frat literary
genius of America. and who lost all his saw
ings in this enterprise. was chiefly engaged
in taking care of the pigs, that being found
by experiment to be the branch Of farm
labor to which his genius vas best
adapted. Hawthorne feeding pigs was
like the spectacle Of butterfly broken on
4 wheel.
George and Bellamy are both men OF
superior literary talents who have sue
ceeded in making a good many people
read with interest the history OF their in
tellectual laDors in threshing old straw.
Professor Huxley points out in his argu-
ment against industrial Utopia that
George and Bellamy, like all other sociails-
tic reformers, either ignore the difficulty
OF population vs.. food, or try to evade it
by "nonsensical suggestions about in
creasing the production of vital capital
ad Hbitum" Poverty, except such as
arises from moral delinguencies or I'M
avoidable calamities, can only be con-
trolled by arrest of over population which
is theoretically practicable according TO
plan which would restrict the population
of any area to the number capable OF being
fed by the agricultural produce of that
area, the manufacturing and professional
population being kept down to a number
equal to the difference between the neces-
sary agricultural and the total permissible
~. ,ln Sc I,I - in
ventor, German philosopher. 1.-The
Closed Industrial State" In practice,
however, all attempts TO arrest over-popu-
lation by internal regulation would fail,
for it requires people OF high, universal
moral sense, as well as worldly wisdom, to
practice the necessary self restraint, and
even the arrest of over-population by halt
ing immigration We find most difficult in
practice.
The trouble with Bellamyism. George
ism and ell these patent methods Of curing
social evils by the imposition OF new ma
chinery is that they totally ignore the
factor of human nature in the problem to
be solved; they treat humanity as Peru
treated it; as the Oneida Community
treated it, and all the success that could be
expected would be the result attained by
Peru and ali later experiments Of this sort.
In industrial prosperity and animal
comfort and content this kind of paternal
government might prove success, but it
is nothing but a non-progressive, un-
fruitful, uninfiuental kind of civilization
that is after all at its best nothing but
well-managed human cattle ranch. II seeks
to eliminate individual effort, struggle and
conquest from this life. and the very results
of its success, from Peru down to the Cher
okee government, the Oneida Community
that once flourished industrially in New
York state. are only sure to prove its essen
tial ahsurdity substitute for true pro-
gressive civilization which lives and moves
forward because Of its complete freedom
Tor individual effort and attainment as op-
posed to all forms of paternalism in gov
eminent.