The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1897-01-23
DANA AT ANN ARBOR.
ADDRESSES A LARGE AUDIENCE
OF STUDENTS.
An Interesting Talk on the Socialis-
tic Movement From 1885 to 1850
The Brook Farm Association
Experiment.

A. Dana of New York addressed an in
townspeople in University hall last
evening. The subject of his address
was The SocialiStic Movement from
1885 to 1885," and he treated of the
celebrated Brook Farm association eX-
pertinent, of which he was member,
together with George Ripley, George
William Curtis, Nathaniel Hawthorne,
Theo. Parker, William Henry Charming,
and others. The lecture is a new one,
Mr.. Dana coming west expressly to de-
liver it here. President Angel intro
dIced the speaker. Mr.. Dana's ad-
dress, in substance, was as follows:
About 80 years ago this country was
the scene of a great social uprising or
agitation which in extent has probably
never been surpassed in history. These
socialistic movements, for there were
a number of them, did not terminate
until the country had been torn by
civil dissensions and thousands of mil
lions OF dollars worth of property had
been destroyed.
THE great abolition movement
aroused the passion and hatred of the
southern states to such an extent that
the two great sections of this country
were pitted against one another in
bloody civil strife. The anti-SlaVery
agitation was carried on by means of
conventions, meetings and public dem
onStrationS. Few newspapers dared
come out openly in favor of the new
movement.
William Lloyd Garrison and Wen
dell Phillips of Boston were the most
active workers in the new agitation,
and they were on the one side objects
of the greatest respect and on the
other of the most violent attacks. Their
meetings were broken up, they were
mobbed and threatened with lynching,
and it was only their moral courage
that carried them through the trying
ordeal. Finally war broke out, bloody
and disastrous, as we all know. But
after this great strife there was no
such thing as slavery. The letters had
been knocked off, and this great eman-
cipation was due largely to the abo
litionists of such stamp as Garrison
and Phillips. They had been the eX-
ponents of the great moral agitation
which brought about this great end.
But there was certain class of
men who centered around Boston that
resistants. They said if force had to
be used to carry out ideas, why should
we have a republic? Why not have a
despotism? These men advocated the
old doctrine of turning the other cheek
when the first one had been struck;
of returning good for evil.
Many great and good men refused
to take sides with the government be-
cause it employed force. They had
many moral sentiments which seem
fine-spun and thin to us days.
[ remember a great philosopher of
Boston who would not eat food which
was cooked with fire because fire was
not pure and heavenly, but necessarily
belonged to the other place
Mr.. Dana here recited a number of
examples, showing the strained ideas
of this extremely moral class so large
ly prevalent at that time. The speaker.
then continued:
Lots of such movements started
about this time. Some of them were
very foolish. Some were not. A phil
OsophicaI school arose in Boston I'M
der Mr.. Emerson, George Riley and
George Bancroft, the famous historian,
which held to the idea that the dem
ocracy which existed in the constitu-
ton of the United States and tri-
umphed under Thomas jefferson was
not democracy. 1t would have to be
made social, not political.
Entire equality was the watchword
of the new school, They believed that
the time had come when it was right
to bring about a great reform. This
idea opened the scholastic movement
Of 1885. 1t did not arise in the poor.
uneducated classes but among the
greatest clergymen, statesmen and
writer's of America. Their reform ideas
were jeered at in the press and it was
that it would end disas
-rously.
About this time New Yorker, Ar
-hur Brisbane, wrote a number of ar
-icles on the doctrine of Fourier, the
noted French reformer, and the COM
principles contained in those
Won many adherents. Mr.. Ripley, of
Boston, bought a piece of land in West
Roxbury. near Boston, and started,
along the line laid out by Fourier, the
Brook Farm Agricultural and Educa-
ional institute. Here such men as
ey and Charming began a communistic
experience They combined labor with
earning, going into the fields and
moving and blowing in the day time
md holding intellectual discussions at
hight.
But the movement did not flourish
Followers did not flock to the Brook
Farm standard. and although life on
he farm was delightful, the plan was
doomed to fail. At last the members of
he Brook Farm association separated,
md Mr. Ripley paid up what debts
lad been incurred. Therefore, we may
ay as a socialistic reform the Brook
Farm was not a success, but as a |
movement full of pleasure to it's sup
'orters and mourning no debt or bur- |
ZEN to them it was truly a grand one"