The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1897-01-30
DANA ON BROOK FARM.

Mr.. Charles A. Dana, among news
paper readers of today, is known prin-
cipally as q hard-headed editor who
has few equals and no superiors in the
art of saying bitter and biting
things. He is an old man now
and is allowed the indulgence that
is the prerogative of age. Once
he was idealistic. He belonged to the
famous Brook Farm community, the
most utopian thing ever attempted in
the United States. He has been telling
about the famous farm in a lecture on
The Socialistic Movement from 1885 to
1850" After telling about the abolition
movement and the civil war, Mr.. Dana
went on to describe the Brook Farm
movement He said:
Lots of such movements started
about this time. Some of them were
very foolish. Some were not A Dhilo-
sophical school arose in Boston under
Mr.. Emerson, George Ripley and
George Bancroft, the famous historian,
which held to the idea that the democ-
racy which existed in the constitution
of the United States and triumphed
under Thomas Jefferson was not dem
ocracy. 1t would have to be made So
cial, 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 So
cialistic movement of 1885. 1t did not
arise in the poor, uneducated classes,
but among the greatest cIergymen,
statesmen and writers of America
Their reform ideas were jeered at in
the press and it was prophesied that
it would end disastrously. About this
time a New Yorker, Arthur Brisbane,
wrote a number of articles on the doe
trine of Fourier, the noted French re-
former, and the communistic principles
contained in those won many adher-
ents. 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 Agri-
cultural and Educational institute
Here such men as Nathaniel Haw-
thorne, Emerson, Ripley and Chan
ming began a communistic existence
They mbined their labor with learn
ing, going into the fields and moving
and blowing in the day time and hold
ing intellectual discussions at night
But the movement did not flourish
Followers did not flock to the Brook
Farm standard, and, although life on
the farm was delightful, the plan was
doomed to fail AT last the members
of the Brook Farm association separ-
ated, and Mr.. Ripley paid up what
debts had been incurred. Therefore,
we may say as socialistic reform the
Brook Farm was not a success. but as
a movement full of pleasure to its sup
porters and mourning no debt or bur
den to them it was truly a grand one"
The farm consisted of some two
hundred acres, and during the pc
riod of its greatest prosperity the
community never numbered more
than a hundred and fiftey souls,
though some of them were very
precious. This company of idealists
sought to realize in actual life the long
ing of the soul for the ideal and the
perfect, which exist only in the soul.
One may dream and in imagination
realize the ideal (what is the ideal af-
ter all but imaginationO while driving
pillow team, but while he may do this
all the chances are that the furrow
will be neither deep nor straight. The
same thing may be done while one