The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1903-05-15
MankatO Free Press
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Community Experiments.

The announcement from Pittsbure
that capitalists of that city and of the
east have Just bought the town of Econ
omy, a short distance below Pittsburg
with the original tract of land upon
which the community founded by George
Rapp settled three-q quarters of CEN
fury ago, recalls very interesting chap
ter of history.
The Minneapolis Journal in recent is
sue tells the story of this settlement by
Rapp, who came with his people from
Wurtemburg, Germany, century ago,
and first settled in Butler county, Penn
sylvania, looking for the speedy second
coming of Christ. The community moved
from here and founded New
Harmony, on the Wabash river in Iu-
diana. and sold out to Robert Owen, the
well-known champion of community of
human interests They then went to
the present location below Pittsburg,
where few of them still reside, retain
ing few buildings and little land,
the residuum of the once large estate
of the community.
This community and the Owen estab-
Iishment at New Harmony were the pro-
totvpes of the numerous experiments in
this country between 1880 and 1850, to
of
to attain the ideal state. 1t was during
this period that a good many intelligent
people lost their heads temporarily.
Brook Farm was among the communities
founded. W. Z. Claiming, the distin-
guished Margaret Fuller, George w. Cur
It's. Hawthorne and other well-known
men and women lived there in communi-
ty. doing such seryile work as was neces-
Sarv for the farm with their own hands.
Many of the communities were found
ed on the basis of Christ's idea of hui
man society, as the leaders understood it,
and not a few of them were impregnated
with the distinguishing ideas of Four
ierism and other French isms. The late
Charles A. Dana and Albert Brisbane
appeared as champions of Fourierism,
and even Horace Greeley was somewhat
fascinated by the movement and permit
ted Brisbane to use the columns of The
Tribune to exploit his pet theories.
laI o,,t of ha fol
fervor, concluding that it is possible to
attain success in practical socialism, if
the movement is undertaken with a firm
and deep religious basis and is free from
communistic notions, which he regarded
as irrational and calculated to prove
fatal Some of the communities declare
war on all religion and others encouraged
loose sexual relations, while others came
together with the genuine ambition to
make a purer and better society, free
from the trammels of sect and human
bigotry. Many of the communities
tried to live on vegetables and fruits.
There was nothing charming in the
theory of making one large family of a
community, but in few years it was de-
monstrated by the reformers themselves
that they could not exercise the spirit of
self-love, and they could not get rid of
human dishonesty; that there was un-
comfortable INSTRUMENTATION, everybody
70 fol nd 10 1a,. hat
ambitious plans failed because silly Wis
ionaries without an atom of business
instinct, attempted to carry them out.
A large percentage of the members were
unwilling to work and labored under the
delusion that, having founded the 'ideal
society, they would not have to work
The social experimentation, indeed, dem
onstrated the fact that human nature
cannot produce the ideal state" by or
ganizing a community with a high
sounding name. Massino d'Azeglo, the
Italian patriot, was right when he said,
"Before forming Italy we must form the
Italians"
The Rappite experiment in social ideal
ism passes like hundreds of others from
the arena. The roaring of the eager
flames of the furnace and the thunder of
the titanic forging hammers, the intense
life of great manufacturing plant will
soon indicate the advent of positive and
achieving modern life and progress over
the buried hopes of impractical theor-