page_title: Brook Farm
section_title: Fourier inspiration
hierarchical_section_title: Brook Farm / History / Fourier inspiration
caption_attribution_description: English: Cover page of The Harbinger from November 7, 1846. The Harbinger was a journal based on Associationist ideals and Transcendentalism produced by the members of the Brook Farm community in West Roxbury, Massachusetts.
context_page_description: Brook Farm, also called the Brook Farm Institute of Agriculture and Education or the Brook Farm Association for Industry and Education, was a utopian experiment in communal living in the United States in the 1840s. It was founded by former Unitarian minister George Ripley and his wife Sophia Ripley at the Ellis Farm in West Roxbury, Massachusetts in 1841 and was inspired in part by the ideals of transcendentalism, a religious and cultural philosophy based in New England. Founded as a joint stock company, it promised its participants a portion of the profits from the farm in exchange for performing an equal share of the work. Brook Farmers believed that by sharing the workload, ample time would be available for leisure activities and intellectual pursuits.
  Life on Brook Farm was based on balancing labor and leisure while working together for the benefit of the greater community. Each member could choose to do whatever work they found most appealing and all were paid equally, including women. Revenue for the community came from farming and from selling handmade products like clothing as well as through fees paid by the many visitors to Brook Farm.
context_section_description: In the late 1830s Ripley became increasingly engaged in "Associationism", an early socialist movement based on the work of Charles Fourier. Horace Greeley, a New York newspaper editor, and others began to pressure the Brook Farm experiment to follow more closely the pattern of Charles Fourier at a time when the community was struggling to be self-sufficient. Albert Brisbane, whose book The Social Destiny of Man (1840) had been an inspiration to Ripley, paid Greeley $500 for permission to publish a front-page column in the New York Tribune which ran in several parts from March 1842 to September 1843. Brisbane argued in the series, titled "Association: or, Principles of a True Organization of Society", how Fourier's theories could be applied in the United States. Brisbane published similar articles in 1842 in The Dial, the journal of the Transcendentalists. Fourier's societal vision included elaborate plans for specific structures and highly organized roles of its members. He called this system for an ideal community a "Phalanx".
  To meet this vision, now under the name "Brook Farm Association for Industry and Education", Brook Farmers committed themselves to constructing an ambitious communal building known as the Phalanstery. Construction began in the summer of 1844 and the structure would provide accommodations for 14 families and single people as well. It was planned to be 175 feet (53 m) by 40 feet (12 m) and include, as Ripley described, "a large and commodious kitchen, a dining-hall capable of seating from three to four hundred persons, two public saloons, and a spacious hall or lecture room".
  Ripley and two associates created a new constitution for Brook Farm in 1844, beginning the experiment's attempts to follow closely Fourier's Phalanx system. Many Brook Farmers supported the transition; at a dinner in honor of Fourier's birthday, one member of the group proposed a toast to "Fourier, the second coming of Christ". Others, however, did not share in the enthusiasm and some left the commune altogether. One of those who left was Isaac Hecker, who converted to Catholicism and went on to become the founder of the first American-based order of priests, the Paulist Fathers, in 1858. In particular, many Brook Farmers thought the new model was too rigid and structured and too different from the carefree aspects that they had been attracted to. Both supporters and detractors referred to the early part of Brook Farm's history as the "Transcendental days". Ripley himself became a celebrity proponent of Fourierism and organized conventions throughout New England to discuss the community.
  In the last few months of 1844, Brook Farmers were offered the possibility of taking over two Associationism-inspired publications, Brisbane's The Phalanx and John Allen's The Social Reformer. Four printers were part of Brook Farm at the time and members of the community believed it would elevate their status as leaders of the movement as well as provide additional income. Ultimately, the Brook Farmers published a new journal combining the two, The Harbinger. The journal's first issue was published June 14, 1845, and was continuously printed, originally weekly, until October 1847, when it was relocated to New York City, still under the oversight of George Ripley and fellow Brook Farmer Charles Anderson Dana. Naming the publication, however, turned out to be a difficult task. Parke Godwin offered advice when it was suggested to keep the name The Phalanx:
  Call it the Pilot, the Harbinger, the Halycon, the Harmonist, The Worker, the Architect, The Zodiac, The Pleiad, the Iris, the Examiner, The Aurora, the Crown, the Imperial, the Independent, the Synthesist, the Light, the Truth, the Hope, the Teacher, the Reconciler, the Wedge, the Pirate, the Seer, the Indicator, the Tailor, the Babe in the Manger, the Universe, the Apocalypse, the Red Dragon, the Plant, Beelzebub—the Devil or anything rather than the meaningless name Phalanx.
caption: November 7, 1846, issue of The Harbinger, printed at Brook Farm
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