Part 39 (1/2)
Reviewing what I have seen and written, these questions occur:
I. On what terms, if at all, could a carefully selected and h.o.m.ogeneous company of men and women hope to establish themselves as a commune?
II. Would they improve their lives and condition?
III. Have the existing societies brought communal life to its highest point; or is a higher and more intellectual life compatible with that degree of pecuniary success and harmonious living which is absolutely indispensable?
I. I doubt if men and women in good circ.u.mstances, or given to an intellectual life, can hope to succeed in such an experiment. In the beginning, the members of a commune must expect to work hard; and, to be successful, they ought always to retain the frugal habits, the early hours, and the patient industry and contentment with manual labor which belong to what we call the working cla.s.s. Men cannot play at communism.
It is not amateur work. It requires patience, submission; self-sacrifice, often in little matters where self-sacrifice is peculiarly irksome; faith in a leader; pleasure in plain living and healthful hours and occupations.
”Do you have no grumblers?” I asked Elder Frederick Evans at Mount Lebanon; and he replied, ”Yes, of course--and they grumble at the elder.
That is what he is for. It is necessary to have some one man to grumble at, for that avoids confusion.”
”Do you have no scandal?” I asked at Aurora, and they said, ”Oh yes--women will talk; but we have learned not to mind it.”
”Are you not troubled sometimes with disagreeable members?” I asked at Oneida; and they answered, ”Yes; but what we cannot criticize out of them we bear with. That is part of our life.”
”_Bear ye one another's burdens_” might well be written over the gates of every commune.
Some things the communist must surrender; and the most precious of these is solitude.
The man to whom at intervals the faces and voices of his kind become hateful, whose bitterest need it is to be sometimes alone--this man need not try communism. For in a well-ordered commune there is hardly the possibility of privacy. You are part of a great family, all whose interests and all whose life must necessarily be in common. At Oneida, when a man leaves the house he sticks a peg in a board, to tell all his little world where he is to be found. In a Shaker family, the elder is expected to know where every man is at all hours of the day. Moses, wandering over the desert with his great commune, occasionally went up into a mountain; but he never returned to the dead level of his Israelites without finding his heart fill with rage and despair. Nor is this surprising; for in the commune there must be absolute equality; there can be no special privileges; and when the great Leader, resting his spirit on the mountain, and enjoying the luxury of solitude and retirement from the hateful sight and sounds of human kind, ”delayed to come down,” his fellow-communists began at once to murmur, ”As for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him.”
Fortunately--else there would be no communes--to the greater part of mankind the faces and voices of their kind are necessary.
A company of fifty, or even of twenty-five families, well known to each other, belonging to the same Christian Church, or at least united upon some one form of religious faith, composed of farmers or mechanics, or both, and strongly desirous to better their circ.u.mstances, and to live a life of greater independence and of greater social advantages than is attainable to the majority of farmers and mechanics, could, I believe, if they were so fortunate as to possess a leader of sufficient wisdom and unselfishness, in whom all would implicitly trust, make an attempt at communistic living with strong hopes of success; and they would undoubtedly, if they maintained their experiment only ten years, materially improve their condition; and, what to me seems more important, the life would affect their characters and those of their children in many ways beneficially.
I think it would be a mistake in such a company of people to live in a ”unitary home.” They should be numerous enough to form a village; they should begin with means sufficient to own a considerable tract of land, sufficient to supply themselves with food, and to keep as much stock as they required for their own use. They should so locate their village as to make it central to their agricultural land. They should determine, as the Rappists did, upon a uniform and simple dress and house, and upon absolute equality of living. They should place _all_ the power in the hands of their leader, and solemnly promise him unhesitating trust and obedience; specifying only that he should contract no debts, should attempt no new enterprise without unanimous consent, and should at all times open his purposes and his acts to the whole society. Finally, they should expect in the beginning to live economically--_very_ economically, perhaps; and in every case within their income.
They would, of course, adopt rules as to hours of labor and of meals; but if they had the spirit which alone can give success, these matters would be easily settled--for in a community men are more apt to over-work than to be idle. The lazy men, who are the bugbears of speculative communists, are not, so far as I have heard, to be found in the existing communes, and I have often and in different places been told, especially of the early days: ”We worked late and early, each trying how much he could accomplish, and singing at our work.”
In a commune, which is only a large family, I think it a great point gained for success to give the women equal rights in every respect with the men. They should take part in the business discussions, and their consent should be as essential as that of the men in all the affairs of the society. This gives them, I have noticed, contentment of mind, as well as enlarged views and pleasure in self-denial. Moreover, women have a conservative spirit, which is of great value in a communistic society, as in a family; and their influence is always toward a higher life.
Servants are inadmissible in a commune; but it may and ought to possess conveniences which make servants, with plain living, needless. For instance, a common laundry, a common butcher's shop, a general barn and dairy, are contrivances which almost every commune possesses, but which hardly any village in the country has. A clean, hard road within the communal village limits, and dry side-walks, would be attainable with ease. A church and a school-house ought to be the first buildings erected; and both being centrally placed, either could be used for such evening meetings as are essential to happy and successful community living.
Finally, there should be some way to bring to the light the dissatisfaction which must exist where a number of people attempt to live together, either in a commune or in the usual life, but which in a commune needs to be wisely managed. For this purpose I know of no better means than that which the Perfectionists call ”criticism”--telling a member to his face, in regular and formal meeting, what is the opinion of his fellows about him--which he or she, of course, ought to receive in silence. Those who cannot bear this ordeal are unfit for community life, and ought not to attempt it. But, in fact, this ”criticism,”
kindly and conscientiously used, would be an excellent means of discipline in most families, and would in almost all cases abolish scolding and grumbling.
A commune is but a larger family, and its members ought to meet each other as frequently as possible. The only advantage of a unitary home lies in this, that the members may easily a.s.semble in a common room every evening for an hour, not with any set or foreordained purpose, but for that interchange of thought and experience which makes up, or should, a large and important part of family life. Hence every commune ought to have a pleasantly arranged and conveniently accessible meeting-room, to which books and newspapers, music, and cheap, harmless amus.e.m.e.nts should draw the people-women and children as well as men--two or three times a week. Nor is such meeting a hards.h.i.+p in a commune, where plain living, early hours, and good order and system make the work light, and leave both time and strength for amus.e.m.e.nt.
Tobacco, spirituous liquors, and cards ought to be prohibited in every commune, as wasteful of money, strength, and time.
The training of children in strict obedience and in good habits would be insisted on by a wise leader as absolutely necessary to concord in the society; and the school-teacher ought to have great authority. Moreover, the training of even little children, during some hours of every day, in some manual occupation, like knitting--as is done at Amana--is useful in several ways. Regular and patient industry, not exhausting toil, is the way to wealth in a commune; and children--who are indeed in general but too proud to be usefully employed, and to have the sense of accomplis.h.i.+ng something--cannot be brought into this habit of industry too early.
What now might the members of such a community expect to gain by their experiment? Would they, to answer the second question above, improve their lives and condition?
Pecuniarily, they would begin at once a vast economy and saving of waste, which could hardly help but make them prosperous, and in time wealthy. A commune pays no wages; its members ”work for their board and clothes,” as the phrase is; and these supplies are either cheaply produced or bought at wholesale. A commune has no blue Mondays, or idle periods whatever; every thing is systematized, and there is useful employment for all in all kinds of weather and at all seasons of the year. A commune wastes no time in ”going to town,” for it has its own shops of all kinds. It totally abolishes the middleman of every kind, and saves all the large percentage of gain on which the ”store-keepers”
live and grow rich elsewhere. It spends neither time nor money in dram-shops or other places of common resort. It secures, by plain living and freedom from low cares, good health in all, and thus saves ”doctors'