Page 10 - C.A.L.L. #26 - Winter 2005/2006
P. 10
The 2005 issue of Communal Societies, the Journal of the Communal Studies Association, focuses
attention on communal groups in the American and Canadian West in the 19th and 20th centuries.
What follows are extracts from an article by Michael and Pamela Clark comparing the Colorado
Cooperative and Brook Farm, communal experiments from the 19th century.
Brook Farm received free medical services, operative Company (CCC).
It was in 1841, just outside of and free tuition in the This group consisted of a dozen
Boston "on 160 acres of community's school. They people, many of whom
beautiful rolling hills with a received one year's board in identified with the
brook, pine woods, and broad return for 300 days labor; a Independent/Populist party,
meadows" that George Ripley, working day was established to which opposed railroad
former Unitarian minister and consist of a maximum of ten domination of politics and
editor of the Transcendentalist hours. They also adopted a which supported, along with
publication, The Dial, founded uniform wage scale of $1.00 per reinstating the Silver Standard,
the Brook Farm Institute for day. As member Charles Dana "all co-operative movements,
Agriculture and Education. observed, especially farmers' mutual
Brook Farm was one of several insurance companies and co-
cooperative colonies that had In this uniformity of the operative grain elevators." They
arisen in the midst of a price paid for labor of all wanted to "establish a
worldwide depression that had kinds, and in the cooperative community
begun in 1836. common table for all, we somewhere in Colorado where
realized a form of social equality and service, rather than
Perhaps Ripley and his fellow life which might be greed and competition, should
Utopians had read their called communistic, be the basis of the community."
histories and had learned from though differing from it Former Colorado State Senator
the mistakes of earlier widely in other and co-founder of the CCC was
communitarian attempts, like prospects. Houses were Benjamin L. Smith, who later
Robert Owen's New built on the farm for wrote in the colony newspaper,
Harmony, which had teetered individual occupancy; The Altrurian:
I don’t reckon that I don’t reckon that
I
I don’t reckon that don’t reckon that and it was proposed that
it’s possible to t’s possible to each family have a Co-operation in the arid
it’s possible to it’s possible to
i
function in that function in that tenement of its own. countries where the
function in that unction in that
f
s statetate small valleys that lie
statestate
Colorado Co-operative along the streams have
Colony been taken, seems to be
Fifty years after Brook Farm, the the only way left. It is a
country found itself in the midst plain, sensible business
of another severe economic proposition, and
depression, brought on by the amounts to this, shall a
industrial revolution and few of us, say a hundred
on the verge of failure during characterized by excesses of the or more unite our brains,
the whole of its short existence, wealthy, abject poverty of the our muscle and our
due, in part to a lack of structure masses, and corrupt, plutocratic means to construct a
and planning. The Brook government. Discontent and ditch to water land
Farmers incorporated their unrest festered in the Eastern enough to give all a
venture as a joint-stock cities. home that participants in
company. To pay for the farm the construction of that
and supplies, shares were sold at Seeing the success of other ditch? It will take some
$500 to each member, except cooperative ventures injected money and a good deal
for children under ten and hope into a small group of more labor… What
adults over seventy, whom the courageous and idealistic people better chance could any
community supported for free. who incorporated on February one want…
All Brook Farm members 16, 1894, as the Colorado Co-
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