THE IRRIGATION AGE. 63 



pressure is less severe than in others, but the same forces are at wor!< 

 everywhere, producing the same results. 



I can think of no experience which more strikingly illustrates the 

 importance of suiting institutions to the times than the wonderful 

 Phalanx Movement of the Forties and its ignominious failure, followed 

 by the successful planting of a few of its seeds, in what was then a, 

 far western wilderness, twenty-five years afterwards. 



The Phalanx Movement became a topic of national discussion and 

 colonies were founded throughout the country. It was one of the 

 products of the hard winter of 1838, a period of bitter times when it 

 looked to many sane observers as if there must be some radical social 

 change to avert universal misery. About ihis time Arthur Brisbane, 

 a young man possessing both wealth and a purpose in life, returned 

 from France where he had been sitting at the feet of Fourier, the 

 gifted philosopher of Socialism. 



Fourier had published some fascinating books in which he set 

 forth with detail his plan for forming communities, or "phalanxes", 

 with lands, tools, and factories sufficient to produce within them- 

 selves all that they required for complete support. He provided not 

 simply for material existence, but for all the refinement of life, inclu- 

 ding books, music, and every intellectual satisfaction. Men and 

 women were to exchange their labor for all that they needed to en- 

 able them to enjoy full, rounded, and useful lives. The people were 

 to live in a central hotel, or "caravansar y, " surrounded by beautiful 

 things of every kind. The various talents of the community were to 

 be utilized in making a little world complete in itself, from the black- 

 smith shop to the theatre and cathedral. Fourier had figured out ex- 

 actly how many persons would be required for this purpose in each, 

 "phalanx," and how many of each trade or profession. 



He did not attempt to make absolute social equality, but recog- 

 nized the inborn differences of taste and temperament between the 

 peasant and the noble, and made provision for both. Each would 

 have what he needed to make him happy, but the philosopher did not 

 deceive himself into thinking that all kinds of people require exactly 

 the same kind of things to make them happy. But there was to be 

 no misery, to drive men to want or to the grave. The world yielded 

 enough for all its children and, if society were organized on the right 

 lines, they would receive it. The units, or colonies, could be indefi- 

 nitely multiplied until finally the whole earth would be absorbed into 

 the plan and the millennium be realized. Fourier was a religious 

 man and believed that he had found the key of the divine harmony. 



Yonng Brisbane was full of Fourierism when he set foot in New 

 York and immediately began to spread the gospel. He hired a regu- 

 lar space in the Xew York Tribune and presented his ideas as a prac- 

 tical remedy for the widespread hard times and misery then existing. 

 Horace Greeley, then at the threshold of his remarkable influence* 



