64 . THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



took the matter up at first cautiously, but finally with characteristic 

 ardor and enthusiasm. Colonies were organized in New York, New 

 Jersey, Ohio, Indiana, and other states. The famous Brock Farm, 

 near Boston, was contemporary with this movement, though not ex- 

 actly its offspring. It will be remembered that Brook Farm included 

 among its colonists many names which afterward became famous in 

 the world of letters and was led by one of the most devoted and high- 

 minded men of the time, Rev. George, Ripley. Indeed, the complaint 

 at Brook Farm, that brightest spot on the map of Utopia was that 

 there were too many philosophers, and too few who could hoe pota- 

 toes. This criticism was probablv unjust, as the most reliable ac- 

 counts show that Brook Farm was a working as well as a thinking 

 and reading community a collection of most charming people who 

 were overcome by business reverses and a disastrous fire. 



The argument in favor of Fourierism were, and still are, quite 

 unanswerable, with one exception. The exception is the result! 

 This was failure, widespread, complete, and hopeless. The plan was 

 humane and Christlike, but it simply didn't work. If space were 

 available, it would be very interesting to look into the matter more 

 closely, but for the present purpose it is enough to say that Fourier- 

 ism was too good for human nature and too advanced for the times. 

 It was undertaken before labor-saving machinery and concentration 

 of business in few hands had assumed their present importance, yet 

 even to-day we have no reason to suppose that these plans could be 

 relied upon as a general social panacea. 



Fourier's beautiful dream may yet come true and future genera- 

 tions may build his monument of bronze and marble in the midst of 

 some such social and industrial paradise as his imagination foretold. 

 But he turned the corner so far in advance of the main procession 

 that he is lost to present view. 



One of the Phalanx communities which struggled along fitfully 

 for some years, to expire of dissension and discouragement, was loca- 

 ted at Trumbull, Ohio. Among its members was Nathan Cook 

 Meeker, who became agricultural editor of the New York Tribune after 

 the war. In his mind the seed of Fourierism, at least the idea of 

 making better conditions for the common people through coloniza- 

 tion, remained to germinate twenty-five years later. In the course of 

 ;a western trip he found a place in Colorado suited to his purpose snd 

 proceeded, with the warm support of Horace Greeley, to prepare a 

 prospectus of the new undertaking. 



\ wish there were space to print side by side, ' 'in deadly parallel 

 columns," the program of Fourierism and then of this later Meeker- 

 Greeleyism, so that we might see just how the experience of Phalanx 

 days, ripened by twenty-five years of thought, had modified the ideas 

 of these earnest men. I wish we might also pause to study the begin- 

 nings of the Union Colony of Colorado, or Greeley, as it is now known. 



