CHAPTER II 



THE GREELEY COLONY OF COLORADO 



THE Greeley Colony of Colorado sprang belated from 

 the seed of Fourierism sown broadcast in the forties. 

 In all our social history there is no more interesting page 

 than that which records the rise, progress, and tem- 

 porary defeat of the doctrine of association. Fraught 

 with the noblest aspirations, and welcomed and cham- 

 pioned by the most brilliant minds, it disappointed, in 

 actual practice, the high hopes of its friends. Frangois 

 Marie Charles Fourier devoted his life to elaborating his 

 scheme of Socialism, and died a few years before the 

 seed of his thought was wafted across the Atlantic to 

 take sudden root in our soil. 



The American impulse of Fourierism arose from the 

 miseries of the hard winter of 1838. The doctrine had 

 been imported by Albert Brisbane, a young gentleman of 

 wealth and leisure who had studied the works of the 

 French philosopher in Paris and returned to this country 

 warm with these new hopes for humanity. Availing 

 himself of the opportunity offered by the universal dis- 

 content, he plunged boldly into the agitation and at- 

 tracted a remarkable degree of attention. Horace 

 Greeley, then in the morning of his fame, espoused the 

 new cause, at first cautiously, then with characteristic 



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