Fourierism in New Jersey: the North American Phalanx (NAP) and Raritan Bay Union

Fourierism in New Jersey: The North American Phalanx (NAP) and Raritan Bay Union Central issue, problem, or question: How did economic conditions associated with the early phases of industrialization make French reformer Charles Fourier’s ideas for reorganizing society so appealing to many Americans? Significance: This lesson examines the market revolution’s effect on workers’ lives by exploring the appeal of utopian communities, like the North American Phalanx (NAP) in Colts Neck, New Jersey. Objectives: After learning about associationist communities like the NAP and reading primary source documents, students will be able to: • Describe how an associationist community, like the NAP, was organized. • Analyze why Fourier’s theories and associationist phalanxes were so popular in the United States during the 1840s. • Explain why the model communities failed. Background: The inequities and insecurities of the early stages of industrialization in the United States sparked interest in utopian socialist alternatives, like Robert Owen’s model villages and Charles Fourier’s phalanxes. Fourier’s premiere American apostle, Albert Brisbane, simplified, expurgated, and popularized the French socialist’s theories in a series of articles published in Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune beginning in March 1842. Blaming economic competition for the miseries of rich and poor alike, Brisbane advocated a system of cooperative labor, pooled capital, and associated living that would render productive labor more attractive, profitable, and equitable. He proposed the creation of model communities as joint stock companies whose residents would both labor for and hold stock in the company. By demonstrating the superiority of cooperative labor and associated property, these communities would serve as models for the peaceful transformation of American society. Brisbane’s critique of industrial capitalism resonated with readers still suffering the effects of the Panic of 1837, and his promise of a solution to the nation’s economic and social woes drew an eager audience. In 1843, his call to found a NAP in New Jersey was quickly answered by a group of interested readers who, months later, established a model township near Red Bank, New Jersey. Though not as famous as Brook Farm (whose members converted to Fourierism or Associationism in 1843/1844), the NAP was one of the first Associationist communities founded in the United States and would prove to be one of the longest lasting. NAP residents came from all walks of life. They were merchants, mechanics, carpenters, seamstresses, printers, shoemakers, teachers, and housewives. Some were wealthy men able to purchase large amounts of stock; others could contribute only good health and hard work to the community. All residents, rich and poor, lived in the main edifice of the community, the Phalanstery, where they could rent rooms or suites according to their needs and tastes. Every resident member, including women and children, performed labor in the NAP’s kitchen, workshops, fields, garden, and laundry room and were remunerated according to hours, task, and skill. They worked as members of teams and generally performed several different tasks each day. This switching from task to task was intended to eradicate tedium and to allow phalanx members to cultivate all aspects of their bodies and minds. Mary Paul, formerly a domestic servant, textile mill worker, and seamstress, became a resident of the NAP in 1854. Her letters to her father, Bela, reveal her reasons for joining the NAP and her enthusiasm for associative living. Although upon first arrival, the customs, especially the communal meals, seemed strange, Paul quickly adjusted to her new community. Like most female members of the NAP, she performed primarily domestic labor, but Paul seems to have enjoyed the variety of tasks—sewing, cleaning, ironing, and waiting tables in the dining room—and her ability to decide how many hours per day she would work. Furthermore, as she wrote to her father, “a woman gets much better pay [in the NAP] than elsewhere." Most of the work performed by NAP members was agricultural or domestic in nature—hoeing, planting, harvesting, milking, cultivating orchards, tending chickens, sewing, cooking, cleaning, etc. Residents worked in teams on varying tasks based on skill, inclination, season, and community needs. Although some preferred just one line of work, most belonged to several work groups. Members controlled admission to the group and elected their own leaders. Leaders were responsible for ensuring that hours were properly reported and for establishing rates of pay on the advice of group members and in committee with other group leaders. Procedures For homework you read the sections of your textbook on utopian communities and on the social and economic effects of the market revolution. 1. We will begin this lesson with a short lecture (based on Ann Pfau’s online lecture, available in the “Fourierism” section of the New Jersey History Partnership Project website, http://nj-history.org) on the origins of the NAP. 2. You will split into three cooperative groups: Proponents, Critics, or Potential Members of the NAP. In groups, you will read and analyze four primary source documents: J. MacDonald’s Account of His Visits to the NAP. Kalikst Wolski’s Account of His 1852 Visit to the NAP. Mary Paul’s Letters to her Father. Alfred Cridge Diagnoses the Failure of the NAP. 3. Proponents and Critics will develop materials, based on evidence from the secondary and primary sources, to support their position and to answer objections. Your group has the option of developing a Titan Pad or a flyer promoting the group’s assigned point of view. 4. Meanwhile, each Potential Member must fill out a membership application that will require them to develop an identity as a nineteenth- century worker (e.g. as a farmer, factory hand, artisan, seamstress, housewife, etc.) and to describe what assets they could bring to the association. Potential Members are also responsible for coming up with five or more thoughtful questions about Fourierism, capitalism/market revolution, and the NAP; questions must reflect knowledge of the primary source documents. 5. Once you have completed your preparations, I will assess the lesson with the following culminating activity. The Potential Members group will begin the activity by introducing themselves to the rest of the class. Then Proponents and Critics will present their perspectives and promotional materials. After the presentations, Potential Members will ask their key questions. Finally, the teacher will poll Potential Members, asking them whether they would prefer NAP membership or life outside the association. 6. As a closure activity, we will read the below end annotation: By the end of the 1840s, the NAP was the most stable of the American phalanxes, but in 1853, the model community was rent by schism when Marcus and Rebecca Spring, major stockholders in the NAP, established a rival community, the Raritan Bay Union, near Perth Amboy. The new community's constitution asserted its commitment to Christianity and cooperation but not necessarily to Fourier's principles; it was, in the words of A. J. MacDonald, "a joint-stock concern, that undertook to hold an intermediate position between the North American [Phalanx] and ordinary society." The Springs, for example, lived in a private house on the estate; they employed servants and did not perform manual labor themselves. Instead of organizing work groups, the community leased fields, mills, and workshops to individual farmers and artisans. Neither community persisted past 1856; by that time, antislavery had come to overshadow all other reform movements. Mary Paul’s Letters to Her Father, 1853-1855. Mary Paul had been self supporting since the age of fifteen and worked as a domestic servant, a seamstress, and a machine tender in the Lowell textile mills, before becoming a member of the NAP. In 1854, she decided to give associated living a chance and traveled there with her friend Carrie Livingston. Paul remained in residence at the Phalanx until it dissolved. Brattleboro, Vermont, 27 November 1853. I have a plan for myself which I am going to lay before you and see what you think of it. When I was at Manchester last spring my friend Carrie and her husband were talking of going to New Jersey to live and proposed that I should go with them. They have decided to go and are thinking of going in a few weeks, maybe as soon as Jan. though they may not go until April or May. I have been thinking of it all summer, and have told them that I will go if you do not object. I can hardly get my own consent to go any further away from you. The name of the town is Atlantic is about 40 miles from New York City. The people among whom they are going are Associationists. The name will give you some idea of their principles. There [are] about 125 persons in all that live there, and the association is called the “North American Phalanx.” I presume that you may have heard of it. The editor [of the New York Tribune Horace Greeley] is an Associationist and a shareholder in the “Phalanx,” but he does not live there. The advantages that will arise from my going there will be that I can get better pay without working as hard as at any other place. The price for work there being 9 cents an hour, and the number of hours for a days work, ten besides I should not be confined to one kind of work but could do almost anything, could have the privilege of doing anything that is done there--Housework if I choose and that without degrading myself. That is, in the opinion of most people, a very foolish and wrong idea by the way, but one that has so much weight with girls, that they would live on 25 cents per week at sewing, or school teaching rather than work at housework.

Load more