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Common Labor, Common Lives: the Social Construction of Work in Four Communal Societies, 1774-1932 Peter Andrew Hoehnle Iowa State University

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Common Labor, Common Lives: the Social Construction of Work in Four Communal Societies, 1774-1932 Peter Andrew Hoehnle Iowa State University Iowa State University Capstones, Theses and Retrospective Theses and Dissertations Dissertations 2003 Common labor, common lives: the social construction of work in four communal societies, 1774-1932 Peter Andrew Hoehnle Iowa State University Follow this and additional works at: https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/rtd Part of the United States History Commons Recommended Citation Hoehnle, Peter Andrew, "Common labor, common lives: the social construction of work in four communal societies, 1774-1932 " (2003). Retrospective Theses and Dissertations. 719. https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/rtd/719 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Iowa State University Capstones, Theses and Dissertations at Iowa State University Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Retrospective Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Iowa State University Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Common labor, common lives: The social construction of work in four communal societies, 1774-1932 by Peter Andrew Hoehnle A dissertation submitted to the graduate faculty in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Major: Agricultural History and Rural Studies Program of Study Committee: Dorothy Schwieder, Major Professor Pamela Riney-Kehrberg Christopher M. Curtis Andrejs Plakans Michael Whiteford Iowa State University Ames, Iowa 2003 © Copyright Peter Andrew Hoehnle, 2003. All rights reserved. UMI Number: 3118233 INFORMATION TO USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleed-through, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. UMI UMI Microform 3118233 Copyright 2004 by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest Information and Learning Company 300 North Zeeb Road P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 ii Graduate College Iowa State University This is the certify that the doctoral dissertation of Peter Andrew Hoehnle has met the dissertation requirements of Iowa State University Signature was redacted for privacy. Ma/or Professor Signature was redacted for privacy. For the Major Prog iii Dedication: For my grandfather, Arthur Selzer and my parents, Charles and Barbara Hoehnle, in appreciation of their love, support and patience. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT v CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 2. THE AMANA SOCIETY, 1843 - 1932 14 CHAPTER 3.THE SHAKERS: LABORING IN THE VALLEY OF GOD'S PLEASURE 72 CHAPTER 4. WORK AS WORSHIP: THE NORTH UNION SHAKERS, 1822- 1889 107 CHAPTER 5. HEAVENLY INDUSTRY AT THE ONEIDA COMMUNITY, 1838- 1881 177 CHAPTER 6. SOLDIERS OF HUMANITY: WORK IN THE ICARIAN COMMUNITIES 255 CHAPTER 7. CONCLUSION 302 WORKS CITED 315 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 332 V ABSTRACT During the nineteenth century thousands of Americans flocked to communal societies for economic, social, political and religious reasons. This study examines the ways in which four of the most prominent societies dealt with the issue of labor. The four communities examined are the Amana Society of Iowa, the Oneida Community of Vermont and New York, the Shakers and the Icarian Community of Illinois, Iowa and California. This study describes the ways in which each society organized its labor, the religious and cultural significance each attached to labor, and the role that a productive economy, oriented toward external markets, played in sustaining each community. This comparative analysis pays particular attention to the labor roles of women, children and the elderly in each society, as well as the contributions of the hired workers that each society, ultimately, employed. 1 CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION Communal societies have been a part of the cultural fabric of the United States since the colonial era, their activities forming interesting aberrations to the general spread of America individualism. At least two hundred and sixty such organizations existed before 1965, although most flourished for relatively brief periods, particularly during the height of communal thinking from 1820 - 1850. Those groups that survived for more than a decade were the exception to the general rule, and typically did so because of a unifying religious belief. Few completely secular societies lasted for more than a year or two, nearly all ending in acrimony and distrust. As the noted Shaker scholar Edward Deming Andrews expressed it, "The ideas of plain people, touched by inspiration, found expression, over and over again, in Utopian undertakings which in the aggregate do much to illuminate the temper of the young country." Although sometimes given to extremes, the very practical and ordered life that developed within these communities stands in contrast not only to the fantastic Utopian literature of the time, but to the general nature of society in the nineteenth century.1 The four societies covered by this study - the Amana Society, the Shakers, and the Oneida and Icarian communities — are among the best known, and longest-lived of American communal societies. Indeed, if any such groups can lay claim to having "household" recognition, the Shakers can, and Oneida and Amana, through the silverware and home appliance companies that grew out of their original communal situation, remain recognizable as brand names, if not for their Utopian ideals, then at least for the quality of their products. 1 Edward Demming Andrews, The People Called Shakers (New York: Dover, 1963), xiii; Dolores Hayden, Seven American Utopias: The Architecture of Communitarian Socialism, 1790- 1975 (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1976), 3. 2 Of these Societies, only Oneida can lay claim to being an entirely American creation. Immigrant groups founded both Amana and Icaria. These groups arrived with preconceived beliefs and ideas that they adapted to their American environment. Although both communities dealt with their English speaking neighbors and sold goods and services to the outside world, they retained their individuality in language, dress, and belief, disassociating themselves from outsiders as much as possible. The Shakers are an amalgamation of an original religious system formulated in Great Britain and brought to the United States. Despite this, the form that Shakerism took in the United States was an entirely new and American creation. Both Oneida and the Shakers benefited from the waves of religious enthusiasm and utopianism that swept the American landscape in the 1810s- 1840s, forces that left Amana and Icaria largely unaffected. Despite their differing religious beliefs and cultural backgrounds, all four groups, however, do manifest what seems to be a central human desire, the need to find security in a changing world through religious and social association with other people. Once each body of people had agreed to live within a communal structure, they adopted remarkably similar means of dealing with labor. The common view of such societies is that their members rejected the world and all its attributes, living simple austere lives, free from internal dysfunction, intellectual thought and, most importantly, technology. In the popular mind, members of the Shakers or of the Amana Society, for example, are often associated with the technology-shunning Old Order Amish. In actuality, none of these groups failed to appreciate the benefits of modern technology; indeed, technological innovations may be attributed to the members of each group. Each society saw technology as a positive influence, a means to simplify and improve 3 life, to lessen the burdens of labor and to improve the quality of life. They merely rejected the abuses to which technology and the burgeoning industrial revolution were put by the outside world. When machinery could lessen the burden on the individual, the members of these Societies saw no reason why factory workers in Europe and the eastern United States should live in misery. By divorcing themselves from the world outside, these societies hoped to draw the best technological, social and religious attributes from the society they rejected in order to formulate their own Heaven on earth and, perhaps, serve as examples for the rest of the world to emulate. For the members of these four societies, work was an expression of either ideological or religious faith. For the Shakers, whose motto was "hands to work and hearts to God," labor was the one "sacrament" adhered to by a sect that otherwise avoided sacraments. At Oneida, improved systems of labor proved the perfection of the system of life propounded by their founder, while Icaria was intended to be a worker's paradise, a joyful human factory where the evils of the industrial revolution would all be kept at bay. Only at Amana was the concept of work less fully integrated into the religious faith of its members. At Amana work was simply the practical expedient by which the society supported itself. By working, members were able to maintain the Society, which they believed had been ordained by God. Thus, in a circuitous way, work became their duty to God; by working they maintained His ordained community. The fruits of these
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