The industrial revolution came earlier to Europe than it did to America. Dropping aqriculture prices forced many to leave the farm and take jobs in the city. By the early decades of the nineteenth century, textile factories in England employed an underclass of urban poor, who lived in crowded, squalid conditions of the sort described by Charles Dickens and Victor Hugo. This was a time of growing unrest that eventually led to a series of revolts throughout Europe. Many social reformers described ways to build a better society and attracted devoted adherents.
Among the early proponents of a new social order was Robert Owen, the manager of a successful textile mill in Manchester, England, who started his own mill in Lanarkshire, Scotland, and implemented many reforms there. Attempting to fully realize his dream of an egalitarian, progressive social structure, Owen founded two utopian communities, one in Scotland, and the other in New Harmony, Indiana (1825-27). His efforts captured the imagination of many reform-minded individuals, who set up similar socialistic communities along the lines proposed by Owen.
Other utopian reformers followed Owen. Among these was the frenchman Francois Fourier, whose philosophy of social reform was much publicized in America by the newspapermen Albert Brisbane and Horace Greeley. The publicity given to Fourier's theories resulted in a Fourierist movement in the United States during the early 1840s. There was a contemporary resurgence of interest in Owen's theories as well. Dozens of utopian "intentional communities" sprang up over night. This was the era of the idealistic and often religious "utopian socialism", which was soon to be replaced by the more scientific and economic socialist doctrines of Marx and Engels. All of the Owenite and Fourierist communities were short-lived failures. Three of these experiments took place within a few miles of each other in the Pocono mountains of Pennsylvania.
Among the few successful utopian communes were the Oneida communities founded by John Humphrey Noyes, based on his peculiar religious theories. During the years that Noyes lived in the Oneida communes, he was visited several times by a historian named A.J. MacDonald. MacDonald travelled around the country visiting as many communes as he could in order to collect material for a book on the history of utopian socialism in America. MacDonald died on the verge of publishing.
Years later, Noyes decided to write a similar book. Noyes was able to obtain MacDonald's notes, which formed much of the basis for History of American Socialisms, which he published in 1870. Noyes was frank in admitting his debt to MacDonald, and in describing MacDonald's work Noyes provides an index of MacDonald's notes. That index reveals that MacDonald collected material on the three Pocono communes.
Following publication of American Socialisms, Noyes donated MacDonald's notes to Yale University, where they remain in the collection of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript library. The Beinecke staff was generous enough to provide me with photocopies of certain pages of MacDonald's notes dealing with the Pocono communes.
I have transcribed MacDonald's notes as well as I could, preserving his spelling, punctuation, and pagination. I am working from a photocopy of a manuscript that was written with a quill or steel pen around 140 years ago. The script, though attractive, is in some places illegible. The page numbers are those which appear to have been added to the manuscript pages in pencil, possibly by Noyes. In some places MacDonald's notes refer to other documents which I do not have.
Oral tradition in my family has it that my great-great-grandfather, Robert Lomax, lived in one of the communes. I have not been able to prove this, but there is some circumstantial evidence that is consistent with the rumor:
I would be glad to hear from anyone who has information on the Pocono communes.
Rolland D. Everitt