BROOK

This article appears in Volume V04, Page 646 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: BRI-BUN

BROOK -FARM, the name applied to a tract of land in West Roxbury, Massachusetts, on which in 18411847 a communistic experiment was unsuccessfully tried. The experiment was one of the practical , manifestations of the spirit of " Trans cendentalism," in New England, though many df the more prominent transcendentalists took no direct part in it. The project was originated by George Ripley, who also virtually directed it throughout. In his words it was intended " to insure a more natural union between 'intellectual and

manual

MANUAL

labour than now exists; to combine the thinker and the worker, as far as possible, in the same individual; to guarantee the highest mental freedom by providing all with labour adapted to their tastes and talents, and securing to them the fruits of their industry; to do away with the necessity of menial services by opening the benefits of education and the profits of labour to all; and thus to prepare a society of liberal, intelligent and cultivated persons whose relations with each other *would permit a more simple and wholesome life than can be led amidst the pressure of our competitive institutions." In short, its aim was to bring about the best conditions for an ideal' civilization, reducing to a minimum the labour necessary for mere existence, and by this and by the simplicity of its social machinery saving the 'maximum of time for mental and spiritual education and development. At a time when Ralph Waldo Emerson could write to Thomas Carlyle, " We are all a little wild here with numberless projects of social reform; not a reading man but has a draft of a new community in his waistcoat pocket,"the Brook Farm project certainly did not appear as impossible a

scheme

SCHEME (Lat. schema, Gr. oxfjya, figure, form, from the root axe, seen in exeiv, to have, hold, to be of such shape, form, &c.)

as many others that were in the air. At all events it enlisted the co-operation of men whose subsequent careers shove them to have been something more than visionaries. The association bought a tract of land about s0 m. from Boston, and' in the summer of 1841 began its enterprise with about twenty members. In September the " Brook Farm Institute of- Agri ' culture and Education " was formally organized, the members
signing the Articles of Association and forming an unincorporated joint-stock company. The farm was assiduously, if not very skilfully, cultivated, and other industries were establishedmost of the members paying by labour for their boardbut nearly all of the income, and sometimes all of it, was derived from the school, which deservedly took high rank and attracted many pupils. Among these were included George William Curtis and his brother James Burrill Curtis, Father Isaac Thomas Hecker (1819-1888), General Francis C. Barlow (1834-1896), who as attorney-general of New

York

YORK
YORK (HOUSE OF)
YORK, EDMUND OF
LANGLEY
- LANGLEY, SAMUEL PIERPONT (1834-1906)
, DUKE OF (1341-1402)
YORK, EDWARD
YORK, FREDERICK
AUGUSTUS
- AUGUSTUS (a name 1 derived from Lat. augeo, increase, i.e. venerable, majestic, Gr. Ee0avr6s)
, DUKE OF (1763-1827)
YORK, RICHARD, DUKE

in 1871-1873 took a leading part in the prosecution of the " Tweed Ring." For three years the undertaking went on quietly and simply, subject to few outward troubles other than financial, the number of associates increasing to seventy or eighty. It was during this period that Nathaniel Hawthorne had his short experience of Brook Farm, of which so many suggestions appear in the Blithe-dale Romance, though his preface to later editions effectually disposed of the ideawhich gave him great painthat he had either

drawn

DRAWN

his characters from persons there, or had meant to give any actual description of the colony. Emerson refused, in a kind and characteristic letter, to join the undertaking, and though he afterwards wrote of Brook Farm with not uncharitable humour as " a perpetual picnic, a French Revolution in small, an age of reason in a patty-pan," among its founders were many of his near friends. In 1844 the growing need of a more scientific organization, and the influence which F. M. C.

Fourier

's doctrines, as modified by Albert Brisbane (1809-1890), had gained in the minds of Ripley and many of his associates, combined to change the whole plan of the community. It was transformed, with the strong approval of all its

chief

CHIEF (from Fr. chef, head, Lat. caput)

members and the consent of the rest, into a Fourierist "phalanx" in 1845. There was an accession of new members, a momentary increase of prosperity, a brilliant new undertaking in the publication of a weekly journal, the Harbinger, in which Ripley, Charles A. Dana, Francis G. Shaw and John S. Dwight were the

chief

CHIEF (from Fr. chef, head, Lat. caput)

writers, and to which James Russell Lowell, J. G. Whittier, George William Curtis, Parke Godwin, T. W. Higginson, Horace Greeley and many more now and then contributed. But the individuality of the old Brook Farm was gone. The association was not rescued even from financial troubles by the change. With increasing difficulty it kept on till the

spring

SPRING (from " to spring," " to leap or jump up," " burst out," O. Eng., springau, a common Teut. word, cf. Ger. springer, possibly allied to Gr. QnrFpxecOac, to move rapidly)

of 1846, when a fire which destroyed its nearly completed " phalanstery " brought losses which caused, or certainly gave the final ostensible reason for, its dissolution. The experiment was abandoned in the autumn of 1847. Besides Ripley and Hawthorne, the principal members of the community were Charles A. Dana, John. S. Dwight, Minot Pratt (c. 1805-1878), the head farmer, who, like George Partridge Bradford (1808-1890), left in 1845, and Warren Burton (1810-1866) a preacher and, later, a writer on educational subjects. Indirectly connected with the experiment, also, as visitors for longer or shorter periods but never as regular members, were Emerson, Amos Bronson Alcott, Orestes A. Brownson, Theodore Parker and William Henry Channing, Margaret Fuller and Elizabeth Palmer Peabody. The estate itself, after passing through various hands, came in 1870 into the possession of the " Association of the Evangelical Lutheran Church for Works of Mercy," which established here an orphan-age, known as the " Martin Luther Orphan Home."
The best account of Brook Farm is Lindsay Swift's Brook Farm, Its Members, Scholars and Visitors (New

York

YORK
YORK (HOUSE OF)
YORK, EDMUND OF
LANGLEY
- LANGLEY, SAMUEL PIERPONT (1834-1906)
, DUKE OF (1341-1402)
YORK, EDWARD
YORK, FREDERICK
AUGUSTUS
- AUGUSTUS (a name 1 derived from Lat. augeo, increase, i.e. venerable, majestic, Gr. Ee0avr6s)
, DUKE OF (1763-1827)
YORK, RICHARD, DUKE

, 1900). Brook Farm: Historic and Personal Memoirs (Boston, 1894), is by Dr J. T. Codman, one of the pupils in the school. See also Morris Hillquit`s History of

Socialism

SOCIALISM

in the United States (New York, 1903). (E. L. B.)

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