Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from house
Speaker 1: stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Holly Fried and I'm Tracy V. Wilson, and today
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about an experiment in utopian living.
Speaker 1: I feel like this has been tried many times in
Speaker 1: anyways it has. And even while this one was going on,
Speaker 1: there were many many others going on. Uh So, to
Speaker 1: give you some clues to what we're talking about. From
Speaker 1: eighteen forty one to eighty six, Boston's West West Roxbury suburb,
Speaker 1: which at the time was completely rural and it is
Speaker 1: not so much now, was home to this experiment in
Speaker 1: transcendentalist utopian living called the Brook Farm Community. And I
Speaker 1: have read at the time that there were approximately eighty
Speaker 1: other similar experimental communities going on in the US. I
Speaker 1: was gonna say, were they all in New England or
Speaker 1: were they all over I think they were highly concentrated
Speaker 1: in New England, but there were a few and other
Speaker 1: parts of the country. Uh. But it is a fascinating
Speaker 1: concept to think about, like a bunch of like minded
Speaker 1: people all kind of throwing in their lot together and
Speaker 1: trying to live in a community where you know, they
Speaker 1: all work together to sort of attempt to achieve a
Speaker 1: blissful happiness. I see the appeal. I think, you know,
Speaker 1: on paper, it's on paper, its great. And then in
Speaker 1: reality and as we'll see, in practice, sustaining harder to
Speaker 1: make that work long term, well, in sustaining yourself as
Speaker 1: a community is pretty difficult. Uh. And the founder of
Speaker 1: this experiment was a man named George Ripley. UM and
Speaker 1: Brook Farm was really unusual because it was the first
Speaker 1: community of its time that was secular. Uh. There were
Speaker 1: many utopian societies launching, as I said, but the rest
Speaker 1: were all pretty aligned with religious ideals. And we'll talk
Speaker 1: a little bit more about the religion element later. Um.
Speaker 1: But Ripley was a Unitarian minister, and he actually launched
Speaker 1: the community with the idea that the residents could pursue
Speaker 1: their scientific and literary studies there while also working. So
Speaker 1: he wanted like a um working thinking balance. He and
Speaker 1: his wife, Sophia Willard Dana Ripley were heavily influenced by
Speaker 1: the Transcendentalist movement, which emphasizes a more intuitive spirituality and
Speaker 1: being highly connected to nature and living outside the trappings
Speaker 1: of societal rules. Uh. There are lots of famous writers
Speaker 1: associated with Transcendentalism, Ralph Waldo Emerson and also Margaret Fuller
Speaker 1: and Luisa may Alcott and Nathaniel Hawthorne, who plays into
Speaker 1: this story a bit. Yes, So the Ripley's envisioned a
Speaker 1: place of balance and equality where people could live very
Speaker 1: closely with the land, and on top of that, class,
Speaker 1: gender and age would not play any part, and how
Speaker 1: valuable a person was viewed in terms of the rest
Speaker 1: of the community. Yeah, it's just that's a big it's
Speaker 1: a big thing bakedown for society. Uh. And so how
Speaker 1: this all got started is that George Ripley and his
Speaker 1: friend Theodore Parker attended the Christian Union Convention in eighteen
Speaker 1: forty and it's at that event that Ripley had the
Speaker 1: idea for Brook Farm. And this convention was organized in
Speaker 1: part by a group called Quote Come Outers, and they
Speaker 1: were religious protesters who had left their churches to speak
Speaker 1: out against all sects like they didn't want the separate
Speaker 1: um elements of religion. They didn't see why we couldn't
Speaker 1: all just come together in spirituality. Uh. And other delegates
Speaker 1: at the conference also went on to form their own
Speaker 1: utopian society. So Ripley was not flying solo in getting
Speaker 1: this idea there. It must have been talked about, because
Speaker 1: several other societies grew out of um the ideas that
Speaker 1: people had while they were at that particular convention. And
Speaker 1: I mean many of the attendees were seeing the tentional
Speaker 1: of establishing communities where people could really simplify their lives
Speaker 1: and shift to a more intuitive relationship with spirituality. And
Speaker 1: so after that, Ripley resigned from his ministry UH to
Speaker 1: pursue his dream of creating a sort of heaven on earth.
Speaker 1: That was his His full time work at that point
Speaker 1: was to figure out a way to make this idea
Speaker 1: a reality. So he wrote a letter to Ralph Waldo
Speaker 1: Emerson in which he described his ideals for what Brook
Speaker 1: Farm would be like, and he wrote, our objects, as
Speaker 1: you know, are to ensure a more natural union between
Speaker 1: intellectual and manual labor than now exists, To combine the
Speaker 1: thinker and the worker as far as possible in the
Speaker 1: same individual. To guarantee the highest mental freedom by providing
Speaker 1: all with labor adapted to their tastes and talents, and
Speaker 1: securing to them the fruits of their industry. To do
Speaker 1: away with the necessity of menial services by opening the
Speaker 1: benefits of education and the profits of labor to all.
Speaker 1: Thus to prepare a society of liberal, intelligent, and cultivated
Speaker 1: persons whose relations with each other would permit a more
Speaker 1: simple and wholesome life then can be led amidst the
Speaker 1: pressures of our competitive institutions. Again, I see the appeal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a pretty good ideal. And while Emerson also saw
Speaker 1: the appeal he was a proponent of transcendentalism, he actually
Speaker 1: declined the invitation to join Ripley's group. He felt like
Speaker 1: the societal changes that Ripley was hoping to catalyze with
Speaker 1: Brooke Farm would actually be better served by individuals instead
Speaker 1: of groups, and he wrote of it all failed to
Speaker 1: see that the reform of reforms must be accomplished without means.
Speaker 1: He didn't really want this big organized group to try
Speaker 1: to change society. He thought you would do better one
Speaker 1: on one, just talking with people. And I think what
Speaker 1: what he was trying to do sort of see threads
Speaker 1: of this today and the whole idea that people should
Speaker 1: follow their passion and make their career based on their passion.
Speaker 1: It's sort of a similar idea of like uniting people's
Speaker 1: work with what's going to be meaningful to them, which,
Speaker 1: as we know, often does not play out current reality
Speaker 1: as something that is possible for all people. Uh And
Speaker 1: Margaret Fuller, who we mentioned earlier as another writer that's
Speaker 1: often connected to this movement, was also invited to participate
Speaker 1: in brook Farm, but she declined for the same ideological
Speaker 1: reasons as Emerson. She just didn't see or didn't feel
Speaker 1: like this structured group way to do it was really
Speaker 1: the best way to affect social change. So the brook
Speaker 1: Farm Institute for Agriculture and Education was established in eighteen
Speaker 1: forty one, and Ripley had figured out that he was
Speaker 1: going to need thirty thousand dollars for the land and
Speaker 1: the buildings and to support the community for its first year.
Speaker 1: So he financed his vision by selling shares of the
Speaker 1: farm for five hundred dollars each, which would later prove
Speaker 1: to be a very bad, bad plan um and he
Speaker 1: took contributions from like minded philanthropists. He bought a two
Speaker 1: hundred acre dairy farm in West Roxbury, adjacent to the
Speaker 1: Charles River, for ten thousand, five hundred dollars. On October eleven,
Speaker 1: he didn't have any knowledge of farming, and so he
Speaker 1: started to study agriculture as he planned the farm. And
Speaker 1: most accounts will also say there's a reason it was
Speaker 1: a dairy farm, which is that it had really awful
Speaker 1: soil for actually growing crops. Yes, so they did focus
Speaker 1: on the dairy part, but it may not have been
Speaker 1: the purchase that a more seasoned farmer would have made. No,
Speaker 1: and the fact that someone who has no knowledge of
Speaker 1: agriculture is trying to start a community that's going to
Speaker 1: sustain itself by farming sort of sets the stage. And
Speaker 1: then they really got to the point where they had
Speaker 1: the land and they had to figure out the actual
Speaker 1: logistics of how this farm was going to work. So,
Speaker 1: you know, they had the ideals of Transcendentalism, but the
Speaker 1: Ripley's really like had to figure out how is Brooke
Speaker 1: Farm going to function? And they had um decided that
Speaker 1: the main farmhouse on the property, which was going to
Speaker 1: be called the Hive, would serve as the primary dorm
Speaker 1: and it also had a lot of the social spaces. Uh.
Speaker 1: There was a community school which eventually moved into a
Speaker 1: building called the Nest, and it was run by Sophia
Speaker 1: Ripley and her sister in law, Marianne, and it was
Speaker 1: designed to educate future citizens. Um jobs would be arranged
Speaker 1: based on affinity so people could choose their work. As
Speaker 1: he had said in his his letter to Emerson, they
Speaker 1: were going to try to make people able to do
Speaker 1: the jobs that most appealed to them, so they would
Speaker 1: be most fulfilling. The work week required sixty hours from
Speaker 1: the months of May to October, and then forty eight
Speaker 1: from November to April. They'd also changed jobs frequently to
Speaker 1: keep people from getting bored, and do lots of stuff
Speaker 1: to try to make the tasks intellectually stimulating and enjoyable.
Speaker 1: There's actually a story, please tell me, because about them
Speaker 1: attaching little reading stands to like ironing boards, so that
Speaker 1: people could be doing the are sort of menial ironing
Speaker 1: tasks that had to get done and the laundry, but
Speaker 1: at the same time they could be broadening their minds
Speaker 1: and reading things that were of interest to them. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was sort of imagining a nineteenth century gamification of
Speaker 1: milking or something, mostly lots of reading. And that's cool.
Speaker 1: All of the labor, regardless of who was doing it,
Speaker 1: got the same compensation and for people who weren't working.
Speaker 1: The rent was four dollars a week, so you could
Speaker 1: go and be at Brook Farm as a border and
Speaker 1: not work, but you would have to be paying for
Speaker 1: your your room and board. Uh. And there's a really
Speaker 1: unique thing about Brook Farm and that it almost entirely
Speaker 1: broke the role of women as housekeepers, which keep in
Speaker 1: mind eighteen forties, so this is really pretty revolutionary in
Speaker 1: terms of how uh the roles of women and men
Speaker 1: are to find. But Aaron mcmris, who is a scholar
Speaker 1: who was writing for the Unitarian Universalist History and Heritage Society,
Speaker 1: made an interesting note about this particular element, and he says,
Speaker 1: there really wasn't a household to keep. There weren't, at
Speaker 1: least at the start of Brook Farm, many family units,
Speaker 1: so the majority of the participants were young and unmarried
Speaker 1: and without children. So in terms of keeping house and
Speaker 1: it wasn't quite the same as if someone had moved
Speaker 1: in with like their three children, and you know, they
Speaker 1: had to make sure the kids were clothed and the
Speaker 1: you know, toys were picked up, and it was a
Speaker 1: little bit easier when it's all young singles to kind
Speaker 1: of have everybody doing their own tidying and not have
Speaker 1: to really have a housekeeper per se. So there were
Speaker 1: twenty people to start, but that number quickly got a
Speaker 1: lot bigger. Yeah, and it waxed and waned a little
Speaker 1: bit as Brook Farm went on, But I don't think
Speaker 1: it went down to that smaller number again until the end. Uh.
Speaker 1: But the interesting thing that happened is it once the
Speaker 1: initial enthusiastic optimism of life in a New Utopia war off.
Speaker 1: It seems that the members of Brook Farm kind of
Speaker 1: separated into two categories. One was the people that were
Speaker 1: happy there and kind of found this simple life very fulfilling.
Speaker 1: And people who realize that farming is hard and they
Speaker 1: didn't really enjoy this whole toil thing. They were like, oh,
Speaker 1: life of the mind, that sounds great. Weight shoveling manure. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well that's sixty hour work week quoted before. A lot
Speaker 1: of people today would find a sixty hour work week
Speaker 1: to be horrible a lot. And it's it's not like
Speaker 1: sixty hours of sitting at a desk, Like we're talking
Speaker 1: sixty hours of, like you were saying, spreading manure and
Speaker 1: plowing and yeah, keeping a farm going is a lot
Speaker 1: of man hours. Uh, and it is. It's hard labor,
Speaker 1: and most a lot of these people were not accustomed
Speaker 1: to hard labor. Like I said, they came into it
Speaker 1: from the intellectual mindset of like, oh, yes, we can
Speaker 1: live with the land and in the meantime we'll be
Speaker 1: reading all the time and studying. But they didn't get
Speaker 1: that whole like we're going to have to cultivate the land. Yeah.
Speaker 1: We grew all of our vegetables when I was growing up, Like,
Speaker 1: I don't think we ever bought vegetables at a store.
Speaker 1: And it was really constant work for the entire spring,
Speaker 1: summer and fall. Yeah. I mean I I grow very
Speaker 1: small amounts of things, and I have to I feel like, man,
Speaker 1: why does this take me an hour a day just
Speaker 1: to like check on plants and weed and and that's
Speaker 1: my tiny, tiny little container gardens. So, of course, on
Speaker 1: a farm, longer hours is actually probably a pretty reasonable number. Uh.
Speaker 1: But the people that fell into that second group of
Speaker 1: farming is hard did not stick around. Nathaniel Hawthorne was
Speaker 1: one of them. I think he was. He's reported to
Speaker 1: have only been there six months. Uh. But those that
Speaker 1: remained referred to that disillusioned group as quote idealistic tourists,
Speaker 1: and they criticized their lack of commitment to the project
Speaker 1: and lack of community spirit. So as the group got bigger,
Speaker 1: they needed more buildings, and financing them proved to be
Speaker 1: kind of a problem. Yeah, before long the community found
Speaker 1: itself in fifteen thousand dollars worth of debt, which, again,
Speaker 1: by eight forty standards, is a lot to have to
Speaker 1: make up because they were hoping this would be a
Speaker 1: long term situation. By eighteen forty two, there were seventy
Speaker 1: people living at Brook Farm and it was a success
Speaker 1: and that it was drawing new people to live there,
Speaker 1: but the expense of caring for the new people was
Speaker 1: beyond what they could financially handle, especially because a lot
Speaker 1: of these newcomers didn't actually make good on the investment
Speaker 1: agreements that they had made to come there. So, because
Speaker 1: many of the idealists involved in the community also found
Speaker 1: money to be distasteful, there wasn't really somebody who was
Speaker 1: just going to take control of the finances and make
Speaker 1: people pay up. Yeah, So that thing that we mentioned
Speaker 1: earlier about it being a five hundred dollar buy in,
Speaker 1: like you would buy in your share if nobody's actually
Speaker 1: giving you their five hundred dollars, and it uh was
Speaker 1: much more of a problem with people that came in
Speaker 1: later than the people that started out. But if nobody's
Speaker 1: actually doing their part to you know, bolster the finances,
Speaker 1: then you're really just hemorrhaging money. At that point, the nest,
Speaker 1: which was operating as a boarding school and had an
Speaker 1: excellent reputation, was really the source of most of the
Speaker 1: community's income. But even so it didn't provide enough to
Speaker 1: cover day to day costs, let alone the expansion plans
Speaker 1: that they were going to need to house all of
Speaker 1: the new people coming in. So from eighteen forty three
Speaker 1: to eighteen forty four, George Ripley became more and more
Speaker 1: interested in a new vision of the utopian society described
Speaker 1: by French philosopher Charles Fourier. So Fourier's concept of communities
Speaker 1: where social and commercial competition could just be completely eradicated
Speaker 1: re appealed to Ripley, and he thought if he could
Speaker 1: reorganize Brooke Farm to be more in line with fourier
Speaker 1: Is m he could solve some of their problems by
Speaker 1: attracting new members and new financial support. So the Brook
Speaker 1: Farm concepts had always been a little bit at odds
Speaker 1: with the individualism that was part of the Transcendentalist movement,
Speaker 1: and that, as you recall, is why Emerson wasn't interested
Speaker 1: in being a member. But Fourier's Utopia smoothed out that
Speaker 1: particular wrinkle, and in a T forty four, Brook Farm
Speaker 1: officially reorganized as a quote Fourier Fourier Phalanx, which is
Speaker 1: a concept that he was a name he used for
Speaker 1: his concept of these communities. But the remaining members who
Speaker 1: still valued transcendentalist individualism left the community. This was actually
Speaker 1: not like a quick and easy transition. There was some
Speaker 1: infighting and arguing and and some rifts that you know,
Speaker 1: cause people to leave. Under this new structure, the organization
Speaker 1: became a lot more agid. Associates were organized into groups
Speaker 1: under larger series divisions. There were three series and they
Speaker 1: were the agricultural, mechanical, and domestic industry. Each group formed
Speaker 1: in any series had to be arranged using so called
Speaker 1: harmonic numbers, so a group had to have three, five, seven,
Speaker 1: or twelve members, but not four, six, or eight. And
Speaker 1: her history of Brick Farm, Linda Swift says, this was
Speaker 1: of course stark lunacy. Uh there were huge there, rules
Speaker 1: upon rules about how the business of these series and
Speaker 1: groups was supposed to be conducted. And it was this
Speaker 1: huge departure from the really intuitive approach that the community
Speaker 1: had been founded on. Yeah, it really completely changed how
Speaker 1: the whole thing was working, because it had been, you know,
Speaker 1: so much of a a relaxed kind of atmosphere, and
Speaker 1: now suddenly there were, you know, all of these guides
Speaker 1: about how business was going to happen and how four
Speaker 1: men of each group would report to one another and
Speaker 1: report up to their provisors. And it felt a lot
Speaker 1: less like the ideals that Ripley had initially founded the
Speaker 1: community on. And the makeup of the group, as you
Speaker 1: can imagine, changed as well as a consequence. And so
Speaker 1: while the initial community at Brook Farm had been made
Speaker 1: up almost entirely of Boston intellectuals, now tradespeople and working
Speaker 1: class people began to fill in the gaps that were
Speaker 1: left by those that had departed during the reorganization. Ripley
Speaker 1: was very quick to point out that children from all
Speaker 1: walks of life were equally successful in the farm's school,
Speaker 1: and that the discourse among the adults was as robust
Speaker 1: and lively as ever. Despite the diversity of backgrounds that
Speaker 1: now lived there. So he was really trying to point out, like, no,
Speaker 1: my ideas really do work. We're all equal here, and
Speaker 1: that's awesome. But at the same time he had lost
Speaker 1: a lot of the people that originally bought into his plan.
Speaker 1: In eighteen forty five, Brooke Farm began producing a periodical
Speaker 1: called The Harbinger. It was dedicated to four A Aism
Speaker 1: and the philosophy of utopian society. Ripley hoped that this
Speaker 1: new project was going to bring them some money, and
Speaker 1: by this point there were more than a hundred people
Speaker 1: living at Brook Farm, so it had grown pretty substantially,
Speaker 1: and Ripley wanted to construct a new building that would
Speaker 1: house all of them. At this point, they still had
Speaker 1: the hive, but they had several of their smaller houses uh,
Speaker 1: and he was really counting on the periodical to make
Speaker 1: some money, so work began on the Great Community House,
Speaker 1: which was to be called the Philanstry. With the increase
Speaker 1: in Fourierism's popularity, Brook Farm and other utopian communities were
Speaker 1: starting to be viewed with more and more suspicion by
Speaker 1: the outside world. Rumors were spreading about sexual promiscuity and depravity.
Speaker 1: And while these rumors were not true of Brooke Farm,
Speaker 1: they were seated in four A's writings in which he
Speaker 1: did advocate for sort of a free love model, similar
Speaker 1: to what we think of with the nineteen sixties. In
Speaker 1: any case, the gossip about this behavior in West Roxbury
Speaker 1: was so devastated to the school's enrollment and consequently to
Speaker 1: Brook Farms finances. Yeah, when your primary source of income,
Speaker 1: you know, loses most of its um it's the checks
Speaker 1: that are coming in, you very quickly find yourself in
Speaker 1: a lot of trouble. And there was just more trouble
Speaker 1: to come at this point. So as times got leaner,
Speaker 1: tensions understandably grew among the Brook Farm residents. One resident
Speaker 1: started hosting an outdoor Sunday service each week, and this
Speaker 1: actually caused a big rift between those who were really
Speaker 1: excited and welcomed this idea and those who had moved
Speaker 1: to Brook Farm because of its secular roots. And we
Speaker 1: should mention that religion wasn't forbidden or even unusual at
Speaker 1: Brook Farm, but organized religion had not been a part
Speaker 1: of the Farms foundation. Uh, people were certainly welcome to
Speaker 1: be spiritual and worship in whatever way they wanted, but
Speaker 1: the fact that this person was now hosting services really
Speaker 1: rankled some people. And then to make matters where smallpox
Speaker 1: hit the community after one of the members caught it
Speaker 1: while visiting relatives in Boston and got back before he
Speaker 1: developed symptoms, about thirty of the group had to be quarantined,
Speaker 1: and then the healthy people in the group weren't able
Speaker 1: to work on the farm because they were having to
Speaker 1: care for the sick. Several pupils were removed from the
Speaker 1: school by their families, which also reduced the little bit
Speaker 1: of income that Brook Farm had. By this point, there
Speaker 1: were four mortgages taken out on the property, so they
Speaker 1: were in really bad financial straits. And it only got
Speaker 1: worse because just after the smallpox outbreak, and to the
Speaker 1: best my knowledge, I don't think they lost anybody during that,
Speaker 1: They just lost productivity. They had very few deaths of
Speaker 1: Brook Farm, which is kind of a happy face in
Speaker 1: the midst of sort of this bad stuff going on. Uh.
Speaker 1: But just after that smallpox outbreak, Nathaniel Hawthorne, who had
Speaker 1: left six months after it was founded, took legal action
Speaker 1: against Brook Farm to try to get his initial investment
Speaker 1: back since he didn't stay. And there had been a
Speaker 1: provision in the original um tracks of brook Farms that
Speaker 1: people could, if they gave enough notice get there, get
Speaker 1: their investment back if they stayed a certain shortened period
Speaker 1: of time. So he was within his rights. Uh, And
Speaker 1: unfortunately there were just no funds to repay him. Ripley
Speaker 1: actually agreed, Yes, he's completely within his bounds to want
Speaker 1: his money back. I just don't have that money. And
Speaker 1: it didn't help that Brook Farm had also lost its
Speaker 1: primary philanthropic supporters. The people that were giving money to
Speaker 1: these utopian communities had decided they were going to give
Speaker 1: them to other communities that looked like they might have
Speaker 1: greater success, and a last ditch effort to breathe life
Speaker 1: back into the community, Ripley and the Brook Farm leadership
Speaker 1: pushed forward on completion of the Philanstrey in eight This
Speaker 1: was yet another case of the characteristic and misguided optimism
Speaker 1: that had given Brook Farm such promise at the beginning,
Speaker 1: but was also its undoing. It's really like any tale
Speaker 1: of the chronic failed dreamer, where we just keep thinking,
Speaker 1: just one more thing, we'll turn this around. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: he really did. I mean everything that you look at.
Speaker 1: It's like, no, we're gonna start publishing his paper. People
Speaker 1: will buy it, and then we'll be fine. The school
Speaker 1: is going to keep us afloat. But then, you know,
Speaker 1: just one thing after another. He kept thinking I would
Speaker 1: save them, and it never did. And then to kind
Speaker 1: of kick them while they were down, they threw a
Speaker 1: party to celebrate what was going to be the completion
Speaker 1: of the new structure. It wasn't completed, but they were
Speaker 1: kind of excited that they were moving forward and close
Speaker 1: to the end. Uh. And this was on March third,
Speaker 1: eight and during the party, a fire broke out and
Speaker 1: consumed the entire building, So the Filan story was completely
Speaker 1: decimated as they were trying to celebrate it. Uh. And
Speaker 1: it was an unfinished structure and it had not been ensured,
Speaker 1: so as it burned, so did the dream of Brooke Farm.
Speaker 1: Because seven thousand dollars had been spent building the structure,
Speaker 1: which had turned to ashes, and it was thought that
Speaker 1: they were going to need another three thousand just to
Speaker 1: finish it. But of course that money never out spent
Speaker 1: because it wasn't there to finish. So they're basically out
Speaker 1: on their investment of the building completely, completely, So not
Speaker 1: having to spend that three thousand more dollars was not
Speaker 1: not a lot going to help them, no, So that
Speaker 1: was really the final nail in the community's financial coffin,
Speaker 1: and it took its toll on the already lagging morale
Speaker 1: of the people that had stuck it out and we're
Speaker 1: trying to keep things going. So then just a few
Speaker 1: months there were only a few dozen people left at
Speaker 1: brook Farm uh and George Ripley, even though he was
Speaker 1: still living there on the property, had kind of already
Speaker 1: turned his focus to the New England for society. He
Speaker 1: really stopped worrying about keeping it going because he kind
Speaker 1: of knew what was going to happen. Towards the end
Speaker 1: of eighteen forty six, the brook Farm Library collection was
Speaker 1: sold at auction, and then in eighteen forty seven the
Speaker 1: bankruptcy filing for brook Farm wrapped up, and in August
Speaker 1: of eighteen forty seven it was officially disbanded. So Ripley's
Speaker 1: transcendentalisk u topia only lasted for six years, and while
Speaker 1: Brook Farm wasn't sustainable long term, it really did have
Speaker 1: a pretty significant influence on many social movements going on
Speaker 1: at the time, including abolitionism and the women's rights movement.
Speaker 1: According to Linda Swift, who we referenced earlier, fourteen marriages
Speaker 1: could track their roots back to the fellowship at brook Farm,
Speaker 1: one of which actually took place there, and most of
Speaker 1: those appear to have been happy. Another interesting point is
Speaker 1: that the community had what could be considered a prototype
Speaker 1: of the modern daycare, where the few parents among the
Speaker 1: group could leave their children with caregivers for the day
Speaker 1: while they set to their work, which had really never
Speaker 1: been done before, at least on an organized level. Nathaniel Hawthorne,
Speaker 1: who probably never got back his initial investment, wrote a
Speaker 1: fictionalized version of his time at brook Farm called Lithdale Romance.
Speaker 1: It's clear from it that he did not enjoy this experiment.
Speaker 1: As for Ripley, he went on to become the literary
Speaker 1: critic for The New York Trip June, and he held
Speaker 1: that job until he died in eighteen eighty. After Brook
Speaker 1: Farm was abandoned, the former dairy farm found other uses.
Speaker 1: It was used as a poorhouse, as a Civil War
Speaker 1: training camp, and as an orphanage. In nineteen seventy seven,
Speaker 1: Brook Farm was designated a Boston Landmark. That same year,
Speaker 1: the hive, which was still standing burned down. In ninety four.
Speaker 1: Arson took the house on the property that had been
Speaker 1: named after Margaret Fuller, even though she had never lived there.
Speaker 1: In the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation acquired the
Speaker 1: Brook Farm site. It lists the lands as a National
Speaker 1: Historic Landscape and the buildings are all gone. In her
Speaker 1: nine hundred book entitled Brook Farm, It's members, scholars and visitors,
Speaker 1: Linda Swift, who he referenced earlier, says of the Brook
Speaker 1: Farm community like some ill contrived play, the brook Farm
Speaker 1: Phalanx lingered during one more act after all the essential
Speaker 1: dramatic elements were exhausted. So even though it kind of
Speaker 1: sputtered out at the end and had a lot of problems,
Speaker 1: it's still kind of referred to when people talk about
Speaker 1: it as sort of a success in terms of it
Speaker 1: being a successful experiment, Like I think a lot was
Speaker 1: learned from it, and from a sociological standpoint, I know,
Speaker 1: people study it and kind of turnover and examine what
Speaker 1: was right about it and what was wrong, And it
Speaker 1: did to have some some pretty interesting influences on society
Speaker 1: at the time. So in that regard, you could count
Speaker 1: it as success. Uh, there were societal reforms linked to subceeds.
Speaker 1: So there and it's so fascinating, and it was pretty
Speaker 1: revolutionary that everyone, regardless of their sex or their age,
Speaker 1: where their race, was going to be treated the same way. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're that's not really how eighteen forty grew. And there
Speaker 1: are many many stories. I mean, we could you could
Speaker 1: almost launch a podcast just about brook Farm and talk
Speaker 1: about individual stories of people and events that happened there
Speaker 1: because there are many, many of them, and most of
Speaker 1: the bol that had lived there really spoke pretty well
Speaker 1: of it, even though there had been problems. So it's
Speaker 1: a fascinating concept to think about. I think I have
Speaker 1: to wonder if someone tried a similar thing today if
Speaker 1: it would work well. And I know a couple of
Speaker 1: people that have lived essentially on communes at some point
Speaker 1: in their life, none of them for their entire life.
Speaker 1: It always seems to have been this three to five years. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: my first my early memories are on the commune, and
Speaker 1: then my parents left. Yeah. Yeah. There are many cases
Speaker 1: of failed communes, but I think a lot of times
Speaker 1: they implode in a much more dramatic way. This one
Speaker 1: kind of like I said it was mostly about money.
Speaker 1: I think, even though there were some ideological shifts throughout
Speaker 1: its life, really the money was what killed it. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: and even if you think you're prepared for the work,
Speaker 1: the manual work, like if you were, if you are
Speaker 1: an intellectual person who most of your life has been
Speaker 1: relatively privileged, then the the sheer amount of manual labor
Speaker 1: required just to raise your own food to shock crazy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it puts a lot of things in perspective. Yes, indeed,
Speaker 1: so that's brock Farm. And I think you also have
Speaker 1: some listener mail I do. I have a few too,
Speaker 1: are well. They're all about our recent episode on the
Speaker 1: domestication of the cat. Uh. One is from our listener Rosie,
Speaker 1: who says she was surprised that neither of us had
Speaker 1: a favorite famous cat in history, both of you being
Speaker 1: cat lovers and history buffs. She says it might only
Speaker 1: be ausee knowledge, but Matthew Flinders, the first man to
Speaker 1: circumnavigate Australia, has a cat called Trim who was born
Speaker 1: on board and sailed with him. Trim is pretty well
Speaker 1: known in Australia, at least in his history and cat's circles,
Speaker 1: and it's probably my favorite historical cat. I had never
Speaker 1: heard of him, so that's super cool. And Kate also
Speaker 1: wrote us and kind of said the same thing. Towards
Speaker 1: the end of the show, you mentioned that you did
Speaker 1: not know of any famous cats, so I thought I'd
Speaker 1: share some with you. In the United Kingdom, the Prime
Speaker 1: Minister has an official chief mouser of the Cabinet who
Speaker 1: lives at Downing Street. This role was currently held by
Speaker 1: Larry and Freya. The first of these cats was during
Speaker 1: the reign of Henry the Eighth, and since ninety nine
Speaker 1: there has been a line in the budget for petty
Speaker 1: cash for the upkeep and maintenance of the mousers. I
Speaker 1: love that. Another famous cat which links nicely to a
Speaker 1: previous stuff you missed in history podcast is Unsinkable Sam.
Speaker 1: Unsinkable Sam or Oscar was a German ship's cat originally
Speaker 1: on the Bismarck, who was found among the wreckage of
Speaker 1: the ship by British navy vessels. He was rescued and
Speaker 1: then served on two British naval ships, surviving the sinking
Speaker 1: of both of them as well. That is almost freaky
Speaker 1: uh in one. After the sinking of his last ship,
Speaker 1: he lived in the Governor's house in Gibraltar, before being
Speaker 1: returned to the UK to live out the rest of
Speaker 1: his life in a home for retired seamen in Belfast.
Speaker 1: That is charming. Uh. The research suggests that the story
Speaker 1: of Sam maybe an urban legend. He still is one
Speaker 1: famous feline and some cat ended up in the seamen zone,
Speaker 1: so those are famous cats we did not know about.
Speaker 1: It was really cool. All I could think of was um,
Speaker 1: President Clinton's cat socks, and he's not really famous except
Speaker 1: for being that, Like there's I have never heard many
Speaker 1: stories about him. So thank you both of you for
Speaker 1: writing in about cats. Uh. If anybody else would like
Speaker 1: to write to us, they can do so at History
Speaker 1: Podcast at Discovery dot com. You can also connect with
Speaker 1: us on Twitter and missed in History and on Facebook
Speaker 1: at Facebook dot com slash history class stuff. We're also
Speaker 1: on tumbler at missed in History dot tumbler dot com,
Speaker 1: and you can find us on Pinterest. If you would
Speaker 1: like to learn a little bit more about what we
Speaker 1: talked about today, you can go to our website and
Speaker 1: type in the words brook Farm, which is two words
Speaker 1: in our search bar, and it will turn up an
Speaker 1: article for you called how socialism works and brook Farm
Speaker 1: is mentioned in that article. And if you would like
Speaker 1: to learn about almost anything else you can think of,
Speaker 1: you can do so at our website, which is how
Speaker 1: stuff Works dot com for more on this and thousands
Speaker 1: of other topics. Because it has toff works dot com.
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