Brook Farm

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Brook Farm (full name: Brook Farm Institute for Agriculture and Education) was a utopian social experiment in co-operative living which flourished 1841-1847 in Massachusetts. At that time, especially in the New England area, there was a widespread enthusiam for such experiments in community cooperative living ^[1].

It was begun by George Ripley, a minister of the Unitarian church in Boston who resigned from that position in 1841. Soon thereafter, together with other like-minded individuals, he purchased land on the banks of the Charles River about 9 miles southwest of Boston and organized his experiment in Christian living. In a letter explaining his motives, he stated:

"Our objects, as you know, are to ensure a more natural union between intellectual and manual labor 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 labor, 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 labor to all; and thus to prepare a society of liberal, intelligent, and cultivated person, whose relations with each other would permit a more simple and wholesome life, than can now be led amidst the pressures of our competitive institutions."

The community was organized as a joint-stock company and, in addition to the agricultural operation, ran a school and, later, several small-scale industries. Beginning with about 20 members, the community never exceeded 70 or 80 in number. Many of the members were intellectuals, including among them Nathaniel Hawthorne. In addition, the Farm attracted numerous eminent visitors, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Ellery Channing, Margaret Fuller, Bronson Alcott, Theodore Parker, Horace Greeley, and Orestes Brownson.

The Farm school was justly famous and many notable individuals sent the offspring there for education. This school provided much of the income of the community.

In 1844, the community decided to adopt the organizational precepts of the French social reformer Charles Fourier who advocated the adoption of small, planned communes as a way towards the social reform of society. The Brook Farm community then re-organized themselves into a Fourierist Phalanx, as these communes were called. For the next two years, much money and work was expended on the construction of the Phalanstery. Unfortunately, a fire destroyed the uninsured building within one day of its completion. The community, facing near insurmountable financial difficulties, gradually wound down and dispersed within a year of that event.

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