The Communistic Societies of the United States: From Personal Visit and ObservationNordhoff, Charles
History
The Communistic Societies of the United States: From Personal Visit and Observation
Nordhoff, Charles
Collective settlements -- United States
"The deacons are empowered to change the employment of an individual for
an hour, a day, or a week, to perform a necessary piece of labor. But a
permanent removal to another vocation can be required only by the
elders.
"No trading is to be done by any save the trustees, and those whom the
trustees may license. No new literary work or new-fangled article can be
admitted, unless it be first sanctioned by the ministry and elders.
Trustees may purchase any thing they believe may be admissible, and
present the same for the inspection of the leaders. If they disapprove
it, it must be sold. The property is all legally held by trustees, who
may at any time be removed by the ministry. The trustees are to
supervise all financial transactions with the world and other families
and societies of their own denomination, and do all by knowledge and
union of the ministry and elders. There must be two trustees in every
order, and they shall make their financial returns known to each other
every journey they perform. An exact book account of every cent of
disbursement and income shall be presented to the ministry at the close
of every year. The deacons are also to keep an exact account of every
thing manufactured or produced for sale in the family, and these two
registers are compared by the ministry.
"Not a single action of life, whether spiritual or temporal, from the
initiative of confession, or cleansing the habitation of Christ, to that
of dressing the right side first, stepping first with the right foot as
you ascend a flight of stairs, folding the hands with the right-hand
thumb and fingers above those of the left, kneeling and rising again
with the right leg first, and harnessing first the right-hand beast, but
that has a rule for its perfect and strict performance.
"The children, or all under the age of sixteen, unless very precocious,
live, eat, work, play, sleep, and worship, accompanied only by their
caretakers. Once upon the Sabbath do they worship with the adults. Their
meetings are not so long, neither do they retire but fifteen minutes
before them. They never attend union meetings until they emerge into the
adult's degree. Stubborn children are sometimes corrected with a rod;
but any child or beast that requires an extreme severity of coercion to
induce them to conform, the society are not allowed to keep. The
contumacious child must be returned to his parents or guardian, and the
perverse beast must be sold.
"Prayer, supplication, persuasion, and keen admonition constitute the
only means used to incline the disposition and bend the will of those
arrived to years of understanding and reason."
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Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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