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
This result in a newly settled state, and among a rude society, will
appear not less remarkable when I add that the community has no library;
that its members, so far as I could see, lack even the most common and
moderate literary culture, aspiring to nothing further than the ability
to read, write, and cipher; that from the president down it is
absolutely without intellectual life. Moreover, it has very few
amusements. Dancing is very little practiced; there is so little social
life that there is not even a hall for public meetings in the village;
apple-parings and occasional picnics in the summer, the playing of a
band, a sermon twice a month, and visiting among the families, are the
chief, indeed the only excitements in their monotonous lives. With all
this there is singularly little merely animal enjoyment among them: they
do not drink liquor; the majority, I was told, do not even smoke
tobacco; there is no gayety among the people. Doubtless the winter,
which brings them all together in the village, leads to some amusements;
but I could hear of nothing set, or looked forward to, or elaborately
planned. "The women talk, more or less," said one man to me, when I
asked if there were never disagreements and family jars; "but we have
learned to bear that, and it makes no trouble."
It seemed to me that I saw in the faces and forms of the people the
results of this too monotonous existence. The young women are mostly
pale, flat-chested, and somewhat thin. The young men look good-natured,
but aimless. The older women and men are slow in their movements,
placid, very quiet, and apparently satisfied with their lives.
I suppose the lack of smart dress and finery among the young people on
Sunday, and at the wedding, gave a somewhat monotonous and dreary
impression of the assemblage. This was probably strengthened in my mind
by the fact that the somewhat shabby appearance of the people was only
of a piece with the shabby and neglected look of their village, so that
the whole conveyed an impression of carelessness and decay. Nineteen
years of steady labor ought to have brought them, I could not but think,
a little further: ought to have given them tastefully ornamented
grounds, pretty houses, a public bath, a library and assembly-room, and
neat Sunday clothing. It appeared to me that the stern repression of the
whole intellectual side of life by their leader had borne this evil
fruit. But it may be that the people themselves were to blame: they are
Germans of a low class, and "Pennsylvania Dutch"--people, too often, who
do not aim high. Then, too, it must be admitted that farm-life in Oregon
is not, in general, above the plane of Aurora. Dutchtown is an Oregonian
paradise; and the Aurora people are commonly said to "have every thing
very nice about them."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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