New England Reformers (1844)

AUTHOR: Emerson, Ralph Waldo

Subtitled "A Lecture Read Before the Society in Amory Hall, on Sunday, March 3, 1844," in this piece Emerson discusses the status, scope, and extent of a range of reform movements.

KEYWORDS: food, animals, labor, reform, Transcendentalism

SUMMARY (Bryn Skibo, edited Ridvan Askin & Deborah Madsen):

On the fall of the Church and the rise of reformism: “[T]he Church, or religious party, is falling from the church nominal, and is appearing in temperance and nonresistance societies, in movements of abolitionists and of socialists, and in very significant assemblies, called Sabbath and Bible Conventions; composed of ultraists, of seekers, of all the soul of the soldiery of dissent, and meeting to call in question the authority of the Sabbath, of the priesthood, and of the church” (250).

One apostle thought all men should go to farming; and another, that no man should buy or sell; that the use of money was the cardinal evil; another that the mischief was in our diet, that we eat and drink damnation. These made unleavened bread, and were foes to the death of fermentation. It was in vain urged by the housewife, that God made yeast, as well as dough, and loves fermentation just as dearly as he loves vegetation; that fermentation develops the saccharine element in the grain, and makes it more palatable and digestible. No; they wish the pure wheat, and will die but it shall not ferment. Stop, dear Nature these incessant advances of thine; let us scotch these ever-rolling wheels! Others attacked the system of agriculture, the use of animal manures in farming; and the tyranny of man over brute nature; these abuses polluted his food. The ox must be taken from the plough, and the horse from the cart, the hundred of acres of the farm must be spaded, and the man must walk, wherever boats and locomotives will not carry him. Even the insect world was to be defended,—that had been too long neglected, and a society for the protection of ground-worms, slugs and mosquitos was to be incorporated without delay. With these appeared the adepts of homoeopathy, of hydropathy, of mesmerism, of phrenology, and their wonderful theories of the Christian miracles! ... But in each of these movements emerged a good result, a tendency to the adoption of simpler methods, and an assertion of the sufficiency of the private man (252-254).

Emerson criticizes trade and the disparity in the pay of a manual laborerin comparison with that of a professional clerk: “Who gave me the money with which I bought my coat? Why should professional labor and that of the counting-house be paid so disproportionately to the labor of the porter and wood-sawyer? This whole business of Trade gives me to pause and think, as it constitutes false relations between men”  (256).

He criticizes the false focus of the education system: “The popular education has been taxed with a want of truth and nature. It was complained that an education to things was not given. We are students of words: we are shut up in schools, and colleges, and recitation-rooms, for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bag of wind, a memory of words, and do not know a thing. We cannot use our hands, or our legs, or our eyes, or our arms. We do not know an edible root in the woods, we cannot tell our course by the stars, nor the hour of the day by the sun” (257).

On the creation of communes, implicitly including Fruitlands:

Following or advancing beyond the ideas of St. Simon, of Fourier, and of Owen, three communities have already been formed in Massachusetts on kindred plans, and many more in the country at large. They aim to give every member a share in the manual labor, to give an equal reward to labor and to talent, and to unite a liberal culture with an education to labor. The scheme offers, by the economies of associated labor and expense, to make every member rich, on the same amount of property that, in separate families, would leave every member poor. These new associations are composed of men and women of superior talents and sentiments; yet it may easily be questioned whether such a community will draw, except in its beginnings, the able and the good; whether those who have energy will not prefer their chance of superiority and power in the world, to the humble certainties of the association; whether such a retreat does not promise to become an asylum to those who have tried and failed, rather than a field to the strong (263-264).

Emerson argues that communes or associations cannot replace individual ethics and morality:

But the men of less faith could not thus believe, and to such, concert appears the sole specific of strength. I have failed, and you have failed, but perhaps together we shall not fail. Our housekeeping is not satisfactory to us, but perhaps a phalanx, a community, might be. Many of us have differed in opinion, and we could find no man who could make the truth plain, but possibly a college, or an ecclesiastical council, might. I have not been able either to persuade my brother or to prevail on myself to disuse the traffic or the potation of brandy, but perhaps a pledge of total abstinence might effectually restrain us. The candidate my party votes for is not to be trusted with a dollar, but he will be honest in the Senate, for we can bring public opinion to bear on him. Thus concert was the specific in all cases. But concert is neither better nor worse, neither more nor less potent, than individual force (265).

Specifically, Emerson believes that a good association, must be composed of self-reliant individuals. Amidst all these reformers, churches, communes, and associations, Emerson values the genius in every man, and believes everyone should listen to themselves:

Obedience to his genius is the only liberating influence. We wish to escape from subjection, and a sense of inferiority, and we make self-denying ordinances, we drink water [Temperance], we eat grass [veg*nism], we refuse the laws [Alcott, Thoreau and taxes], we go to jail; it is all in vain; only be the freest activity in the way constitutional to him, does an angel seem to arise before a man, and lead him by the hand out of all the wards of the prison” (284-285).

 

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