The Consociate Family Life (1843)

AUTHOR: Lane, Charles and A. Bronson Alcott

PUBLICATION: The New York Weekly Tribune, 2 September 1843.

In this rather lengthy letter, dated August 1843, Charles Lane and Bronson Alcott write from and about the utopian ethical vegan community of Fruitlands that they established in June of that year. The letter is reprinted in The Liberator and, under Lane's sole authorship, in the English periodical New Age and Concordium Gazette, published by Lane's former colleagues in the Ham Common Concordium whom he left to join Alcott in New England. In the latter reprint, the editor's short introduction of the letter compares the prospects for progressive communities in England and the US based on Lane's report.

KEYWORDS: food, diet, animals, farming, slavery, economics, land usage, spirituality, Transcendentalism, Fruitlands

RELATED TITLES:

SUMMARY (Deborah Madsen):

This letter outlines and explains the fundamental principles according to which life at Fruitlands is organized. The radical vegan diet, refusal of stimulants like coffee, salt, and spices, the practice of celibacy, and the reformed dress codes all practised at Ham Common were introduced by Lane to the community at Fruitlands (though Lane explicitly attributes the practice of celibacy  to the Shakers). The motivation for this social experiment is described as the “pure reform principles, or rather ... pure creative spirit” (116) that animate “our perseverance in efforts to attain simplicity in diet, plain garments, pure bathing, unsullied dwellings, open conduct, gentle behaviour, kindly sympathies, serene minds. These and the several other particulars needful to the true end of man’s residence on earth, may be designated the Family Life” (117). This life is “our sacred earthly destiny” (117) and the higher or transcendental aim of Fruitlands was to create a better social state via “the union of Divine and Human Will” (117). The practical habits of daily life that will promote these values are detailed: “Being, in preference to doing, is the great aim, and this comes to us rather by a resigned willingness than a wilful activity; which is indeed a check to all divine growth. Outward abstinence is a sign of inward fulness” (120). Food was restricted largely to a raw diet of bread, vegetables, and fruit, with water to drink; members of the community wore plain garments (women refused the corset) with linen used in place of cotton that was produced using enslaved labor; while pure bathing took the form of daily cold showers.

The ambition to live in self-sufficient harmony with the natural world and “Divine Law” informs the anti-capitalist values of the “consociate Family.” Both personal and social property are rejected as contrary to the “New Spirit”; the use of a money economy was also to be refused, with trade replaced by “hand-labour” and exchange in a barter economy. Although Lane and Abba Alcott's brother Samuel May together bought the land on which Fruitlands was founded, this letter insists that in future land will be redeemed from “the debasing state of proprium ” by the recognition that God is the sole “Divine Owner” of the land (119). Labor will also be freed from the money economy; coerced labor (working to live), both human and animal, is described as slavery: “Our outward exertions are in the first instance directed to the soil; and ... our ultimate aim is to furnish an instance of self-sustaining cultivation without the subjugation of either men or cattle” (119). The farming of cattle is vigorously opposed: animal manure in contrast to “green” plant manures poisons the soil, land used to raise cattle fodder is wasted, human labor is expended in husbanding animal labor to the point where it becomes a form of enslavement. He concludes, “No one can fail to perceive, that if cattle were no longer bred and fed for slaughter, milking, or draught, the human family might be drawn much closer together all over the country. It is calculated that if no animal food were consumed, one-fourth of the land now used would suffice for human sustenance” (119).

In response to the anticipated question of what to eat if animal products are refused, the letter provides a lengthy response that captures the essence of the ethical veganism practiced at Fruitlands: “Debauchery of both the earthly soil and the human body, is the result of this cattle-keeping. The land is scourge for crops to feed the animals, whose filthy ordures are used under the erroneous supposition of restoring lost fertility; disease is thus infused into the human body; stimulants and medicines are resorted to for relief, which end in a precipitation of the original evil to a more disastrous depth. These misfortunes, which affect not only the body, but by re-action rise to the sphere of the soul, would be avoided at least in part, by the disuse of animal food. Our diet is therefore strictly of the pure and bloodless kind. No animal substances, neither flesh, butter, cheese, eggs, nor milk, pollute our tables or corrupt our bodies. Neither tea, coffee, molasses, nor rice, tempts us beyond the bounds of indigenous productions. Our sole beverage is pure fountain water. The native grains, fruits, herbs, and roots, dressed with the utmost cleanliness, and regard to their purpose of edifying a healthful body, furnish the pleasantest refections and in the greatest variety, requisite to the supply of the various organs. The field, the orchard, the garden, in the bounteous products of wheat, rye, barley, maize, oats, buckwheat; apples, pears, peaches, plums, cherries, currants, berries; potatoes, peas, beans, beets, carrots, melons, and other vines, yield an ample store for human nutrition, without dependence on foreign climes, or the degradations of shipping and trade. The almost inexhaustible variety which the several stages and sorts of vegetable growth, and the several modes of preparation, afford, are a full answer to the question which is often put by those who have never ventured into the region of a pure and chaste diet: 'If you give up flesh meat, upon what then can you live?' ” (119-120).

Last updated on June 14th, 2024

SNSF project 100015_204481

@VLS@veganism.social | VeganLiteraryStudies | @veganliterarystudies |