schools, and to adopt all means which they may deem | absolute English form of ownership for such an achieve necessary and proper to secure to the people the ad- ment as the cultivation of the soil of North America.' vantages and opportunities of education. The genBut what the European settlers had escaped from at eral principles of common schools are well enunciated home they found in full vigor in America. When by a leading educator, Horace Mann: "Under our Columbus landed at San Salvador, the continent was republican government, it seems clear that the mini- in the hands of communists. Every American people, mum of education can never be less than such as is from the Esquimaux of the remote North to the Patasufficient to qualify each citizen for the civil and social gonians of the remoter South, held at least their lands duties he will have to discharge; such an education as in common, the nearest approach to a subdivision of teaches the individual the great laws of bodily health, land being the exclusive right of the person who planted as qualities for the fulfilment of parental duties; as is a crop to gather the harvest, and even that existing indispensable for the civil functions of a witness or a only in some cases. And in spite of all the changes juror; as is necessary for the voter in municipal and effected by European conquest, communism remains in national affairs; and, finally, as is required for the the rule of life for those of our aborigines who live faithful and conscientious discharge of all those duties in or north of the United States; and a closer study of which devolve upon the inheritor of a portion of the the social arrangements in the villages from Mexico sovereignty of this great Republic." southward probably would show that this method of land tenure still perpetuates itself there also. The literature of the history of common school education in America is at once immense and meagre. No general work exists, though one is now contemplated. The reports of State and town committees contain a vast deal of information relating to both fact and theory, but they still remain uncollected and uncollated. Of these reports those of Horace Mann, Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education, 1837-1848, are specially valuable. Barnard's Journal of Education, which has reached its 30th volume, though somewhat defective and desultory in method, contains an immense amount of matter concerning education not only in America but also in all countries. A general index is now in preparation which will render its treasures more accessible. The annual reports of the United States Commissioner of Education, a most useful Bureau established in 1867, present valuable statistics concerning the progress and condition of education in each of the States. Several volumes relating to education in America have been published in Europe. Among them may be named Fraser's Report on the Common School System of the United States and Province of Upper and Lower Canada (London, 1866); Laveleye's L'Instruction du Peuple (Paris); L'Instruction Publique aux Etats Unis, by the French Commissioner, Hippeau, and the American School System, by F. Adams. (C. F. T.) COMMUNISM, in America as elsewhere, is of two types. The first is the primitive, See Vol. VI. unreflective and tribal type, which charp. 188 Am. ed. (p. 211 acterizes the less advanced portions of the Edin. ed.). human race in every part of the world, and of which traces and reminiscences exist even among civilized races. This communism has its origin in the gradual development of society from the family (the institute of the affections) to the state (the institute of rights), a development which in most cases has been checked before reaching its goal. That rule of common ownership, which is right enough within the family, is carried over into the new community, in which it has no proper place. It corresponds to that sentiment of personal regard for the chief, as father of the kindred, which in tribal forms of society is the rudimentary anticipation of loyalty to the law and reverence for its authorized agencies. The first European settlers of America came hither from communities out of which this primitive communism had been extirpated by the influence of the civil law. The nations which they represented already had accepted the institution of private property as the normal mode of ownership, and had emancipated the individual from those restraints upon his activity in the pursuit of wealth and happiness which existed in primitive society. To this fact we owe, in good part, the magnificent display of human energy which has brought the new world to its present stage of development as regards occupation and civilization. Had America been laid open to the nations of Western Europe at a time when the forms of European society were less mobile and adaptable, and the conception of property less developed, we might have seen armies conquering America from the natives, but no floods of peaceful settlers spreading the arts of peace and of eivilization over the continent. "We are indebted," says Sir Henry Sumner Maine, "to the peculiarly Dr. Lewis H. Morgan, to whose investigations in this field America owes much, divides the American aborigines into three groups, according to the stage in civilization they had reached. The first and lowest consists of those who lived by hunting and fishing, without horticulture. The third and highest includes the village Indians, who lived chiefly by the culture of the soil. The second are the intermediate group, who obtained a subsistence in both ways. The first group was found, of course, only in sparsely settled regions, from which it drew a scanty subsistence; an exception being the valley of the Columbia, that American officina gentium, where the abundant supply of fish supported a rather dense and not uncivilized population. The village Indians were found in Arizona, New Mexico, Mexico, and especially Central America, the population growing in density and rising to higher stages in social development the farther south the locality. were the Ojibwas in Wisconsin, the Dakotas, the Nez Among the tribes which lived by hunting and fishing Perces and other tribes of the Columbia valley, the Black feet and most of the Indians of the great plains. Whatever they took was thrown into a common stock, and divided each day according to the numbers in the families. Except in the Columbia valley, these Indians lived in separate wigwams, and did not build community houses. The contrary was true of the Indians who lived only partly by hunting. These included the Iroquois in New York, the Powhatans in Virginia, the Creeks in Georgia, the Sawkees in Wisconsin, the Mandans and Minnetarees of the upper Missouri, and the Maricopas and Mohaves in Colorado. All these built village houses capable of containing a large body of people. These generally were long parallelograms, constructed of poles, birch-bark, dried grass, and straw. The houses of the Mandans were circular in form, roofed with earth. These Indians cultivated maize, and generally put their harvest into a common stock. In some cases each Indian family cultivated its own patch, and enjoyed for the year exclusive possession of the land thus used. But even under this advance to private property, the resources of the whole village were at the service of all its members. This was effected by what Mr. Morgan calls the law of hospitality." which required that food should be set before every visitor who entered house or wigwam, at whatever hour of the day. The community houses of the third group were pueblos of adobe or of stone. Some of these still exist and are in use in Arizona, New Mexico, the most notable being that of the Zuñis. Others remain as the monuments of a past civilization in the forests of Yucatan. Such barrack-like structures constituted the city of Mexico, at the time of the Spanish invasion. Those at Uxmal, in Central America, are the most curious and imposing of these ruined pueblos. As to the industrial economies of these village Indians, we know little more than is indicated by their common dwellings. In whatever part of the world such houses have been found, communism has been found to be the mode of life practised by those who live in them. And the Indians of the pueblos of New Mexico "still hold their lands in common, with a possessory right in each to cultivate land, so long as the individual chooses to occupy it.' 66 orders-Buddhist and Christian. Of these we have developed no new order in America, except the Paulist, founded in New York by Father Hecker for the conversion of American Protestants to Catholicism. But we have seen transferred to American soil every notable order of the Roman Catholic Church: the most The existence of an undeveloped social system remarkable in its American activities being that great among the aborigines did much to facilitate Euro-order of the Jesuits (q. v.), which explored the wilpean conquest. There was no coherence among these dernesses of North America, and created the Republic communistic tribes, who still rested social relations on of Paraguay from native material in the southern half kinship and not on proximity, and therefore were in- of the continent. capable of large and effective organization. The In Protestant experiments at religious communism nearest approach to this was the confederacy of the America has more abounded than any European Aztecs, with the large dependency of conquered tribes, country. The first great group of these is of German and that of the six nations of the Iroquois, held to- origin, the members of the communities being German gether by the cross organization based on community mystics and separatists, more or less influenced by the in the same totem or coat of arms. For similar reasons ideas of Jakob Böhme (1575-1624.) A sort of forerunthere was a great want of individuality, a great re-ner of these was the community of Dutch and German pression of personal force. Communism creates irre-Labadists in Maryland, at the head of Chesapeake sistible power to punish dissent or independence of Bay (1684-1722). The proper members of the group opinion. And this power easily passes into the hands are (1) the Woman in the Wilderness," founded on of a few persons, to be used by them for any purpose the Wissahickon, within the present limits of Philadelthey may choose, however narrow and selfish their phia, by Johann Kelpius in 1695, and dissolved by his aims. The chief, the priest, the medicine man amounted death in 1704; (2) the colony of Dunker celibates, to more than public opinion in such a form of society, founded in 1713 at Ephrata in Lancaster co., Pa., They are able to inflict substantial annoyance, and and imitated by a purely American community at even suffering, through the community's control of the Snowhill, near Harrisburg, Pa., established in 1820; whole property. In the last resort they will cut off (3) the Harmony Society, established first in Western the man's pipe and water," according to the threat Pennsylvania, then in Indiana, and finally at Economy, of the Hindoo villagers. For this reason it is felt near Pittsburg, in 1824, and still in existence; (4) the that the destruction of the communism which exists Separatist community, established at Zoar in Tuscaamong our Indians is necessary as a first step to their rawas co., Ohio, in 1817; (5) the Community of the elevation to a genuine civilization. Even among the Inspired, a sect established in Germany in 1714-6, as more civilized tribes, such as the Cherokees, the power one consequence of the excitement spread through of the chief over the people is found to be tyrannical Protestant Europe by the Camisards, and transferred and oppressive. For this reason most of the proposals to America in 1846, settling first near Buffalo, but in which have been made for the elevation of the red 1855 removing to Amana in Iowa; (6) the Bethel man to the level of American citizenship have been community in Missouri, with a colony in Oregon, offaccompanied by plans for the assimilation of their land shoots of a secession from the Harmony Society; and tenure to that of the rest of the country. At the (7) the community of Swedish pietists, founded at same time it is felt that any sudden and complete tran- Bishop Hill, in Illinois, in 1846, and finally dissolved sition of this sort would be accompanied by great in 1860-62. All these societies, except perhaps the dangers. To prevent the land-speculators from getting last, have common characteristics traceable to the influpossession of the Indian's holding, it is proposed fur- ence of Jakob Böhme. They all either proscribe ther to make his lands inalienable for fifty years. marriage, or treat it as an inferior and less perfect state conceded to human frailty. Strictly celibate were the community of Kelpius, that of Ephrata, and the Harmony Society. The latter became so in 1807, after two years of community life in the married state, the younger members taking the lead in the change. A great revival of community zeal, as well as religious fervor, was the immediate result. The secession of 1832, which cost them a third of their members, moved in the opposite direction; but their new community underwent a gradual decline, the Bethel community, mentioned above, being a mere remnant in a new field. The Zoar community passed from compulsory celibacy to the toleration of marriage in 1828-30, and the Inspired always have tolerated it as a less perfect form of life, and require the sanction of inspiration in each case. Even in these communities, however, marriage is no more than tolerated, and the family relations are treated as carnal and secular, in contrast to the ties of community brotherhood. In Zoar the sexes are kept apart in every way possible, and no man is permitted to marry until he has reached his twenty-fourth year. See Dr. Lewis H. Morgan's Letters on the Iroquois, in the American Review for 1847; his League of the Iroquois (1851); his Ancient Society, or Researches on the Lines of Human Progress from Savagery through Barbarism to Civilization (New York, 1879); his paper on System of Consanguinity and Affinity, in the Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, Vol. XVII.; his article on Montezuma's Dinner, in the North American Review for April, 1876; his article on the Architecture of the American Aborigines, in Vol. I. of Johnson's Encyclopædia; and The Iroquois Book of Rites, edited by Horatio Hale (Philadelphia, 1883). Also H. II. Bancroft's Native Races of the Pacific States; Prof. E. Laveleye's Primitive Property, Chapter IX. (London, 1878). The second type of communism is the theoretical and voluntary. It is developed by the reflective and intelligent association of those who have not been born to this order of things, but who have taken it up by preference. This again distinguishes itself into two great classes. The first accepts communism, not as a general law for human life, but as a special arrangement for a few, in order that these may exert a greater influence upon the rest of mankind. They seek in communism, as Fortlage has well observed, the Archimedean TOV OT outside the world, from which to move the world in some direction they think desirable. The second class regard communism as the only right order of human life, the only means of escape from the selfishness and the covetousness which they believe to be the root-evil of human society. They advocate it for the many, not for the few only. Communisms of the first class are nearly always religious. The forms most familiar are the monastic In their arrangement as to property all these societies are purely communistic, aiming in this to reproduce the condition of things which existed in the Church of Jerusalem after the day of Pentecost (Acts iv. 34; v. 11). In point of prosperity they vary a good deal: the Harmony Society being much the richest, although it has had to sustain numerous lawsuits by members withdrawing from the community. The rights of a member expelled from the Society have not been tested. "The Millennial Church or United Society of Be lievers, commonly called 'Shakers,"" might be classed | to a general agitation against these in 1879. Up to with these German_Behmenists on many accounts. the time of change, every woman in the community Their founder, Ann Lee, while a resident of Manches- had been regarded as the wife of every man in it. ter, in England, had belonged to a peculiar religious Sexual intercourse had been regulated by certain society, which probably was one of those started in esoteric rules, which seem to have had the double England by the disciples of Böhme and Jane Leade object of pratising human stirpiculture, and the preand which were influenced by the Camisards. What vention of special attachments among the members of theology there is in Shakerism-their notions of a of the community. At the time of the dissolution, a female principle in the godhead; that the first man large proportion of the members entered the married was male and female in one person; of marriage as a state, and a joint-stock partnership was substituted for state inconsistent with Christian perfection-is a communism. detritus of Behmenism. The society was gathered These, with a short-lived community of modified first in 1774, at Watervliet, N. Y., organized as a Swedenborgians (disciples of T. L. Harris), on the church in 1787, and assembled into community life in shores of Lake Erie, make up the series of American 1792. It has a few members who live in the world, communities of the religious type. The Church of the under the inspection of the ministry of the commu- Latter-Day Saints sometimes is classed here, because nities. The society regards itself as a kind of spiritual of certain co-operative arrangements, but incorrectly. priesthood, serving important purposes in that econ- The apostles of that body appeal very strongly to the omy of salvation by which all fallen spirits are to be passions for private and especially landed property, in restored to God. As its members are strictly celi- addressing the poorer classes in Europe, from whom bate, it perpetuates its existence partly by adopting they draw their recruits. children and partly by conversions from the world. The property and the affairs of the society are in the hands of the ministers and elders, who are not chosen by the community and who give no account of their stewardship. Vacancies in their numbers are filled by the surviving members, and complete obedience to the Lead, as these authorities are called, is an especial point of Shaker ethics. These select trustees to manage the property and care-takers to direct the work, and remove or transfer these at their pleasure. Persons who attain to full membership by signing the covenant thereby renounce all claims to the property they have brought into the community, and to wages for their labor while they remain. But it is not unusual for members to abstain from signing. The sixteen communities, spread from Maine to Kentucky, enjoy a varying degree of prosperity. As a rule the members do not work hard. Farming is the principal business, but manufactures on a small scale are practised. Each community is independent of the rest financially. The membership is less than 2500, and they own nearly 50,000 acres of land. The first religious community of purely American origin was the Hopedale community, founded by Rev. Adin Ballou in 1841, on a farm near Mendon, in Massachusetts. It set before it no less an object than the complete conversion of society to the principles of Christian socialism. It was at once a Christian church and an industrial community. Its members were sundered from the world by the prohibition of voting, office-holding, and the resistance of evil by force of any kind. This last feature led Mr. Emerson to mention it to Mr. Carlyle as the most original contribution America had made to the world's wealth of ideas. It lasted until 1857, but proved at last a complete failure. At first it was purely communistic, but in the hope of attracting persons of some means, a joint-stock system was substituted. The person who proposed this change afterwards employed it to break up the community, by getting a majority of this stock into his own hands. But while it lasted, it was a remarkable instance of an honest effort to realize a great idea. Four years later was formed the Community of the Perfectionists, another native form of religious communism, and the least reputable of the series. It was organized at Putney, in Vermont, by John H. Noyes, a preacher in the great revival which culminated in 1837. He, with many others, had begun to preach the duty of attaining Christian perfection through a complete emancipation from selfishness, and had reached the conclusion that monogamous marriage and private property were institutions rooted in selfishness. The discovery of his principles and practice led to disturbances which compelled his emigration, in 1848, to Oneida, N. Y., which, with a branch at Wallingford, Conn., remained the seat of the community until it gave up its objectionable practices in concession Whatever may be true of the influence of the Roman Catholic orders, it cannot be said that these Protestant communities have found in their communism a powerful fulcrum from which to move the world. Their united influence upon the national life is infinitesimal-less than that of the smallest of the American churches. But they and the monks have solved the conditions upon which communism can maintain itself. The first of these is the presence of some masterful authority, either personal or official, for the control of the membership. Nothing is more notable in the history of these societies than the part played by the founders, and the demand for a strongly constituted paternal authority at the centre. The second requisite is some sort of religious enthusiasm as a motive power. Where this is wanting, individualism is too strong for the community. The third is the exclusion of the family from the community. Where the natural unit has been permitted to exist inside the artificial unit, it has proved too strong for it. Where it has been excluded, either by celibacy or by some such arrangement as that devised by Mr. Noyes-or even where it has been vigorously and effectively depreciated as profane and sensual-then the community has managed to perpetuate itself. the Labadists, Journal of a Voyage to New York in 1679-80. For Kelpius see the Penn Monthly for August, 1871; for By Jasper Dankers and Peter Sluyter; edited by H. C. Murphy (Brooklyn, 1867); for the Ephrata Community see the Chronicon Ephratense, and Dr. Seidensticker's article in the Century Magazine for December, 1881; for the Inspired see Max Goebel's articles in the Zeitschrift für historische Theologie (1876) and also Chas. Nordhoff's Communistic Societies of the United States (New York, 1875), which includes all the later religious Communities except those at Hopedale, Snowhill, and Brocton; for the Harmony Society see Dr. Aaron Williams' The Harmony Society (Pittsburg, 1866); for the Oneida Community see J. H. Noyes' History of American Socialisms (chapters xlvi-xlvii), also The Oneida Circular, 1854-1874, and its continuation, The American Socialist, 1875-1879; for Brocton and Snowhill see Noyes. The foregoing sketch of the American communities founded on religious views enables us to understand the general and rapid failure of communism of the second type, i. e., those which put this order of society before men as the only rightful mode of human life, but refuse to associate this conviction with any views as to the infinite and the eternal. Of these secular communities in America, the two great groups are the Owenites and the Fourierites, but with these may be classed the famous community at Brook Farm, and the Icarian community at Nauvoo, in Illinois. Robert Owen made his great experiment in communism in 1824 at New Harmony, in Indiana, a village which he purchased of the Harmony Society when the latter returned to Pennsylvania. Into this village there streamed a great multitude of persons of all classes, who thought they would like the new experiment. | 1844, under the presidency of George Ripley, the Nothing that Mr. Owen and his friends could do to principal founder of the Brook Farm Community, defeat the movement was left undone. While asking others to embark their substance in the experiment, he took measures to secure his own interests and to get a return for his investment. He gathered a miscellaneous mass of human material into the village, without exercising any kind of discrimination. He left the community to itself for the first two years of its existence. He changed repeatedly the constitution of the community, one plan after another having proved worthless. Finally he dissolved the community by selling the property, in lots, to private owners. Ten other communities, modelled on Owenite ideas, were established in various parts of the country, but none of them lasted more than a few years, and by 1832 the Owenite movement came to an end in America. 66 which had joined the new movement. From New York were organized the two most important phalanxes--the Sylvania, in Pike co., Pennsylvania, under Mr. Greeley's especial influence, and the North American, in Monmouth co., New Jersey, under that of Mr. Brisbane. Sylvania was begun in the heyday of first enthusiasm; the North American, after repeated failures, had warned the Fourierites that their best men and their utmost efforts were required to carry the experiment to success. Never was an experiment made with more earnestness and self-sacrifice, but the results proved how weak the bonds which unite a secular community. After lasting for ten years, it received in 1853 its first and perhaps fatal shock, by the intrusion of religious disagreements, such as the natural forms of society have to sustain constantly, but which generally prove burning of the community's mills caused its dissolution, and the Fourierite movement disappeared from our history. In the interval between this and the Fourierite move-too much for the artificial forms. Two years later the ment came the memorable experiment at Brook Farm, first suggested by Dr. Channing, and organized by the most remarkable group of men and women that ever embarked on such an undertaking. It had not a solitary condition necessary to success. It professed to be an attempt to realize Christ's idea of society," but it had no religious enthusiasm as its motive power. It had no central authority sufficient to secure a proper attention to needful work. Its property arrangements, instead of the simplicity of pure communism, consisted of a joint-stock arrangement, somewhat similar to that proposed by Fourier. The community relation, so far from dominating every other, was too weak to stand the first strain. Having no proper basis of its own it fell in with the Fourierite movement in the first month of 1844; but in 1847 it was dissolved through financial difficulties, yet without the quarrel which has characterized every other dissolution. In 1842 the Fourierite movement was at its height; by 1848 it was a thing of memories and epitaphs. In strictness this movement does not fall within our scope, as Fourier did not favor communism, but common labor and common dwellings based on a joint-stock arrangement. But it stands in such close relation to the history of our communisms, that it cannot be omitted. To transplant Fourier's ideas to America was a sufficiently hazardous experiment, and especially so in a period of great religious interest such as that in which the experiment was undertaken. There was much in his denunciation of selfishness as a social motive-power which appealed to earnestly religious people, who felt strongly the difference between the actual condition of society and the Christian ideal. But his doctrines as to marriage and his indifference to religion generally were equally offensive to them. These, however, were slurred over by his American disciples generally, who thought to adopt a part of his system and ignore the rest. They founded thirty-three communities or phalanxes in the years 1842-53, of which the last was dissolved in 1855. A few proceeded strictly upon Fourier's principles and methods, and were fair tests of both. The majority were the outgrowth rather of an enthusiasm for his general ideas of attractive labor in society and the abolition of selfishness, than of an exact understanding of his plans. But the extent of the interest in socialist principles is by no means to be measured by these communities scattered over the Northern States from Massachusetts to Iowa. A great agitation stirred the cities of America. Lectures, debates, and conferences on socialism were the order of the day between 1842 and 1847; and a large proportion of the men who were to bear the burden of the war for the Union, or to create American art, literature, and science, were enlisted in the new crusade. But everywhere and under every sort of condition the experiment was a failure. The interest centred in New York, where it was sustained by Mr. Greeley's Tribune and Mr. Brisbane's Phalanx. Here the National Convention was held in Since the failures of the Fourierites the religious communities have had the field to themselves. The only exception is the Community of French Icarians, which, since 1850, has been attempting to carry into practice the ideas of Etienne Cabet, first at Nauvoo, in Illinois, and latterly at Corning, in Iowa. At one time there were fifteen hundred members at Nauvoo; not a twentieth of the number resumed the experiment at Corning. They have no religious principles or observances, and the affairs of the society are controlled by the vote of the membership in weekly meeting. They live in separate dwellings, and sanction marriage. They are very poor, but are out of debt and have overcome great difficulties in the struggle to acquire the ownership of their homes. The fullest record of the secular communities is found in the History of American Socialisms, by John Humphrey der Socialismus und Communismus in Nord-Amerika. A Noyes (Philadelphia, 1870). See also Semler's Geschichte good account of Brook Farm will be found in Mr. Frothingham's George Ripley (Boston, 1882), in the series "American Men of Letters." Communism as a theory still exists in some quarters, especially among groups of working people who learnt it in Europe. Mr. Henry George's remarkable work on Progress and Poverty (1882) is hardly an exception to this statement. It starts from the premises furnished by foreign economists and socialists. It has in view the evils of European rather than American society in its proposals for the nationalization of the land. And since Fourier's influence ceased, it is the only able statement of such principles in our literature. That communism of any sort is likely to take any firm or extensive hold of the American people is not the judgment of any impartial observer. This is prevented (1) by the popular love of that liberty which communism denies to the individual; (2) by the strength of those family affections which communism must extirpate; (3) by the general diffusion of private property, and especially of property in land, among the American people; (4) by the increasing influence of Christianity, which points to the future as the scene of a perfect order of human society, and discourages the expectation of the immediate realization of this great hope. (R. E. T.) COMPTROLLER. An officer of the United States, of a State or of a county or municipality, who has certain duties to perform in the regulation of the fiscal matters of the government under which he holds office. The office of Comptroller is French in its origin, and was first created in this country upon the organization of the Board of Treasury by the Continental Congress on Sept. 26, 1778. By the terms of the resolution of |