Oneida Experiment

A YANKEE SAINT--Robert Allerton Parker--Putnam ($3.75).

Throughout the early years of the igth Century, U. S. social thinking was concentrated on the abolition of Negro slavery and the formation of experimental Utopian communities of the character of Brook Farm. Strangest and strongest of these colonies was the Oneida Community at Oneida, N. Y., stronghold of "communism of love" and of experiments in birth control, prosperous manufacturer of steel traps and silverware, centre of scandal for more than 30 years. Founded in 1847 with a handful of converts and a few hun-dred dollars capital, the Community in 1880 owned property valued at more than $500,000, divided among 225 members, including a number of scientifically-bred children. The original members had endured systematic and effective persecution, had the privilege of exchanging wives within certain limits rigidly enforced by the leaders.

Last week Robert Allerton Parker recounted the complex history of the Oneida Community in a biography of its founder, John Humphrey Noyes, shrewd, enlightened fanatic who expounded his theories of free love with passionate moral fervor. Carefully documented, A Yankee Saint is a mine of information on a significant development in U. S. history, succeeds in giving a comprehensive account of the ways of the Community without exploiting its absurd or sensational aspects. The Oneida Community was a serious economic and ethical experiment. Noyes, who held it together throughout his life, was a courageous and resourceful man, well-informed, sufficiently intelligent to win the respect of such later students as Havelock Ellis and Bernard Shaw. Born in Brattleboro, Vt., in 1811, son of a Vermont Congressman, he was educated at Dartmouth, Andover and New Haven, came into conflict with established religion formulating the doctrine of Perfectionism, which held that moral perfection was attainable on earth. This was in direct opposition to prevailing "miserable sinner" Christianity. Awkward, shy, redhaired, Noyes neverthe-less won enthusiastic followers, particularly among women. A period of acute economic distress made a profound influence on him, led him to declare, "Heaven must begin on earth soon, or Hell will."

Although Noyes lived chastely, submitting himself successfully to the fiery temptations of Manhattan's Five Points ("Hell has done its worst," he said as he escaped the painted ladies) his course was marked with scandals. Greatest scandal did not break until after his marriage. The household of one of his followers had been broken up through a wife's infidelity, and Noyes had reconciled all parties, who went to live with him in Putney, Vt. There the unconventional religious views of the Perfectionists aroused hostility, but no knowledge of their sexual conduct reached the townspeople. With great gravity and high sense of moral earnestness, a general reshuffling of wives was arranged, continuing until most of the Perfectionists had new partners. Converts were eagerly sought, until at length the conversions of young girls brought down widespread antagonism, arrest, threats of lynching.

Fleeing Putney, the small group founded Oneida Community on the site of a sawmill owned by one of the believers. Hardships were intense, and the Community was saved only when one member discovered a new type of steel trap. Small orders for Newhouse traps got them through the early winters, large orders from Hudson's Bay Co. made them prosperous. Despite the outcries of moralists, life within the Community, once its system was recognized, was almost austere. Moderation was stressed. Resenting the term "free love." Noyes stood for "Complex Marriage," which meant that each was married to all. He believed that the amative and propagative functions were distinct, advocating a method of birth control which was based primarily on an avoidance of the propagative crisis. This he defended eloquently on moral, physiological, esthetic and psychological grounds. The practice of Mutual Criticism, in which members assembled to discuss candidly one another's shortcomings, was also popular. It was held to be of distinct therapeutic value, cures of croup, diphtheria and common colds being credited to it.

Only in John Noyes's old age did internal dissension become strong. Conflicts broke out over religion, for younger members accepted Darwinian ideas; over morals, for the second generation revealed a remarkable tendency to conservatism. John Noyes's last sensational innovation, Stirpiculture, or scientific procreation, aroused greater hostility. Scientific procreation was directed by a committee which selected mothers from among volunteers, chose satisfactory mates. Since the committee was dominated by older members, young men felt that patriarchs were selecting the younger women to become mothers of their children, resented it still more deeply that John Humphrey Noyes, now in his sixties, deaf, deliberate, irritable, had been chosen to sire "at least" nine of the 58 children born in the experimental period.

Shortly before the Community disbanded in 1880 the manufacture of silverware was added to its industries, was afterwards carried on by a successful commercial company which produced Community Plate, adopting the name but not the ideas of the original colony. The original members scattered, in general lived prosperous, commonplace lives. John Noyes's son, Pierrepont Burt Noyes, is president of Oneida Ltd., managed the spending of the last $4,500,000 devoted to building Saratoga Spa (TIME, Aug. 5).

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