rriages"
gave way to monogamous families. In the following year the communistic
holding of property gave way to a joint stock company, under whose
skillful management the prosperity of the community continues today.

The American Utopias based upon an assumed economic altruism were much
more numerous than those founded primarily upon religion but, as they
were recruited almost wholly from Americans, they need engage our
attention only briefly. There were two groups of economic communistic
experiments, similar in their general characteristics but differing in
their origin. One took its inspiration directly from Robert Owen, the
distinguished philanthropist and successful cotton manufacturer of
Scotland; the other from Fourier, the noted French social
philosopher.

In 1825 Robert Owen purchased New Harmony, Rapp's village in Indiana
and its thirty thousand appurtenant acres. When Owen came to America
he was already famous. Great throngs flocked to hear this practical
man utter the most visionary sentiments. At Washington, for instance,
he lectured to an auditory that included great senators and famous
representatives, members of the Supreme Court and of the Cabinet,
President Monroe and Adams, the President-elect. He displayed to his
eager hearers the plans and specifications of the new human order, his
glorified apartment house with all the external paraphernalia of
selective human perfection drawn to scale.

For a brief period New Harmony was the communistic capital of the
world. It was discussed everywhere and became, says its chronicler,
"the rendezvous of the enlightened and progressive people from all
over the United States and northern Europe." It achieved a sort of
motley cosmopolitanism. A "Boat Load of Knowledge" carried from
Pittsburgh the most distinguished group of scientists that had
hitherto been brought together in America. It included William
Maclure, a Scotchman who came to America, at the age of thirty-three,
ambitious to make a geological survey of the country and whose
learning and energy soon earned him the title of "Father of American
Geology"; Thomas Say, "the Father of American Zooelogy"; Charles
Alexander Lesueur, a distinguished naturalist from the _Jardin des
Plantes_ of Paris; Constantine S. Rafinesque, a scientific nomad whose
studies of fishes took him everywhere and whose restless spirit
forbade him remaining long anywhere; Gerard Troost, a Dutch scientist
who later did pioneer work in