In 1825 Robert Owen, a Welsh philanthropist-turned-socialist, bought the town of Harmonie, in the region then known as Indiana Territory, in its entirety. He then attempted to create a commune of 3,000 people there, living and working (harmoniously) within a projected giant, socialist citadel, which would have been the largest structure in the country.
Owen rechristened it “New Harmony”, envisioning a vast quadrangle which would act as a prototype for settlements across the continent and indeed the globe, enabling the creation of a “New Moral World”. The inaugural structure was set to cover three acres and encompass all the components needed to bring about communal utopia: dwelling space, schools, segregated bath houses, communal kitchens and dining halls, ballrooms, lecture theatres, “dormitories for the unmarried”, a bookbindery – even a brewery.
So serious were Owen’s intentions that he even presented a model of the model society at the White House. But the experiment would ultimately fail. The principle of united interests brought a concommitent sense of diminished individuality, causing many less-ideologically driven residents to abandon the experiment. Quarrels ensued and the commune descended into chaos. However New Harmony’s legacy has endured, notably in the USA’s free public library system, first initiated in the town, and also apparently in the phrase ‘free love’, coined by Owen to describe his alternative to the oppressive institution of marriage. p (fs)
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