238 THE UTOPIAN COMMUNISTof native-American and immigrant Utopias in the ante-bellum
period when the United States was a great laboratory for social
experimentation of every kind. Some of these colonies were so
small and short-lived that almost nothing of their history has been
preserved. Others included such well-known ventures as Owen's
New Harmony in Indiana and its many offshoots, such as Yellow
Springs and the Kendall Community in Ohio, and the Blooming-
ton, Indiana colony at Blue Springs. In somewhat the same cate
gory belong Frances Wright's Nashoba in Tennessee, the colony
at Haverstraw in New York, Adin Ballou's Hopedale Community
in Massachusetts, the Brook Farm of the New England intellec
tuals and transcendentalists, and John Anderson Collins' Skane¬
ateles Community. Brisbane's type of modified Fourierism, a
scheme for a planned economy which was widely publicized in
Greeley's Tribune, produced at least thirty colonies during the
years when the "plague of phalanxes" swept the country. Among
the better-known colonies formed by nonreligious German groups
may be mentioned the Teutonia settlement and Ginalsburg, both
in Pennsylvania (the latter lost $40,000 in one year); the Germania
colony of Wisconsin; and New Helvetia, Missouri, which was
directly connected with Weitling's undertaking.^3
Weitling was interested in establishing ideal communities while
he was still deeply involved in the European labor movement. He
contended that the teachings of Christianity logically led to such
undertakings as the Arbeiterbund and the founding of colonies.
Nevertheless, it is doubtful whether he would have had his major
attention diverted to Communia in 1851 had not the accidents of
history brought him into contact with the Iowa settlement. Once
he had embarked on an enterprise, his imagination always outran
his reason and practical judgment, and so he came to view the
Iowa experiment as the first nucleus for a long succession of com
munist Utopias. If he could be certain of support by the Arbeiter-
(^3) See Schlüter, Anfänge der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung, 110-18; and Hein¬
rich Semmler, Geschichte des Sozialismus und Communismus in Nord Amerika
(Leipzig, 1880), passim.