Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm fair Dowdy and I'm doubling and chuckerboarding, and today
Speaker 1: we're going to talk a little bit more about free love.
Speaker 1: I mean, hopefully that makes you keep on listening right away.
Speaker 1: But I was thinking about it because we did a
Speaker 1: podcast a couple of weeks ago on Victoria wood Hall,
Speaker 1: who was the first female presidential candidate, And I don't
Speaker 1: know if you want to give a quick recap of
Speaker 1: her beliefs on free love. Yeah, she basically didn't believe
Speaker 1: free in free love in the sense that everyone should
Speaker 1: be having sex with each other. But she did believe
Speaker 1: that people should have the choice whether or not to
Speaker 1: be together. So that was just a little bit about it.
Speaker 1: You didn't have to be stuck in a marriage if
Speaker 1: you didn't want to be. Yeah, So we we had
Speaker 1: her on our minds. And then also I co edited
Speaker 1: an article recently that Molly Edmonds wrote one of the
Speaker 1: hosts of Stuff Mom Never Told You on polyamory, and
Speaker 1: so it came up again, and she actually even mentioned
Speaker 1: the Oneida community in her article. So both of those
Speaker 1: examples got me thinking about this community, which is probably
Speaker 1: the most famous example of organized free love in American history,
Speaker 1: and it is, of course the Oneida Commune or Onada
Speaker 1: community in New York State. Yeah, when I first started
Speaker 1: researching this with you, it seemed almost too crazy to
Speaker 1: be real. I don't know. Maybe I've just lived too
Speaker 1: sheltered a life. Maybe I'm alone in this, but I
Speaker 1: don't know. Can you tell us a little bit about
Speaker 1: some of these things? It does sound too crazy to
Speaker 1: be real, And that's partly because the people that made
Speaker 1: up this large Victorian community shared not only property and labor,
Speaker 1: but of course sexual partners. And they surprisingly earned boatloads
Speaker 1: of money through these really successful marketing schemes. I think
Speaker 1: that's sort of the first loop in this In this episode,
Speaker 1: they were actually quite successful financially. Another potentially strange fact
Speaker 1: about them they regarded the genders equally and they shared labor,
Speaker 1: so pretty surprising. The ladies even wore pantaloons. You can
Speaker 1: look up pictures of them. They have short skirts and
Speaker 1: little pantaloons underneath. And um. Then, maybe the strangest thing
Speaker 1: of all. Their eventual undoing came about when this eugenics
Speaker 1: inspired breeding program left the younger members yearning for good
Speaker 1: old fashioned courtly love and and monogamous marriage. And for
Speaker 1: those of you who own some fine Oneida silver, you
Speaker 1: might know where it goes from there. The commune doesn't
Speaker 1: last forever, much like a lot of other communes, even
Speaker 1: those that are often considered to be the most successful
Speaker 1: in American history, like Ohneida. So who is behind this
Speaker 1: oi a community in the first place. This guy named
Speaker 1: John Humphrey. Noise and it's not doesn't look like noise,
Speaker 1: it's n O y e s in case you want
Speaker 1: to look up this guy little more. But yeah, the
Speaker 1: commune and the ideas behind it came from his ideas
Speaker 1: and preaching. And he was born in eighteen eleven in Vermont.
Speaker 1: He was a wealthy kid. He went to Dartmouth and
Speaker 1: then to law school. Really seemed to be on the
Speaker 1: right track to being a well off New England lawyer
Speaker 1: until he attends a revival of evangelist Charles Finney in
Speaker 1: eighteen thirty one, and at that point he decides to
Speaker 1: become a minister instead, so big career change. But but
Speaker 1: even then he seems like he was possibly on the
Speaker 1: track to becoming just a well off New England minister
Speaker 1: instead of a lawyer. He went to andover theological seminary.
Speaker 1: From there he transferred to Yale. But after that his
Speaker 1: ideas started to get kind of out there, and definitely
Speaker 1: two out there. For Yale, he believed in something called perfectionism,
Speaker 1: which was the idea that after conversion we are free
Speaker 1: from sin. Which obviously that idea didn't sit very well
Speaker 1: with the Calvinist faculty at Yale, and they denied his ordination. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so just to give you a little background on the
Speaker 1: beliefs that he had. They extend from the central idea
Speaker 1: of perfectionism, and they're pretty controversial. He, for one thing,
Speaker 1: thinks the Second Coming has come and gone already. In fact,
Speaker 1: he thinks that happened in a d seventy at the
Speaker 1: destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. This meant that man
Speaker 1: didn't have to wait for heaven to be one with God.
Speaker 1: You could do it here on earth as well. But
Speaker 1: to do so you had to leave the world and
Speaker 1: live according to the laws of heaven, like maybe in
Speaker 1: a commune run by noise. So he gets kicked out
Speaker 1: of Yale and he starts kind of meeting with other perfectionists,
Speaker 1: learning the drill, talking to people going on the circuit,
Speaker 1: and he decides, well, I'm going to start my own
Speaker 1: group here, and he organizes the Bible Communists in Putney,
Speaker 1: Vermont in eighty six and preaches love and harmony to them.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting to sort of get a look at
Speaker 1: what type of people were joining this, the Bible Communists.
Speaker 1: They were mostly small town folks. They came from all
Speaker 1: sorts of occupation, something that probably proved useful down the line.
Speaker 1: And you know, maybe if it had stayed at this level,
Speaker 1: it would have been pretty under the radar. You know,
Speaker 1: a religious group that's too radical for Gail, but not
Speaker 1: so radical that it doesn't fit in in some way
Speaker 1: with all of the revivals sweeping the United States at
Speaker 1: this time. Then Noise shakes things up a little bit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he doesn't just keep it at that level. Just a
Speaker 1: year after starting that group, Noise writes the so called
Speaker 1: battle Axe Letter. And this letter it really gets the
Speaker 1: public riled up. It stirs up a lot of controversy
Speaker 1: because it advocates free love. Specifically, it says, quote, when
Speaker 1: the will of God is done on earth as it
Speaker 1: is in heaven, there will be no marriage, and his
Speaker 1: rationale came from scripture. It came from Matthew, which says
Speaker 1: for in the Resurrection, they neither marry nor are given
Speaker 1: in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven.
Speaker 1: So Noise took this to mean that marriage should not
Speaker 1: be exclusive. All men should be married to all women,
Speaker 1: and it's something called complex marriage. So this is definitely
Speaker 1: an example of free love that's different from the one
Speaker 1: we talked about in the Victoria Woodhole episode. Quite different
Speaker 1: in fact, but the idea, just like Victoria Woodell, made
Speaker 1: Noise and his followers incredibly notorious. And when they actually
Speaker 1: start practicing complex marriage by eighteen forty six, which is
Speaker 1: a little bit after they decide that they're going to
Speaker 1: share all their property and all their belongings, it does
Speaker 1: not sit well with their neighbors in Putney, Vermont, not
Speaker 1: at all. And Noise is arrested for adultery because he
Speaker 1: is married legally, and he jumps bail, and by eighteen
Speaker 1: forty eight, he and most of his followers DeCamp for Oneida,
Speaker 1: New York. And there are a few other satellite communities,
Speaker 1: but the main Onada community is set up there in
Speaker 1: New York. It last for another thirty years. So we're
Speaker 1: gonna talk more about free love in that aspect of
Speaker 1: the community later, But first, it's interesting to figure out
Speaker 1: how these perfectionists Biblical communists actually made a living. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: at first they don't write the two hundred people that
Speaker 1: live in this community. They try farming and logging. It's
Speaker 1: a situation where men and women are sharing the same
Speaker 1: rights and labor, but the community isn't doing well enough
Speaker 1: to support itself for the long term. So then things
Speaker 1: start picking up eventually, though, when they start manufacturing things,
Speaker 1: they get into manufacturing work a little more reliable. So
Speaker 1: what sorts of things were they manufacturing. They were canning
Speaker 1: and jarring veggies and fruit, also processing silk and printing.
Speaker 1: They were milling gristmills and sawmills both and uh, making
Speaker 1: small goods like traveling bags. Yeah, and there. That was
Speaker 1: all pretty successful for them. But the big win, the
Speaker 1: thing that really made them sustainable, was the invention of
Speaker 1: one of the community's members, a guy named Suel new House,
Speaker 1: and he came up with a new kind of lightweight
Speaker 1: animal trap for for animals, and the trap market at
Speaker 1: the time was not so crowded that you couldn't have
Speaker 1: a new a new trap burst through. And so by
Speaker 1: the mid eighteen fifties, they were making so many of
Speaker 1: these traps, and they were selling them so well that
Speaker 1: they had to hire on wage workers, which was kind
Speaker 1: of at odds with their belief because they were not
Speaker 1: only against slavery, they were also against wage labor, and
Speaker 1: especially seasonal wage labor, because at this point people would work,
Speaker 1: they'd have jobs during the summer, and then they'd get
Speaker 1: laid off in the winter, especially in a place like
Speaker 1: New York where there were pretty heavy winters. So here
Speaker 1: they were doing it themselves, you know, hiring seasonally to
Speaker 1: make these traps. But they did create many things. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think we all know some of the results of
Speaker 1: their inventiveness, for example the Victor mouse trap and the
Speaker 1: Lazy Susan who was so excited to learn that they
Speaker 1: were responsible for this. It's made such a difference in
Speaker 1: my life. Excellent piece of trivia, I think. Well. And
Speaker 1: the interesting thing about the Lazy Susan Um one of
Speaker 1: the important things in the community was that mediocracy was key.
Speaker 1: You were never supposed to be lazy, but you weren't
Speaker 1: supposed to try to strive above all the others. And
Speaker 1: I think it's maybe a little funny that the lazy
Speaker 1: Susan is the result of that a convenience product. But
Speaker 1: even though some inventions did stand out and some inventus
Speaker 1: did stand out, in this community community, that word was
Speaker 1: still definitely the key. Even labor was social. They would
Speaker 1: hold these bees to complete tasks in a timely manner um.
Speaker 1: And maybe you can talk about the bees a little more, Sarah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean probably most people are maybe familiar with quilting bees,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing where everybody gets together and you
Speaker 1: make all the quilts. You know, you have the tops
Speaker 1: piece together already, but you go ahead and do the
Speaker 1: more boring work, which is is um attaching it to
Speaker 1: the bottom and putting in the padding and everything. But
Speaker 1: they wouldn't do this just for quotes. They would do
Speaker 1: it for any kind of task that needed to be
Speaker 1: accomplished quickly. So for instance like bringing in the hay
Speaker 1: it's something you better do before it rains heavily, or
Speaker 1: making these bags. You know, they'd all get together. And
Speaker 1: the interesting thing about it is, like you mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: they really did emphasize the community aspect. It was something
Speaker 1: that was supposed to be fun, not just boring work
Speaker 1: if you're doing it yourself. And there's even a quote
Speaker 1: from their second annual report where they wrote that the
Speaker 1: task could be done quote at a single stroke with
Speaker 1: all the enthusiastic, sportive feeling of a game of ball.
Speaker 1: That does sound rather exciting, but it does beg the
Speaker 1: question also, if a hayin bee is as fun as
Speaker 1: a game of ball, then what is downtime like in
Speaker 1: this community? And again we see that it's really communal.
Speaker 1: The adults live in what is called the mansion House,
Speaker 1: which was a three story modern home complete with shared
Speaker 1: dining and living spaces. It's a pretty handsome home actually
Speaker 1: still stand. Yeah, and it's interesting. One of the perks
Speaker 1: of living in Oneida meant that because of scale, the
Speaker 1: community could afford some things that other people couldn't. They
Speaker 1: could afford luxuries like um furnaces and heated drawing rooms,
Speaker 1: things that only wealthy people could afford at the time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because it is a mansion house, it just has a
Speaker 1: lot of people living in it. So we're gonna take
Speaker 1: you on a little tour of the home. Um, starting
Speaker 1: in the dining room, which would hold the entire community,
Speaker 1: and I think this is a really interesting thing they
Speaker 1: did to to ensure that clicks wouldn't pop up in
Speaker 1: the dining room as they always do, right, Yeah, the
Speaker 1: typical Yeah, you would take your seat by your place
Speaker 1: in the serving line, so I guess you could maybe
Speaker 1: jump the line to be with your friend, but you
Speaker 1: would essentially be seated at random, so so no favorites.
Speaker 1: After dinner. After dinner with with any of your random
Speaker 1: community members, you would move on to the big Hall
Speaker 1: and have a meeting. And the hall is sort of
Speaker 1: the center of the religious aspect of this community too,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't look at all like a church. It
Speaker 1: had paintings of justice and music and astronomy and history,
Speaker 1: allegorical painting, and it's also where members would discuss their
Speaker 1: spiritual concerns and talk about community concerns and then maybe
Speaker 1: relax a little too and enjoy a concert. I think
Speaker 1: the community kept a band among its members or some
Speaker 1: other kind of entertainment, and it's quite the program. And
Speaker 1: if that program on any given night was promising enough,
Speaker 1: maybe some tourists would stop by pay about twenty five
Speaker 1: cents for an evening of Grand entertainment, so they build it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but the gatherings in the big hall, they weren't always
Speaker 1: that fun. So for instance, you wouldn't want to show
Speaker 1: up on a night where they were doing quote mutual criticism,
Speaker 1: and on those nights that's when everyone could basely air
Speaker 1: their grievances with everyone else. Her minds me kind of
Speaker 1: a festivus, not to make a comparison with a fake religion,
Speaker 1: but um, the mutual criticism part is one of the
Speaker 1: strangest aspects of this to me, that you would go
Speaker 1: face to face with these people who you lived with
Speaker 1: and worked with every day and tell them what was wrong,
Speaker 1: which could be not only you're not working hard enough
Speaker 1: to support the community, but you're working too hard, you're
Speaker 1: going above and beyond, and it's it's not you don't
Speaker 1: fit in. Yeah, it goes back to that goal of
Speaker 1: mediocrity that you mentioned before. So after getting some of
Speaker 1: these neighborly criticisms off your chest, you might go on
Speaker 1: up to the upper sitting room, which was a well
Speaker 1: appointed salon where you could page through some books like
Speaker 1: Charles Dickens The Mystery of Edwin Drewd, which I think
Speaker 1: you read recently. I read the spin off. You read
Speaker 1: the spin off. Sorry, my mistake. They wouldn't have read
Speaker 1: the spin off, probably not quite, but they might have
Speaker 1: also read some bound copies of magazines like Atlantic Monthly. Anyway,
Speaker 1: just your basic chill out space. Take some time to
Speaker 1: n off after the hanging, and then it's off to
Speaker 1: bed in your private room with a twin bed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and here's the kicker there. You would definitely be by
Speaker 1: yourself when you were going off to bed. And this
Speaker 1: brings us to the complex marriage, which you knew we
Speaker 1: were going to have to talk about eventually. It's what
Speaker 1: made the Onanta community so infamous, and Noise believed that
Speaker 1: for the community to live without sin, they would need
Speaker 1: to quote nail marriage to the cross. So he was
Speaker 1: against monogamous marriage, but he wasn't against sex. He was
Speaker 1: actually quite in favor of it as long as it
Speaker 1: took place between multiple partners. But he knew that there
Speaker 1: was a potential problem with that, and that was that
Speaker 1: complex marriage would soon produce a whole lot of kids,
Speaker 1: more kids than the community support. So he instituted this
Speaker 1: practice that he himself had begun after his wife had
Speaker 1: suffered from four premature births and death, and it was
Speaker 1: He called it male continents, and it was basically male
Speaker 1: birth control. Um. He decided to do it himself after
Speaker 1: her after her premature birth UM. She was quite understandably
Speaker 1: distraught over the death of those four kids, and he
Speaker 1: decided that she shouldn't have to go through it again.
Speaker 1: But he actually turns it into part of his philosophy
Speaker 1: after that. It's not just something that happened personally to him.
Speaker 1: He takes it and makes it part of the community.
Speaker 1: So he separates sex into two components, essentially the pleasurable
Speaker 1: aspect of it and the reproductive aspect, and treats them
Speaker 1: into entirely different ways. So, since Adam and Eveson, the
Speaker 1: reproductive part had been dominant, but by taking the reproductive
Speaker 1: aspect out of the picture, people would be free to
Speaker 1: indulge in the more pleasurable part. So this is how
Speaker 1: he saw it. Yeah, and this male continence idea that
Speaker 1: he comes up with really does work pretty well for
Speaker 1: the community as far as limiting the number of children born,
Speaker 1: because between eighteen forty eight in eighteen sixty nine, only
Speaker 1: thirty one kids they're born. And we're gonna talk a
Speaker 1: little bit more about kids in the community later, but
Speaker 1: after they were weaned, they were raised communally in this
Speaker 1: children's house by guardians. But there aren't just rules about
Speaker 1: how people were supposed to have sex and not reproduced.
Speaker 1: There were also rules about how the matchups even were made. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the main thing about these rules is that there
Speaker 1: were no secrets, right. That was the essential component here.
Speaker 1: For example, if you had sex with someone, it wasn't
Speaker 1: even happening in a private room. Instead, you would go
Speaker 1: to these small Trystane rooms. Is how they were known,
Speaker 1: I think, right off of the upper sitting room, and
Speaker 1: you could essentially book a room for a few hours,
Speaker 1: but everybody knew about it when you did. It seems
Speaker 1: so awkward to they are right off the room. I
Speaker 1: think one that is still in existence as a as
Speaker 1: a show piece really is right off the fitting room
Speaker 1: where everyone is hanging out. Um, but really everyone already
Speaker 1: knew who is matched up anyways, because couples had to
Speaker 1: be approved by the Central Guidance Committee, which was made
Speaker 1: of course of Noise and his family and other elders.
Speaker 1: And they not only approved the couples, but they kept
Speaker 1: an eye out for anyone that was getting too exclusive
Speaker 1: because that was of course at odds with the community's ideals. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and other couplings were enforced and created by the committee itself,
Speaker 1: which is kind of a strange idea. This is where
Speaker 1: it gets a little disturbing. Yeah, Noise would initiate teen
Speaker 1: girls while his wife and sister would do the same
Speaker 1: for boys. So this is one type of arrangement that
Speaker 1: was made to sort of introduce these younger people into
Speaker 1: the system. Yeah, and these these couples that were formed
Speaker 1: by the committee, not because of some other attraction. After
Speaker 1: the members hit their twenties, they were usually allowed to
Speaker 1: choose have a little more choice in who their partners
Speaker 1: were going to be. But interestingly, it is this regulation
Speaker 1: surrounding not just sex, but eventually child bearing that eventually
Speaker 1: signaled the beginning of the end for the community. So
Speaker 1: Noise decided that it seemed like the Kingdom of Heaven
Speaker 1: wasn't immediately on hand, and he started thinking that maybe
Speaker 1: they should start having more children and and beef up
Speaker 1: the numbers a little bit and have the community grow.
Speaker 1: So he started to approve natural reproduction, no longer using
Speaker 1: male continents. But there's a catch. Only the reproduction between
Speaker 1: partners that seemed to be a good spiritual match with
Speaker 1: each other. Yeah, he calls its strip culture. That's the
Speaker 1: name that he gave it. And it basically says that
Speaker 1: only those with the highest spiritual development will be allowed
Speaker 1: to reproduce. So couples would have to apply to the
Speaker 1: committee and either be accepted, reject died, or rematched with
Speaker 1: another person. And it was pretty successful. Forty eight kids
Speaker 1: or fifty eight, depending on which you read, were born
Speaker 1: between eighteen sixty nine in eighteen seventy nine. Nine of
Speaker 1: those were noise kids, because, of course he has the
Speaker 1: highest level of spiritual development. And one of the strange
Speaker 1: things about this is, of course it is very much
Speaker 1: inspired by eugenics. It's spiritual, but it is eugenics, and
Speaker 1: he had read quite a bit about it and and
Speaker 1: was trying to emulate that. But obviously it read a
Speaker 1: lot of hard feelings. In addition to children. There were
Speaker 1: couples who were rejected, who felt jealous of the people
Speaker 1: who did get to have children. Some of the new
Speaker 1: parents were sad because they're forced to turn their kids
Speaker 1: over to this communal upbringing, and so by eighteen seventy eight,
Speaker 1: some of the younger community members were getting really tired
Speaker 1: of it. They were getting fed up with being rejected
Speaker 1: or matched with the people they didn't want, or having
Speaker 1: to give up their kids, and they wanted romance and
Speaker 1: monogamous marriage and family, and so some of them started
Speaker 1: to couple up and leave the community, often when they
Speaker 1: were rejected by the committee. And trouble was compounded by
Speaker 1: noise passing on administration more and more to his son, Theodore,
Speaker 1: who was not very competent, and in eighteen seventy nine
Speaker 1: he fled to Canada because he was faced with this
Speaker 1: moral lawsuit. And it only took two months for the
Speaker 1: community to end the practice of complex marriage and mutual criticism.
Speaker 1: Can imagine maybe people were a little bit tired of that,
Speaker 1: but it's interesting to see how how quickly it crumbles
Speaker 1: with Without him, it dissolved quickly. But it didn't end
Speaker 1: there right, not exactly after the community dissolved in a
Speaker 1: couple of months. Within a year, they became a corporation,
Speaker 1: which is a total surp which was as a total shock,
Speaker 1: but I mean, when you look at it, they already
Speaker 1: had the foundations for this and the Share All Things group.
Speaker 1: They got together and decided that instead of property and partners,
Speaker 1: they would share stock in business. Yeah, so they formed
Speaker 1: the Oneida Community Limited, which was a joint stock company
Speaker 1: that made silver plate because they were quite successful and
Speaker 1: good in this manufacturing realm, and probably they were also
Speaker 1: thinking they had invested their life's work into a community.
Speaker 1: You want to get some kind of return on it,
Speaker 1: even if it's in the form of stock. That sort
Speaker 1: of goes against their their original community ideals. But Oneida
Speaker 1: Silver is, of course still one of the most famous
Speaker 1: American silver companies today. Their motto interestingly, like I checked
Speaker 1: out their website to see what they were what they
Speaker 1: were offering these days, and their motto is bring life
Speaker 1: to the table, which I'm probably reading too much into that.
Speaker 1: And the mansion house is also still intact. You can
Speaker 1: tour it, stay the night, and some people even rent
Speaker 1: apartments there. Only one trusting room is still left for show, however,
Speaker 1: the one I mentioned that is really right off of
Speaker 1: the upper sitting room. And um, I think maybe we
Speaker 1: could close out with this quote from an Oneida expert.
Speaker 1: He's a historian, Robert S. Fogerty, and he wrote quote,
Speaker 1: there's some who think noise is just a lecturer, pure
Speaker 1: and simple. There are others who believe that he was
Speaker 1: a great forward thinking individual who is a great religious figure.
Speaker 1: I think it's fifty fifty to be honest. So UM,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm sure that you guys are going to
Speaker 1: have an opinion on on noise and the Anona community,
Speaker 1: and um, maybe you have family members who were a
Speaker 1: part of it. I actually read that many of the
Speaker 1: people who go and stay at the mansion house today, UM,
Speaker 1: in the hotel or tour it did have ancestors who participated. UM.
Speaker 1: Or if you just have some some Oneida silver and
Speaker 1: let us know, um what you think about the history
Speaker 1: of the company. UM. You can email us at history
Speaker 1: podcast at how stuff works dot com. We're also on
Speaker 1: Twitter at Misston History, and we're on Facebook. I'm definitely
Speaker 1: expecting some feedback on this episode. Yeah, I can't imagine
Speaker 1: that people won't have some strong opinions about that. But
Speaker 1: if you want to learn a little bit more about
Speaker 1: some of the ideas related to those that we've talked
Speaker 1: about here, you can check out Molly Edmonds article on
Speaker 1: how polyamory works by visiting our homepage at www dot
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com For more on this and
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics. Visit how stuff works dot com
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