John Minter Morgan's Schemes, 1841–1855 W. H. G. ARMYTAGE JOHN MINTER MORGAN'S SCHEMES, 1841-185 5 One summer's day, 22 June 1841, fifty-nine year-old John Minter Morgan launched a scheme to establish "self-supporting villages" under the superintendence of the Established Church. It was a stirring attempt to rouse the Establishment to its responsibilities in the face of the Owenite challenge, and it secured a respectable response. An admiral (Sir G. Scott), a general (George Norton Eden) and a respectable muster of clergy, mainly from the Ham, East Sheen and West Molesely districts, all rallied to hear what was afoot.1 To Minter Morgan it was the climax of some twenty-five years in his career of social philanthropy 2, a career which he could be said to have begun when he first heard Robert Owen at the London Tavern on 21 August 1817 expound his gospel that "national edu- cation and employment could alone create a permanent, rational, intelligent, wealthy, and superior population, and that these results could be attained only by a scientific arrangement of the people, united in properly-constructed villages of unity and co-operation". As Owen became more aggressively atheistic, Minter Morgan became more conciliatory and Christian. Minter Morgan had supported the Duke of Kent's Committee, established in 1819 to raise subscriptions for the establishment of an experimental "parallelogram" or "Village of 1 His audience included the Hon. Alg. G. Tollemache, Rev. Jas. Hough, M. A., Capt. Blanchford, Gordon Forbes, Admiral Sir G. Scott, Gen. George Norton Eden, Rev. Thomas Hore and Captain Roberts, R. N., all of Ham; The Rev. Dr. Walmsley and Rev. J. A. Emerson, M. A., of Hanwell; Rev. Geo. Hope, R. N., Rev. G. Trevelyon, M. A., of Maiden; Rev. F. J. H. Reeves of East Sheen; Rev. E. A. Omaney, M. A., of Mortlake; Rev. J. P. Mills, A. B., of West Molesely; Dr. Arnott of Bedford Square; and G. Craik Esq. s His importance has been recognised by Max Beer, History of British Socialism (1929), i, pp. 126, 180, 184, 228-50. The purpose of this paper is to provide further evidence of his activities. G. D. H. Cole, Socialist Thought: The Forerunners 1789-1850 (1953) describes him as "the first to take up Owen's plans of 1817 and advocate their adoption, while rejecting Owen's hostility to religion." Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859000001036 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Carnegie Mellon University, on 06 Apr 2021 at 00:59:24, subject to the Cambridge https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859000001036 https://www.cambridge.org/core J . M. MORGAN S SCHEMES 2 7 Unity and Co-operation", by publishing an enthusiastic pamphlet entitled "Remarks on the Practicability of Mr. Owen's Plan to improve the Conditions of the Lower Classes". But Owen's aggra- vation of the churches prejudiced the success of the scheme and it collapsed. Morgan was deeply concerned about the consequences of industri- alisation. In 1826 (when he was 44 years old) he published The Revolt of the Bees. This, serialized by the Co-operative Magazine, was much read by working men, who bought it for their Mechanics' Institutes. Harriet Martineau read it and it was also to be found on the shelves of Manea Fen. In this he turned the cynical eighteenth-century thesis of that eighteenth-century Freud, Bernard Mandeville, to regenerative purposes. It was the story of a hive that went through five revolutions, from "noble savagery", through "pastoral occupations", "farming" and "industry", to a fifth revolution pioneered by "the wise bee" (Owen). After this fifth revolution all benefitted from a redistribution of the fruits of wealth and knowledge. He followed this by publishing An Inquiry Respecting Private Property and the authority and Perpetuity of the Apostolic Institution of a Community of Goods (1827), in which he called attention to the original function of a deacon, as one responsible for the communal property of the early Christians.1 II There was something apian in Minter Morgan's own industrious eclecticism. He was a great promoter of schemes for the Establish- ment to adopt. In Letters to the Bishop of London (1830) he put forward his plan. "Through the insufficiency of knowledge and experience in their respective eras", Morgan wrote, Plato, More and Bacon "were unable to perfect a system". "Yet", he continued, "their general principle was true and has at length assumed a practical and durable form". The "practical and durable form" of Morgan's plan was that "each class of society could derive great advantages without the surrender of their present habits and opinions". He urged the Bishop of London to sanction and commend it as "an advance towards a superior state of society". For episcopal sanction would ensure acceptance with the public. Morgan's plan was devised to prevent the intermixture of the three classes of society. For the upper class he suggested that a "college" 1 This work shows how the Essenes (p. 121), Spenceans (p. 132) and Shakers (p. 134) and Moravians (p. 134) coloured thought on the subject. He republished it in the Phoenix Library in 1850. Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859000001036 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Carnegie Mellon University, on 06 Apr 2021 at 00:59:24, subject to the Cambridge https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859000001036 https://www.cambridge.org/core 2 8 W. H. G. ARMYTAGE the size of one of the largest squares in London should be built, surrounded by a park and gardens. It was to house 1,000 families, each paying a rent of £ ioo a year, and would cost £ 800,000, and earn, in rentals, £ 40,000 a year. He had a model made and placed in the saloon of the Colosseum in Regents Park. He described this upper class community as combining: "the pleasures of town and country residence, for besides pro- curing, in a superior degree, their present objects including education for their children, they could have libraries, theatres, and philosophical apparatus for lectures, music and ballrooms, baths, gymnasia, and whatever belongs to the highest physical and moral cultivation . . . Increased attention could be given to scientific enquiry by magnificent orreries, globes lately exhibited at Paris, superior solar microscopes, and other aids to philo- sophical illustration, and such as no private fortune, however great, could command. The powerful impulse which such exhibitions and aids would have in stimulating the useful curiosity of the children, must be obvious. The concerts also could be conducted upon a scale of magnitude, and with an effect beyond the reach of any private entertainment. The Association would enable the children of the middle and higher classes of society to enjoy the benefit of an infant school, which has hitherto been confined to the working classes." For the other two classes, more modest communities were projected. "Squares" were to be erected seven miles outside London and centred round a school. The unemployed would have a "settlement" to provide work. For those who were not in community, Morgan suggested that churches should be opened on workdays as com- munity centres and in the evenings for lectures. Even here he was careful to add, "There would be no premature mixture of classes, as each class could occupy the same pews and seats as on a Sunday".1 As an enthusiast for "community", he was in close touch with Sted- man Whitwell and William Thompson, both of whom published their scheme in the same year as Morgan addressed the Bishop of London. Stedman Whitwell outlined his scheme in his "Description of an Architectural M o d e l . . . . for a Community upon a principle of United Interests, as advocated by Robert Owen" (London 1830). Whitwell's community was to be three times as large as Russell Square, covering thirty-three acres with a quadrangle of twenty-two acres. A diagonal line of this vast structure was to coincide with the 1 Letters to the Bishop of London (1830). Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859000001036 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Carnegie Mellon University, on 06 Apr 2021 at 00:59:24, subject to the Cambridge https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859000001036 https://www.cambridge.org/core J . M. MORGAN S SCHEMES 2 9 meridian to ensure equal distribution of light and be convenient for astronomical and geographical purposes. Each side of the parallelo- gram was to consist of i ,000 feet. Each apartment was to have a ground and a first-floor and consist of two sets of sitting rooms, a chamber and a closet. Dormitories were to be provided both for the unmarried and for children. The whole building was to be internally heated, with hot and cold water in each apartment. There were to be libraries and public rooms with large staircases leading throughout the building. It was a Fourierist phalanx anglicised.1 Thompson went one further and issued "Practical Directions for the Speedy and Economical Establishment of Communities" (1830). He thought that communities could be founded as easily as "the establish- ment of any ordinary manufacture", by a joint stock company. Communities, Thompson continued, could arise out of a normal co- operative venture, of which he recognised there were some 300 or so existing in England. From co-operative nuclei, Thompson envisaged a community of 2,000 people taking shape. His sanitary, agricultural and economic ideas included a suggestion for regulation of the birth rate. When he died three years later he left £ 10,000 to some socialist trustees for the purpose of establishing Communities. As the legacy was inadequate and creditors were pressing, the plan came to nothing.2 Thompson's plan captured the imagination of co-operators and at the Manchester Co-operative Conference of 1831, it was resolved "upon the plan laid down by Mr. Thompson" to establish communi- cation with 199 other Co-operative Societies in order that "an incipi- ent Community of two hundred persons, with a capital of £ 6,000 may immediately be formed in some part of England". A committee was duly formed in October of that year to carry out the plan. "Immediacy", however, was the stumbling block. Owen (who had returned to England in 1829) discouraged the project, and at the 1832 Congress in London the Committee reported that they had only secured support from two of the societies. Travellers from America, where they had seen communities in action, fed the enthusiasm and T. Wayland, in his Equalisation of Property and the Formation of Community (,1832), revealed that he was much encouraged by their tales. Owen himself added impetus to the drive for a community. The Crisis, first issued in 1832, carried a picture of a community on its title page. Two years later this paper, now called The New Moral 1 Stedman Whitwell was at New Harmony (Indiana) with Owen from January to August 1826 where he published A new nomenclature suggested for communities, in: New Har- mony Gazette, 12 April 1826, and published an account of it in the Co-operative Magazine (London) in January 1827. 2 R. K. P. Pankhurst, William Thompson, 1775-1833, London 1954. Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859000001036 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Carnegie Mellon University, on 06 Apr 2021 at 00:59:24, subject to the Cambridge https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859000001036 https://www.cambridge.org/core }O W. H . G. ARMYTAGE World, carried numerous suggestions for communities. "J.C.", for instance, writing in the 4th number of the New Moral World, proposed a "Floating Co-operative Community", arguing: "As the preservation of the human species depended on the ark, why may not the regeneration of society arise from the waters. The very deluge which destroyed the imperfections of anti- diluvian society, may become instrumental, by the aid of modern science, in establishing the foundation of a new moral world by giving a local habitation and a name to what has been contemptu- ously called the visionary system of Mr. Owen." * "J.C." suggested that an old warship should be purchased on the Thames where such an experiment might be initiated. Another correspondent, "E.L.", suggested a week later that a community should be established.2 As Owen re-entered the English scene, Morgan turned his attention to education. He had lectured at the London Mechanics Institute in 1830 on Sunday lectures. Three years earlier (in 1827) he had printed Pestalozzi's Letters on Early Education and held Pestalozzi's chief English disciple, James Pierrepont Greaves, in high regard, remarking in his book "Hampden in the Nineteenth Century, or Colloquies on the Errors and Improvement or Society" (18 3 4) that "among the numerous advocates for various improvements, there was not one who exceeded him in personal sacrifices to what he esteemed a duty".3 He also urged the proprietors of the newly-founded University of London, in an "Address" he printed in 1833, to establish a chair of education.4 And as Owen's scheme for a community at Tytherley began to annoy the clergy, Minter Morgan began to crusade on behalf of a self-supporting village under the superintendance of the Church of. England. Ill During the extensive Parliamentary debates on the "condition of England" in July 1842, Minter Morgan organised a petition to Parliament. It was presented by William F. Cowper, whose mother was the sister of Lord Melbourne, the wife of Lord Cowper and mistress of Lord Palmerston, whom she married shortly after her 1 New Moral World, 22 November 1834. 2 Ibid. 29 November 1834. 3 Hampden in the Nineteenth Century (1834). Emerson read it and wrote "The spirit is excellent". The Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson (1939) ed. R. L. Rusk, IV p. 71. 4 Mistaken by Dr. H. Hale Bellot, University College, London (1929), p. 141 as "a Mr. J. H. Morgan". Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859000001036 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Carnegie Mellon University, on 06 Apr 2021 at 00:59:24, subject to the Cambridge https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859000001036 https://www.cambridge.org/core j . M. MORGAN'S SCHEMES 31 husband's death in 1837.1 Though it came to nothing, it brought further publicity to his scheme. He also sought for, and obtained, the approval of the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford. He stumped the country. At Cheltenham the Rev. Francis Close held a crowded meeting in the infant school to expatiate upon this plan.2 At Sheffield, the clergy listened in April of 1843 to an explanation of it, and the Sheffield Iris reported: "Church of England Agricultural Self-Supporting Institution During the past week Mr. John Milner [!] Morgan, of Ham Common, in Surrey, has been exhibiting before the clergy and other inhabitants of the town, a very beautiful transparent painting at the Cutler's Hall of a Self-Supporting Institution, the principles and economy of which, he states, might be applied, with the necessary modifications, to existing manufacturing establishments, having such an extent of land as might afford a healthful and profitable resource to the workmen and their families, especially in times of commercial difficulty. According to the prospectus, it is proposed to form, in the centre of an adequate extent of land (not less than one thousand acres) arrangements in connection with the Church of England, in which, under efficient direction three hundred families may be established, by the produce of their own labour, not only to support themselves, but to defray the expenses of the Establishment. In these expenses would be included the interest of capital advanced. The chief employment of the aggregated body would be agricultural, combined, at the discretion of the Committee of Management, with handicraft and mechanical pursuits. The whole concern looks very beautiful on canvas, but we doubt very much its practicability. - We understand that Mr. Morgan purposes returning to Sheffield during the summer, when the subject will be brought before a public meeting."3 A similar meeting, six months later, at the Wakefield Mechanics Institute was the subject of comment by the Leeds Mercury: 1 The text can be found in Morgan's Christian Commonwealth (1850) pp. 97-8. W. F. Cowper later (in 1848) married Georgina Tollemache of Ham, whose cousin was another of Minter Morgan's supporters (see Note 1 on p. 26). She edited "Memorials" of his life (privately printed, 1890). From this we learn that in 1858 he was reading Law's Spirit of Love and "liked it very much". He was a friend and supporter of Laurence Oliphant. 2 Rev. Francis Close 1787-1882, was a diligent pamphleteer who had published his "sermon to the Female Chartists at Cheltenham" in 1859 and issued a sermon "on insipid sermons" in 1867. 3 The Sheffield Iris, 15 April, 1843. Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859000001036 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Carnegie Mellon University, on 06 Apr 2021 at 00:59:24, subject to the Cambridge https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859000001036 https://www.cambridge.org/core 32 W. H. G. ARMYTAGE "The plan is very similar to that proposed by Mr. Robert Owen, with the addition of a church and a resident minister. We understand that the law of marriage, as at present understood, is proposed to be adhered to in the Modern Eden." 1 In the following year Morgan explained his scheme at the Clerical Library, and the Collegiate Sunday School, Liverpool, at the Athe- naeum and St. Ann's Schoolroom in Manchester, at St. George's School Rooms, Bolton, and at a large public meeting in Derby.2 For those who did not attend such public meetings, Morgan issued a large illustrated folio volume entitled The Christian Commonwealth (1845). I n t n i s n e outlined his philosophy of historical development citing Plato, Bacon, More, Harrington, and the Gaudentia de Lucca (which he ascribed to Bishop Berkeley) as "speculators on better systems of polity". He added that his own times were far more aus- picious than theirs as "the idea of commencing de novo with a detached portion of the community, and illustrating their principles by an epiborne of society, had not then occurred: but in modern times the principle of Association has often been resorted to for the accomplish- ment of many important objects". Co-secretaries of his "Society to Form Self-Supporting Villages" were the Rev. Joseph Brown and the Rev. Edmund R. Larken. Brown, the chaplain to the Poor Law Schools at Norwood, used to bring poor London children down to Ham Common each year.3 E. R. Larken, an old Etonian, was the rector of Burton by Lincoln in 1843.* He had a large beard and had flirted with "Christian Fou- rierism". As a thirty-two year old social investigator in 1842, he had, he said, "met with sights and sounds of distress enough to freeze the blood within my veins". This experience led him to promote a new but partially tried remedy, Association upon Christian principles, "wherein, each labouring for all, the exertions of each will receive their due and proper reward - wherein the weak shall be aided and supported by the strong". In 1843, a s a Lincolshire curate, he had preached a sermon at Horbling "on behalf of the distressed manu- facturers" from Galatians VI 2: "Bear ye one another's burdens". The sermon was printed by J. Young as "Christian Sympathy" (1843) and contained a sketch of the industrial system of Fourier. 1 Leeds Mercury, 28 October, 1843. 2 J. Minter Morgan, The Christian Commonwealth (1845). 3 He published a "Sketch of the State and Progress of the Poor Law Schools at Norwood with reference to Religion" (1843). 4 E. R. Larken. He was so described by G. J. Holyoake (Sixty Years of an Agitator's Life, 1893, i, p. 237). He had married the daughter of Lord Monson and his rectory was in his father-in-law's park. W. J. Linton, Memories (1895). Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859000001036 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Carnegie Mellon University, on 06 Apr 2021 at 00:59:24, subject to the Cambridge https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859000001036 https://www.cambridge.org/core J . M. MORGAN S SCHEMES 3 3 Larken was a good French scholar; five years later he and Matilda Hays were to publish a translation of the Works of George Sand. Similar efforts were being made by his friends in other directions. The Bishop of Norwich and W. F. Cowper subscribed their moral and financial support to the Labourer's Friend Society. This body had on 11 May 1844 enlarged its operations and changed its name to the Society for the Improvement of the Conditions of the Labouring Classes. As such, it promoted schemes for model houses and agri- cultural cottages, allotments and "planned dwellings". From greatly increased financial resources it now exhibited model houses in Strea- tham Street, Bloomsbury, where 48 families were housed, a building known as 2 Charles Street, Drury Lane, where 82 single men lived, and another at 76 Hatton Gardens housing 59 single women. It had no less than seven designs for agricultural cottages in pairs.1 To this widening scope of operations, the Society now had the advantage of a journal, The Labourer's Friend, which recorded right up to the i88oties, a host of similar promotions and activities. Minter Morgan was its firm supporter, and his name was prominent in the subscription list. Then too, in 1845, W. F. Cowper devoted himself to promoting a Bill in the House of Commons for enabling vestries and local authori- ties to acquire land for letting it out in allotments. This measure was opposed by the utilitarian group like J. A. Roebuck, since it would stem the march of industrialism. Nor did Morgan confine his missionary tours to England. He met some English workmen at Boulogne in 1845 and (literally) unfolded his scheme to them. According to him they saw "it was the best remedy for the disorders of society they had yet heard of, and better than O'Connor".2 He also talked to the Fourierists, Considerant and Doherty. He interviewed Etienne Cabet, who gave him a copy of his famous book. So convinced was he of the essential wrong headedness of Fourierist schemes that he devoted Letter 12 of "Letters to a Clergyman" (1846) to a severe criticism ot them. Morgan also visited the Moravian settlements at Herrnhut in Saxony, Neuwied on the Rhine and Zeist in Holland. At each the bishops and managers recommended the speedy establishment of similar communities. In his travels he met the Baron von der Recke 1 See The Labourer's Friend, June 1844. The Labourer's Friend Society was formed in 1831 and had already published Facts and Illustrations demonstrating the important benefits... derived... from possessing small portions of land etc. (1831). Cottage Hus- bandry; the utility and national advantage of allotting land for that purpose (1835). 2 Letters to a Clergyman (1846), p. 5. Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859000001036 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Carnegie Mellon University, on 06 Apr 2021 at 00:59:24, subject to the Cambridge https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859000001036 https://www.cambridge.org/core 34 W. H. G. ARMYTAGE in Diisseldorf, where an old monastery was being used as a social community.1 IV After five years of such activity, the Church of England Self-Sup- porting Villages Society held another important meeting at the Exeter Hall on 27 May 1846. The Hon. William F. Cowper, M. P., presided, flanked by powerful and distinguished Tories.2 Cowper opened the meeting by saying, "We are in the situation of people digging in a field for a treasure which we believe to be somewhere about, but know not exactly where". With a singular analogy, he continued, "The Clubs of London show how the principle of combination can be applied to the increase of luxury. Palaces are reared containing comforts for a large body of men which they could not have individually and separately. But the benefits to be derived from combination have not yet been extended as they might be to the social existence of the hard labour classes." The audience was a large one, larger than had been expected, and the Bishop of Norwich rose to express his "satisfaction" that this was the case. He outlined his own "conversion" to Morgan's scheme: "I can well recollect that when I first heard of this institution, and mentioned it to others, prejudices were excited immediately; because Mr. Morgan talked of squares and parallelograms, immediately the ghost of Mr. Owen's plan rose up before people's imaginations; and I believe that that phantom very nearly nipped the whole scheme in the bud. He now simply proposes to establish a village, no matter what its form shall be, whether square, or circus or streets, but an aggregation of buildings, which shall accommodate 300 families, which, taking four or five to a family, we may consider to amount to 1200 or 1500 individuals." After expiating on the virtues of "combination and concentration" as principles for improving the standard of living, the Bishop said: "It appears that the ruling principle which Christianity enjoins in the intercourse between man and man has never yet been fully applied to the social and industrial arrangements of a country; these have hitherto not been directed by the spirit of love and mutual participation in different wants and cases. We have gone 1 Op. cit. 2 For a full report of the conference op. cit., pp. 155-192 and The People's Journal 1 (1846), Annals of Industry 46. Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859000001036 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Carnegie Mellon University, on 06 Apr 2021 at 00:59:24, subject to the Cambridge https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859000001036 https://www.cambridge.org/core J . M. MORGAN S SCHEMES 35 upon the old principle, which I fear still prevails among Christians . . . of each looking to his own interest and trusting that the interest of the whole would be secured by each member caring for himself. Now I am anxious to attempt something of a different sort." When the Bishop stressed that "among the cluster of cottages, first, and above all, the spire of a Church of England should rise", cheers and "a solitary hiss" greeted him. James Silk Buckingham moved a resolution "that the benefits resulting in the Moravian settlements, from a more intimate con- nection between secular and religious affairs, and the rapid accumu- lation of wealth in some religious societies constituted on a similar principle in America, encourage a well-grounded type that associations of the unemployed poor, under the direction of intelligent members of our own pure and reformed Church, with all the facilities and scientific appliances this country affords, would realise advantages still more important". Not only did he quote the Shakers and Rappites in support of his thesis, but also the example of the Irish Waste Lands Society formed in 1841 under the Earl of Devon, which was culti- vating 18,000 acres of land with 2,000 people, and paying a dividend of i\%. Buckingham suggested that they might begin on the "associ- ative principle" with waste land on Hounslow Heath or Salisbury Plain. Buckingham was seconded by the Rev. Hugh Hughes, the Rector of St. Johns, Clerkenwell, who confessed that he knew of "no other plan that is likely to meet the emergencies of society". "The present miserable and destitute state of the working classes of this country", he went on, "is far beyond the reach of any measure hitherto at- tempted for their amelioration." The Rev. Hughes vented some rous- ing socialistic principles which were loudly applauded when he said that "the very necessity of these institutions would cease to exist if men were remunerated for their labour as they ought to be". "Our most holy faith repudiates the spirit of exclusive competition for wealth which marks the present generation." Finally the Rev. E. R. Larken proposed the formation of the Church of England Self-Supporting Village Society. Its aims were defined as for: "promoting the religious, moral and general improvement of the working classes, by forming establishments for three or four hundred families, in which instruction may be allowed, and religious ordinances administered, on the principles of the Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859000001036 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Carnegie Mellon University, on 06 Apr 2021 at 00:59:24, subject to the Cambridge https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859000001036 https://www.cambridge.org/core 3,6 W. H . G. ARMYTAGE Church of England, and combining agriculture with manu- facturing employment, for their own benefit." 1,000 acres, and £ 45,000 were wanted, and the Society set about raising it. When Emerson visited England in 1847, he attended one of Morgan's meetings and described the audience as "mainly socialist". Emerson was impressed by the "huge coloured revolving view" with which Morgan explained his views of the future social organisation of the country.1 Morgan was also financing the publication, in this year, or W. C. Walton's Law and other Mystics, together with further extracts from Greaves' journals New Theosophic Revelations and The New Nature in the Soul. V Morgan's own books had meanwhile been having an effect beyond his own efforts. As Canon Raven has shown, they were in the library of J. M. Ludlow, the logistic genius of the Christian Socialist Movement.2 William Cowper, who had presented the petition in 1842 and was one of the speakers at the Exeter Hall meeting in 1846, became an early supporter of the Christian Socialists in association with Thomas Hughes.3 Another of the speakers at the Exeter Hall meeting was James Silk Buckingham 4 who, as we have seen, suggested that the Church of England might begin its operations on Hounslow Heath or Salisbury Plain. Buckingham had been impressed both by Moravian and Shaker experiments and went on to exploit Morgan's ideas in a pamphlet of his own called National Evils and Practical Remedies, published in 1848. This is now recognised as the first complete and concrete scheme for a garden city, the first practical blueprint for a planned town. The very name of this model city - Victoria - was Minter Morgan's. 1 Rusk, The Life of Ralph Waldo Emerson (1949), p. 352. 2 C. E. Raven, Christian Socialism (1920), p. 140. 3 Writing to Lady Cowper-Temple on 29 October 1888, Thomas Hughes said, "It is all but forty years since we first met in Lincoln's Inn Chapel, in the early days of Christian Socialism, of which movement then so vehemently and widely denounced, he was from the first an avowed and liberal supporter, and from his social and public position, ranked more than all the rest of us put together. Memorials printed for private circulation, 1890, p. 151. 4 Buckingham was not only a pioneer town planner in England (Lewis Mumford, The Culture of Cities, London 1940, p. 394) and the first M. P. for Sheffield, but a pioneer of self-government for the colonies (Cambridge History of the British Empire, Cambridge 1940, ii, p. 405). He was also a notable publicist and founded The Athenaeum, The Sphynx and The Oriental Herald and Colonial Review. Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859000001036 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Carnegie Mellon University, on 06 Apr 2021 at 00:59:24, subject to the Cambridge https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859000001036 https://www.cambridge.org/core J. M. MORGANS SCHEMES 37 It was to be an iron city with glass-covered streets. "Beershops, Gin palaces, cigar divans, and pawnbrokers", together with gunpowder, were to be prohibited. But what we must admire is his uncanny prognosis of many of the features which we ourselves have come to acknowledge as the very principles of good town planning. Buckingham's ideal town covered a square mile and would house 10,000 people of all classes. He recognized ten categories of workers, and wanted his town to blend both the agricultural and industrial elements in its economy. His streets were to be a hundred feet wide, and they were all to lead somewhere. There were to be no blind alleys which might lead to "the morose defiance of public decency which such secret haunts generate in the inhabitants". In plan it resembled a concentric series of rectangles; the centre of the town to be a large green park, with the main public buildings grouped round it. The houses, themselves in broad avenues, were to be in square belts around this civic centre, till they lapped the great green fringe outside the town itself. In these houses on the outside fringe of the town, nearest the green belt, were to be the workers' dwellings. All the streets were to be covered galleries, to discourage traffic and to keep those travelling to work from the inclemency of the weather. His factory and workshop area coverd 40 acres. To relieve the drabness of his rows of houses, a liberal intermixture of open spaces and parks were suggested. The practicability of the scheme is shown by his intention to launch it by means of a company. This was to have a capital of £ 4,000,000 and would construct the houses to sell at prices ranging from £ 30 to £ 300. The council of the town were to be elected by the shareholders, and in order to prevent anyone obtaining a monopoly, the number of shares to be held was limited. Certain features of his scheme seem surprisingly modern. One was that all married families with children were to have not less than three rooms. Another was that the children should stay at school till they were fifteen years old. Medical service was to be free, with the doctors paid by the community to prevent disease rather than to cure it. Moreover, he suggested that it would be a good thing if as many of the inhabitants as possible took their meals in the large public halls provided for the purpose - a striking forecast of the Civic restaurant. VI After the collapse of the Chartists and the rise of the Christian Socialists, Morgan intensified his efforts to raise £ 50,000 for his Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859000001036 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Carnegie Mellon University, on 06 Apr 2021 at 00:59:24, subject to the Cambridge https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859000001036 https://www.cambridge.org/core 38 W. H. G. ARMYTAGE scheme. He issued a collection of his writings in the Phoenix Library.1 But none took him seriously. The Illustrated London News, on 24 August 1850, condemned his project as "dooming men to an oyster-like level of morals and manners" and looking "more like a lunatic asylum than the ordinary abodes of rational men". "It reminds us", continued the Illustrated London News, "of Bridewell, or some contrivance for central inspection, not of the sunny or shady lanes in which the rose and honeysuckle decked cottages of our native land are so happily nestled . . . The idea is obviously borrowed from the unsuccessful efforts of the State to correct the people by bridewells, workhouses and prisons - substituting a gentler kind of control for meagre diet, ships, dungeons and fetters . . . Mr. Morgan does not conceal his desire to organize the "destitute people" and the whole society in Reducations (formal villages) similar to those by which the Jesuits drilled the Indians in Paraguay and made them fit for the despotism and desolation of Dr. Francia." Not only Paraguay, but New Harmony, Snigs End and Icaria were held up as typical examples of what would happen if the non-com- petive, highly regulated society of Morgan's plan was brought into operation.2 Nothing daunted, Morgan proceeded with the publication of his testament, The Triumph, or the Coming Age of Christianity (18 51). This was a collection of enthusiastic supporters of community life from Bacon to Thompson. From our point of view, the most inter- esting extract is that from Whiston's translation of Josephus on the Essenes. Amongst others were Buckingham and Mrs. Martineau on the Shakers, Beattie on the Elysian age and Langford on the age of gold. One of those whom Morgan quoted in this anthology was his friend Robert Pemberton, and it was Pemberton who, in the year before his death, carried his ideas literally a stage further away from reality by publishing The Happy Colony (1854).3 Described as "the result of 1 It is significant that he included his friend Charles Hall's The Effects of Civilisation (1805) in the series. Hall, who died in 1820, was practically unknown till Morgan produced this edition. G. D. H. Cole, op. cit., p. 35. a It should in fairness be said that there were a number of similar schemes in the air. In 1845 a London architect called Moffatt proposed to form an association for the erection of villages within four to ten miles of the metropolis to house 350,000 people at a cost of£ 10,000,000. 8 Pemberton, in this plan, shows himself a disciple of John Minter Morgan, for not only did he quote Morgan in The Happy Colony in 1854 (on page 209) but in his Address of the following year, To the Bishops and Clergy of all denominations and to all Professors and Teachers of the Christian World, he shared Morgan's hope that the established churches would come to his aid in the project. Indeed, he shows his allegiance, by mention- ing Morgan as his friend on page 21 of this work. — Before the Happy Colony, Pemberton Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859000001036 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Carnegie Mellon University, on 06 Apr 2021 at 00:59:24, subject to the Cambridge https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859000001036 https://www.cambridge.org/core J. M. MORGANS SCHEMES 39 twenty years study", The Happy Colony is dedicated "To the Working Men of Great Britain" and divided into three parts: a Philosophical dialogue, an Address to the Workmen of Great Britain, and a de- scription of the "Elysian Academy or Natural University". Two large plates are included in the text. Pemberton intended his colony to be taken seriously, for his book includes a prospectus for its formation. "Why is man not happy?" asked Pemberton, and replied: "the cause is that every child is bred into slavery" The remedy, he continued, was for the workers to found a Happy Colony under the sovereignty of Queen Victoria in an island of the Pacific, "where the land is open and ready to receive the best and most scientific system of dividing and laying it out". This best and most scientific system Pemberton outlined in his Queen Victoria Town - an interesting and novel garden had written three other tracts. The Attributes of the Soul from the Cradle, and the Philosophy of the Divine Mother, Detecting the false basis, or fundamental error of the schools and developing the perfect education of man (i 849); The Natural Methods of Teaching the elements of grammar for the nursery and infant schools (1851); and The Natural Method of Teaching the Technical Language of Anatomy for the Nursery and Infant Schools (1852). — Afterwards he wrote six more: An Address to the Bishops and Clergy of all denominations, and to all professors and teachers of the Christian World, on Robert Owen's proclamation of the millenial state to commence this year (1855); The Infant Drama: a model of the true method of teaching all languages (1857); (a letter by R. Pemberton on his system of teaching languages) 1857; Report of the proceedings at the inauguration of Mr. Pemberton's new Philosophical Model Infant School, for teaching languages on the natural or euphonic system (1857); The Science of Mind Formation, and the reproduction of genius elaborated; involving the remedy for all our social evils (1858); An Address to the people on the necessity of Popular Education, in conjunction with emigration, as a remedy for all our social ills (1859). As might have been expected from these, Pemberton's main interest lay in education. His Address to the Bishops said: "Our present civilisation,under the boarding school system, is obtained at the cost and sacrifice of health, and muscular and nervous energy, producing empty heads and useless hands. All must be genteel, and consequently useless; and every species of useless occupation must be inverted for the educated classes; but the burden of feeding, clothing, and housing this multitude of useless beings falls on the workmen. This state of villainy or corrupt imbecility cannot last. Every child of man is worth all the stars and worlds in the heavens; but every man that is bred to genteel idle- ness, is worse than a savage and does indirectly more mischief to society, by reason that others follow like a flock of sheep, the bad example." As to the future he was very gloomy: "Excess of population in Great Britain will of necessity bring about a dreadful crisis sooner or later. The gentleman-and-lady imbecile education, by which the nation is of necessity governed, combined with our commercial gambling mania, will if continued, produce ruin and destruction to Great Britain." The only tangible result of his labours was the establishment of a school at 33, Euston Square, N.W , opened on 22nd August 1857, where his son Robert Markham and his two daughters, Charlotte Delia and Elizabeth Mary, taught. This school essayed to practise the ideas embodied in his writings. Languages were to be taught by sound. "Sound", he wrote, "will become the giant power that will harmonise the human race." He said that his school possessed a "chromatic barrell organ" to accustom the child to music from birth, and a system of cards for teaching grammar. Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859000001036 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Carnegie Mellon University, on 06 Apr 2021 at 00:59:24, subject to the Cambridge https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859000001036 https://www.cambridge.org/core 4 0 W. H. G. ARMYTAGE city, planned on circular lines - as opposed to the rectangular fancies of James Silk Buckingham. Pemberton envisaged an inner ring of fifty acres with four colleges, each with conservatories, workshops, swimming baths and riding schools. These were to be surrounded by an outer ring containing the factories, public hospitals and gardens of the community. Outside these again was to be a park; the outer rim of this was to be three miles long in circumference. The whole project was to cradle the new Labour Kingdom based on Creation and Love. Labour was to be the basis of the economic system. "All truths must emanate from the people", Pemberton argued; "the emancipating power must proceed from the labour kingdom". He rejected the contemporary world of his own day as "the germ of every sin and error, and the very root of all corruption, unhappiness and misery in every class of society . . . Wealth is the tyrant of labour and the destroying angel of the happiness of the human race". Unlike Buckingham, who envisaged the establishment of his model city through a joint-stock company, Pemberton proposed to grant plots of land to its occupiers. Just how they were to obtain the capital for the enterprises is left unexplained. VII One of those responsible for convening and presiding over public meetings in the year 1845 w a s t n e Head Constable of Bradford, Titus Salt. He may well have heard Minter Morgan, though as a Congre- gationalist he could not be expected to swallow or follow his idea of making the Church of England the central pivot of a "self supporting village". Indeed, being a Yorkshire manufacturer, he was more likely to make his factory the centre of such an experiment. Yet he could see that Minter Morgan's moral approach to the need for urban reorganisation was justified in the light of evidence given to the Health of Towns Commission in the following year 1846. To this Commission James Smith of Deanston, reporting on Bradford, remarked "it was the most filthy town I visited". He spoke of houses being put up regardless of any place for gardens or sport, crammed into as small a space as possible, and added "if the lower orders have not places where they can engage in sports and keep their minds engaged in matters of that kind, it is the very thing to drive them to chartism". Some of the Christian Socialists, who unconsciously owed so much to Minter Morgan, thought the same. So did several manufacturers. After all, Disraeli had sketched the archetype in Mr. Trafford of Sybil and the Millbanks factory and village in Coningsbj. So when in 1848 Titus Salt became mayor of Bradford and the town was gripped Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859000001036 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Carnegie Mellon University, on 06 Apr 2021 at 00:59:24, subject to the Cambridge https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859000001036 https://www.cambridge.org/core j . M. MORGAN'S SCHEMES 41 by both Chartism and cholera, he began to consider the possibility of such a community for his own employees. In 1850 he consulted the firm of Lockwood and Mason. In 1851 he went up to the Great Exhibition in London (where the Prince Consort's model houses for working men were being exhibited) and made an offer for the Crystal Palace itself, which he intended to use as a weaving shed. This idea had to be abandoned because of the vibration involved in the manu- facturing process which would have broken the glass. Such daring imagination and opportunism had been the key of Titus Salt's career. Born at Morley on the 20 September 1803, he had at- tended the grammar school at Heath before following his father to Bradford as a wooldealer. At that time, his father dealt in Donskoi wool: Titus however, thought of making worsted out of it. And when he could find no one in Bradford who would listen to his suggestion, he decided to set up in the manufacturing business himself. He began in Silsbridge Lane, and by the time he was thirty- three years old, he had four other mills hard at work. That was in 1836. In that same year, he went to Liverpool on a visit. There, in the warehouse, he found three hundred bags of Llama or alpaca wool. Admiring its long staple and sheen, he was quick to appreciate the possibilities of this and bought the whole consignment at 8d. per pound, and began to make alpaca cloth. In 1850 the chimneys of over 200 mills were polluting the air of Bradford. It was a depressing environment in which to work. Titus Salt determined to emancipate his workers from the smoky canopy in which they lived, and made plans to transfer his factories to the valley of the Aire where the London-Glasgow railway and the Leeds and Liverpool canal intersect. At the same time he proposed to build a complete community for the workers in the Salt factories. Thus Saltaire was conceived. Work began in the autumn of 18 51, and within two years, the first part of the model town was finished: the factories and houses. The great congregation which assembled on 20 September 1853 to see the opening of Saltaire was confronted with an amazing sight! Sprawling over ten acres was a huge works, shaped like the letter T. Built in the Italian style, the T was six storeys, or seventy-two feet high. The facade of the building was the top of the T, and it contained on its top floor one of the longest and largest rooms in the world at that time. Great windows of plate glass admitted light into the building, flues admitted fresh air, while noise was eliminated by placing all the machinery under the flooring. This last arrangement was a great novelty at the time, for it not only made for comparative silence, but enabled the weaving rooms to be kept free from dust. The stem of the letter T was formed by the warehouses which ran Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859000001036 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Carnegie Mellon University, on 06 Apr 2021 at 00:59:24, subject to the Cambridge https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859000001036 https://www.cambridge.org/core 4 2 W. H. G. ARMYTAGE down towards the canal some hundred years or more away. Special conduits caught the rain water and stored it in tanks, ready to be used by the factory. Linking this great production unit with the outside world were a number of roads. Perhaps the most striking object to those who were seeing it for the first time was the chimney - a huge two hundred and fifty feet shaft built in the style of an Italian bell- tower. Up it passed every day the smoke from fifty tons of coal a day, but little of it escaped at the top, for special smoke burning appliances destroyed its toxicity. The engines, with a combined horse power of three thousand horse power, drove some three miles of shafting. To build this mammoth works, twenty quarries worked full-time for two years, and its solidity, as late as 1876 was described by one proud native as "having no equal in this or any other country". Around this great stone T rose houses of various sizes, also built of stone, each with a kitchen, living room and scullery, a pantry, cellar and at least three bedrooms. In a few years, no less than 800 of these houses sprang up around the factory, covering a further twenty-six acres. Shops, too, lined the well-paved streets, and soon a church (finished in 1859) described as "the most exquisite example of pure Italian architecture in the Kingdom", schools, a Literary Institute, and other social amenities all followed, and all provided by the generosity of Titus Salt. In front of these schools and the Institute were four carved lions, and the story goes that they were designed by Thomas Milnes the sculptor for the base of Nelson's column in Trafalgar Square, but owing to some hitch, the commission was withdrawn and offered to Edwin Landseer, whose lions lie in Trafalgar Square today. Titus Salt saw the four lions made by Milnes, and had them moved to Saltaire. Saltaire might well be described as "an industrial Utopia". It was a man-planned frame, integrating industry, housing and, in time, parks, trout fishing, and boating - indeed all the amenities of which the mind of man could conceive - were provided, except one. For across the boundary of the town was written all beer abandon ye that enter here. For to Titus Salt, as to Morgan and James Silk Buckingham "Drink and Lust" lay at the bottom of all social evils.1 1 R. Balgarnie, Sir Titus Salt; His Life and Lessons (1873). Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859000001036 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Carnegie Mellon University, on 06 Apr 2021 at 00:59:24, subject to the Cambridge https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859000001036 https://www.cambridge.org/core