would publish a short book on the subject a great cloud lifted. His encouragement and enthusiasm never wavered and I owe the existence of the book to this gifted editor. I am proud to be published under his imprint.
I presented the first draft of the manuscript to my colleagues in the History Department Workshop at the University of Virginia in September of 1992. The reception was heartening and the suggestions for improvement wonderfully varied and helpful. For their presence and encouragement I thank Ed Ayers; Brian Balogh; Alice Carter; Bob Cross; Rebecca Edwards; Megan Holden; Michael Holt; Ann Lane; Juliette Landphair; Mel Leffler; Andy Lewis; Nelson Lichtenstein; Brad Mittendorf; Duane Osheim; Anne Rubin; Pat Sullivan; and David Throup. Bill Taylor and Ann Schutte also gave me very helpful suggestions.
Lisa Szefel helped as my research assistant and showed me what an accomplished editor she is. Gwyneth Love, director of the Oberlin in London program, made me the beneficiary of her acute sense of style and tone to point me to many needed improvements. Gale Rowe, secretary of the Fairhope Single Tax Corporation, supported me all the way, gave me guidance on critical points, and generously shared his reactions with me. Fairhope is lucky to have him.
Fitz Brundage, of Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada, kindly let me read his unpublished essay on “The Utopian Moment in the New South.” He also shared with me his knowledge of the Ruskin colony and commented helpfully on my Fairhope work. Ron Yanosky found time during his first year of teaching at Harvard to read the manuscript and guide me to a better understanding of the national single-tax movement, the subject of his dissertation. He sent me numerous detailed suggestions—all of them immensely helpful—gave me a copy of his unpublished paper, “The Colored Farmers’ Alliance and the Single Tax,” and granted me permission to quote parts of it and to cite some of his other unpublished findings. This is scholarly generosity at its best, and I am deeply grateful for it.
My daughter, Chinta Gaston, pronounced the book good, and then marked up all but a few of my pages with red ink. She spotted sloppy constructions, suggested felicitous alternatives, and made me aware of ambiguous arguments and unwarranted expectations of my readers. I hope she will be available for the next book. Bill Abbot, my colleague and neighbor, has never ceased urging me to get on with my Fairhope work. He read this installment, pointing out dozens of ways to give it greater precision, clarity, and subtlety. I am fortunate to be among those who have been nurtured by his caring and by his sensitivity to our language.
Mary Gaston has been involved in every stage of my study of Fairhope’s history. She understands its nuances and is always there to share her insights with me. I have depended on her editing, as always, from first rough paragraph to last polished draft. Finally, although he was not here to read this manuscript, my father, the late Comie Gaston, was a constant presence as I wrote it. He told me much that I could have learned nowhere else and his measured judgments were always bench mark reminders.
PAUL M. GASTON
Charlottesville, Virginia
January 15,1993
MAN AND MISSION
A PARTY OF TWENTY-EIGHT SETTLERS—NINETEEN adults and nine children—arrived on the eastern shore of Mobile Bay in November of 1894. Strangers to the land, and mostly to each other, they were driven by idealism and armed with a blueprint for a better world. Their purpose, as their freshly drawn constitution put it, was “to establish and conduct a model community or colony, free from all forms of private monopoly” so that they might enjoy “equality of opportunity, the full reward of individual efforts, and the benefits of co-operation in matters of general concern.” They came hoping for a better life for themselves. But they also hoped that their model community might show others how the “unnatural and unjust” conditions under which they believed Americans were forced to live might be removed. The economic system of the United States, ravaged by monopoly capitalism, violated the “natural rights” of its citizens, was “at war with the nobler impulses of humanity, and opposed to its highest development.” All of that could be changed by “intelligent association” dedicated to revealing a better way to organize and conduct human activity.5
With a fair hope for the success of their venture, these ambitious reformers called themselves Fairhopers and chose the name Fairhope for the community they would establish.
Americans today, like citizens everywhere in the industrialized democracies of the world, are likely to find something quaintly irrelevant in the spectacle of a tiny band of ordinary individuals, alone on a sparsely settled seashore, speaking of conquering the “unnatural and unjust” conditions of their society in order to free the “nobler impulses of humanity” to reach its “highest development.” Accustomed to thinking of social changes coming from great impersonal forces or from the power of surging mass movements, we of the 1990s cannot imagine marching to the beat of the utopian impulse. How could such a journey today possibly banish poverty, eliminate injustice, and foster more humane relationships in our vast, complex, and interdependent world?
We are not the first to think this way. A hundred years ago most Americans said much the same thing. Among the skeptics were some of the most influential apostles of social change. Henry George and Edward Bellamy, the two most famous, warned against trying to reform the society with experimental, demonstration communities. They feared that the smallness and isolation of such efforts would cause them to fail, thereby discrediting the very theories they championed. But in those days not everyone heeded their warnings. Thousands of hopeful reformers from all parts of the country, and Europe as well, became communitarian reformers. They set out to change the world by creating model communities to show the virtues of their utopian ideals. Most of these efforts failed; many lasted for only a few years, if that, but new ones kept arising.
This late nineteenth century communitarian impulse does not resonate with most of us of the late twentieth century; but, if we let ourselves penetrate the unfamiliar language and discussions of public policy issues of that time, we should be overwhelmed with the familiarity of descriptions of a society in crisis. Henry George’s statement that the great progress of his age brought with it unprecedented poverty is echoed in the assertions of our own time that the rich have become richer, the poor have become poorer, and that a greater proportion of our people have fallen into poverty than in any other major industrial country. The descriptions of social unrest and urban squalor from those days resemble the accounts of deprivation, homelessness, and ghetto explosions of our own times. The Populist Party lament of 1892 that the nation was on the verge of “moral, political, and material ruin” is heard again in the chilling 1992 essay of economist Ray Marshall. He tells us that “inequality as extreme as ours destroys democratic institutions” and he fears that we may “now rank last among the industrialized democracies of the world in achieving, as a whole, the goals of a democratic society.” 6
We have good reasons to look at the complex world of a century ago. Reminders of unsettling paradox and enduring injustice are not pleasant, but we may also find hope and guidance in the vision, courage, and tenacity of men and women who gave that era an all-but-forgotten richness and distinction. The story of Fairhope’s origins is a small part of the history of the search for a more just and humane world. But it is a part. Touched in one way or another by nearly all of the ferment of the late 1880s and early 1890s, Fairhope’s architects sifted through a dazzling variety of ideas, movements, and organizations to clarify their vision of what a better world might be and how it could be created. To watch the unfolding of that odyssey is to enter deeply into one of the enduring aspects of the American experience.
