RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Communism
paper, and is believed to have printed and bound a part of the edition of Christopher Sower's Bible, published at Germantown, 1743 (see 3 Growth Sower, Christopher). The school and maintained by the brethren enjoyed a
Decline, high reputation, and drew students from Philadelphia and Baltimore. The community was celebrated also as a musical center, and the founder was a prolific writer of hymns and music. His Gottliche Liebe and Lobesgetone, printed by Benjamin Franklin in 1730, are believed to be the earliest books of German poetry printed as native productions in America.
After the death of Beissel in 1768 the society decliaed; and in 1814 the remaining members became incorporated as the Seventh-day Baptists, German, receiving authority to hold the land and buUdings in trust for religious and educational purposes. Their principles and practises are substantially those of the Ephrata Community, with the elimination of the communistic and celibate principles. They have congregations in the counties of Bedford, Franklin, Lancaster, and Somerset, Pennsylvania, a bishop emeritus, six active and two retired ministers, and about 250 members. They possess an estate of 110 acres, and the total value of all property is about $100,000. The numbers are not increasing, and in 1907 one of the churches united with the Seventh-day Baptist General Conference. W. H. Larrabee.
Bibliography: Chronicon Ephratense: a Hist, of the Community of SevenOi Day Baptists at Ephrata, finished in 1786, translated by J. M. Hark, Lancaster, Pa., 1889 (carries the reader to the death of the founder); C. Nordhoff. Communistic Societies, pp. 133-134, New York, 1875; 0. Seidensticker, in The Century Magazine, vol. i., no. 1, 1881; S. G. Fisher, The Making of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 1896; J. F. Sachse, The German Sectarians of Pennsylvania. Critical and Legendary Hist, of the Ephrata Cloister and the Bunkers, Philadelphia, 1900; W. A. Hinds, American Communities, pp. 16-24, Chicago, 1908; A. H. Lewis, in The Sabbath Recorder, Plainfield, N. J., May and June, 1906.
6. The Harmony Society: Founded in Pennsylvania and Indiana by Georg Rapp (q.v.), who came to America with a number of followers from Wurttemberg in 1803. Five thousand acres of land were bought in Butler County, Pa., as a site for a settlement, to which the name Harmony was given. Other followers of Rapp came the next year and the organization of the community was completed in 1805. The members placed their property in a common fund, covenanted to labor for the good of the community, and promised to make no demand, in case of withdrawal from the society, for compensation for their labor or that of their chUdren. In 1807 they gave up marriage; in 1818 they renounced the right of receiving back their original contributions in case of withdrawal, and the records of these contributions were burned.
The site of the colony proving unsuitable in some respects, 30,000 acres of land were bought in fosej County, Ind., in 1814 and a new settlement was founded. Agricultural and manufacturing enterprises were undertaken on a liberal scale, and a considerable trade was buUt up. But unpleasant conditions developed, and the property was sold in 1824 to Robert Owen (q.v.), who es-
tablished another community upon it. Rapp and his associates returned to Pennsylvania, and settled at Economy, on the Ohio River (17 m. n.w. of Pittsburg), which remained the home of the community during the rest of its existence. In 1832 the society suffered severe loss by the withdrawal of 250 members following a disaffected leader, whose claims it was deemed expedient to satisfy by the payment of upward of $100,000.
While they were without any religious organization separate from their community and had no written creed except the Bible, the Harmonists made the salvation of their souls their supreme object. They believed that Adam was created in the likeness of God, androgynous; that he became discontented when God separated the female part from him, and this was the fall of man; that the ceKbate state is the more pleasing to God; that in the renewed world man will be restored to the dual Godlike and Adamic condition; that Jesus was born in the likeness of the Father, a dual being, and taught and commanded a community of goods. A cardinal point of their doctrine was that the coming of Christ and the regeneration of the world were near at hand; and one of their aims was to be in readiness for the event. All who sought admission to the society were required to make a complete confession of sins to one of the elders.
The society declined rapidly during the later years of the nineteenth century. In 1890 the United States Census gave the number of members as 250; in 1900 there were nine. After a period of financial strain, of lawsuits brought by seceding members, which were decided in the society's favor in the Supreme Court of the United States, their property was sold in Apr., 1903.
W H. Larrabee.
Bibliography: W. A. Hinds, American Communities, pp. 69-98, Chicago, 1908; A. WiUiams, The Harmony Society at Economy, Pa., Pittsburg, 1866; C. Nordhoff, Communistic Societies, New York, 1875; G. B. Lockwood, New Harmony Communities, Marion, Ind., 1902; W G. Davis, The Passing of the Rappists, in Gunton's Magazine, XXV (1903), 20 sqq.; J. A. Bole, The Harmony Society, Philadelphia, 1904; F. Podmore, Robert Owen; a Biography, 2 vols., New York, 1907.
7. Icaria and New Icaria: A society formed in 1848 by French immigrants who settled in Texas under the leadership of Etienne Cabet, a French revolutionary agitator connected with the society of the Carbonari, author of several historical and socialistic works, and a member of the French Assembly of 1831. His radical utterance against the French king and ministry led to his expulsion from France, but, in 1840, he returned and gained many thousand adherents to his socialistic theories through his fanciful descriptions in Le Voyage en Icarie (Paris, 1842) of an ideal society in which all class distinctions were abolished and equality prevailed, and through their promulgation in the journal Le Populaire. In 1848 he purchased land in Texas for the purposes of a colony. The country being wild and practically inaccessible, it proved unfit for the purpose. Homes were procured for the baffled and disappointed immigrants, several hundred in number, who had suffered great hardships
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