>I ran across this and thought it sounded interesting.
>
>
> Oneida Society

>>From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

>
> The Oneida Community was a utopian commune founded by John Humphrey
> Noyes in 1848 in Oneida, New York. The community believed that Jesus
> Christ had already returned in the year 70, making it possible for
> them to bring about Christ's millennial kingdom themselves, and be
> free of sin and perfect in this world, not just Heaven (a belief
> called Perfectionism).
>
> The Oneida Community practiced Communalism (in the sense of communal
> property and possessions), Complex Marriage, Male Continence, Mutual
> Criticism and Ascending Fellowship. There were smaller communities in
> Wallingford, Connecticut; Newark, New Jersey; Putney, Vermont; and
> Cambridge, Vermont. The community's original 87 members grew to 172 by
> February 1850, 208 by 1852 and 306 by 1878. With the exception of the
> Wallingford community, which remained in operation until devastated by
> a tornado in 1878, all the rest of the branches were closed in 1854.
> The Oneida Community dissolved in 1881, and eventually became the
> silverware giant Oneida Limited.
>
>
> Community structure
> Males and females had equality and equal voice in the governance of
> the community. A community nursery provided care for infants and
> children so that both parents could work. Females adopted a style of
> dress, believed to have been copied from the Iroquois, consisting of a
> short skirt over trousers (bloomers). This allowed them much greater
> freedom of movement than contemporary women's styles.
>
> Even though the community reached a maximum population of about three
> hundred, it had a complex bureaucracy of twenty-seven standing
> committees and forty-eight administrative sections.
>
> The Oneida Community was a self-supporting enterprise. Its primary
> industries were the growing and canning of fruits and vegetables, the
> production of silk thread, and the manufacture of animal traps. They
> were the primary supplier of animal traps to the Hudson Bay Company.
> The manufacturing of silverware, the sole remaining industry, was not
> begun until 1877, relatively late in the life of the Oneida Community.
> Secondary industries of the Oneida Community included the manufacture
> of leather travel bags, the weaving of palm frond hats, the
> construction of rustic garden furniture, and tourism.
>
> All Community members were expected to work, according to his or her
> abilities. Although more skilled jobs tended to remain with one person
> (the financial manager, for example, held his post throughout the life
> of the Community), Community members rotated through the more menial
> jobs, working in the house, the fields, or the various industries. As
> the Community thrived, they began to hire outsiders to work in these
> positions as well. They were a major employer in the area, with
> approximately 200 employees by 1870.
>
>
> Complex marriage
> In theory, every male was married to every female. In practice, this
> meant that most adults had continuous sexual access to a partner.
> Community members were not to have an exclusive sexual or romantic
> relationship with each other, but were to keep in constant
> circulation. To help prevent a "special love" from forming, each
> Community member had his or her own bedroom. This extended even to
> couples who came to the Community already married. A married couple
> entering the Community was not required or even encouraged to legally
> dissolve their union, but rather to extend the borders of it to the
> rest of the Community in complex marriage. The average female
> Community member had three sexual encounters, or "interviews", a week.
>
> Post-menopausal women were encouraged to introduce teenage males to
> sex, providing both with legitimate partners that rarely resulted in
> pregnancies. Furthermore, these women became religious role models for
> the young men. Noyes often used his own judgment in determining the
> partnerships which would form and would often encourage relationships
> between the non-devout and the devout in the community, in the hopes
> that the attitudes and behaviors of the devout would influence the non-
> devout.
>
>
> Male continence
> Males were encouraged to avoid ejaculation during intercourse with
> their partners, as a sign of grace. (Compare with Tantric sex.) This
> meant that many sexual acts did not cause impregnation of the female
> partner. This practice was based on the idea that "wasting" a man's
> semen was bad, and that difficult pregnancies for women should be
> avoided. (Noyes' wife had lost four of five children during her
> pregnancies.) The Oneida Community had a low fecundity rate, although
> there are around 40 unplanned pregnancies documented during the early
> years of the Oneida Community.
>
> Male Continence is based on the male's muscular ability to control his
> ejaculation during sexual coitus. Young boys just entering puberty
> were only allowed to participate in sexual acts with women who were
> past the child bearing age until they had proved their fully mastered
> ability to control ejaculation. Many women of the community found male
> continence to lead to the furtherment of their sexual enjoyment, as
> sexual encounters often could last for more than one hour.
>
> There were rumors at the time claiming that controlling the man's
> 'seed' could be detrimental to the male's health and lead to
> infertility, but these claims were later disproved.
>
>
> Mutual criticism
> Every member of the community was subject to criticism by committee or
> the community as a whole, during a general meeting. The goal was to
> eliminate bad character traits. Various contemporary sources contend
> that Noyes himself was the subject of criticism, although less often
> and of probably less severe criticism than the rest of the community.
>
> John Humphrey Noyes believed that sex had social and spiritual
> purposes, not only biological. To Communitarians, it was yet another
> path to perfection. Generally, it was believed that older people were
> spiritually superior to younger people, and men were spiritually
> superior to women. Noyes and his inner circle were at the top of this
> hierarchy in the Community. In order to improve oneself, one was only
> supposed to have sexual relations with those spiritually superior.
> This was called "ascending fellowship." Once a Community member had
> reached a certain level (usually determined by Noyes and his inner
> circle), they were then to turn around and practice "descending
> fellowship" with those Communitarians trying to work their way up.
>
>
> Stirpiculture
> A program of eugenics, then known as stirpiculture, was introduced in
> 1869.[1][2] It was a selective breeding program designed to create
> even more perfect children. Communitarians who wished to be parents
> would go before a committee and get matched based on their spiritual
> and moral qualities. 53 women and 38 men participated in this program,
> which necessitated the construction of a new wing of the Oneida
> Community Mansion House. The experiment yielded 58 children, nine of
> whom were fathered by Noyes.
>
> Once children were weaned from breast milk (usually at around the age
> of one), they were raised communally in the Children's Wing, or South
> Wing. Their parents were allowed to visit, but if those in charge of
> the Children's Wing suspected a parent and child were bonding too
> closely to one another, the Community would enforce a period of
> separation.
>
>
> Decline
> The community lasted until John Humphrey Noyes attempted to pass the
> leadership of the Community to his son, Theodore Noyes. This move was
> unsuccessful because Theodore Noyes was an atheist and lacked his
> father's talent for leadership. The move also divided the Community,
> with Communitarian John Towner attempting to wrest control for
> himself.
>
> Within the commune, there was a debate about when children should be
> initiated into sexual rituals, and by whom. There was also much debate
> about its practices as a whole. The founding members of the Community
> were aging or deceased, and many of the younger Communitarians desired
> to enter into exclusive, traditional marriages.
>
> The capstone to all these pressures was the harassment campaign of
> Professor Mears, of Hamilton College. John Humphrey Noyes was tipped
> off by trusted adviser Myron Kinsley that a warrant for his arrest on
> charges of statutory rape was imminent. Noyes fled the Oneida
> Community Mansion House and the country in the middle of a June night
> in 1879, never to return to America alive. Shortly afterwards, he
> wrote to his followers from Niagara Falls, Ontario, advising that the
> practice of complex marriage be abandoned.
>
> Complex Marriage was abandoned in 1879 following external pressures
> and the community soon after broke apart with some of the members
> reorganizing as a joint-stock company. Marital partners normalized
> their status with the partners they were cohabiting with at the time
> of the re-organization. Over 70 Community members entered into a
> traditional marriage in the following year.
>
> During the early 20th century, the new company, Oneida Community
> Limited, narrowed their focus to silverware. The animal trap business
> was sold in 1912, the silk business in 1916, and the canning
> discontinued as unprofitable in 1915.
>
> The joint-stock corporation is still in existence as of 2007 and is a
> major producer of cutlery under the brand name "Oneida Limited". In
> September 2004 Oneida Limited announced that it would cease all
> manufacturing operations in the beginning of 2005, ending a 124 year
> tradition. The company would continue as a marketer for products
> manufactured overseas. The company has been selling off its
> manufacturing facilities. Most recently, the distribution center in
> Sherrill, New York was closed. Administrative offices remain in the
> Oneida area.
>
> The last original member of the community, Ella Florence Underwood
> (1850-1950), died on June 25, 1950 in Kenwood, New York near to
> Oneida, New York.[3][4]
>
>
> Legacy
>

>>From a 1907 postcardAn account of the Oneida Community is found in

> Sarah Vowell's book, Assassination Vacation. It discusses the
> community in general and the membership of Charles Guiteau, for more
> than five years, in the community (Guiteau later assassinated
> President James Garfield). Worth Tuttle Hedden's book Wives of High
> Pasture is based in the Oneida Community. Oneida Community is given
> tribute at Twin Oaks, a contemporary community of 100 members in
> Virginia. All Twin Oaks' buildings are named after communities that
> are no longer actively functioning, and "Oneida" is the name of one of
> the residences.
>
> The primary artifact of the Oneida Community, its 93,000 square foot
> Mansion House, still stands in Oneida, NY. It has been lived in
> continuously since its construction in stages between 1862-1914.
> Today, it contains 35 apartments, 9 dorm rooms, 9 guest rooms, a
> museum and meeting and dining facilities.
>
>
> References
> ^ Victoria C. Woodhull: Stirpiculture; or, The Scientific Propagation
> of the Human Race (1888, ASIN: B00085ZZRA).
> ^ Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute, Utopian Communities, 1800-1890
> ^ New York Times; June 27, 1950
> ^ Time (magazine); July 3, 1950; Died. Ella Florence Underwood, 100,
> last surviving member of the Oneida Community, a financially
> successful communal settlement (Oneida Silver) which practiced both
> promiscuity within its own group and stirpiculture; of a heart attack;
> near Oneida, N.Y.
>
> Further reading
> Without Sin: The Life and Death of the Oneida Community, by Spencer
> Klaw, 1993, The Penguin Press, ISBN 0-7139-9091-0
> Charles Nordhoff, "The Perfectionists of Oneida and Wallingford," in
> The Communistic Societies of the United States (1875) [online text]
>
> External links
> Oneida Community Mansion House -- a museum of the Oneida Community
> Oneida Community Collection at Syracuse University
> The Oneida Community, New York History Net
> Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oneida_Society"
> Categories: Communalism | Utopian communities | Code of conduct
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oneida_Society
>