>Facinating reading. Seems that the weak point of the organization was who
>got to drive. Pretty standard human nature. :)
>
>rock.com> wrote in message
>news:1194911654.624890.34670@v23g2000prn.googlegroups.com...

>>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
>>

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