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Looking Backward, 1994-1894

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.

It is also to examine another of the enduring aspects of the American experience—the ways in which a single individual may make a difference in the historical process. Several hands were involved in the making of Fairhope, but without Ernest B. Gaston it would not have existed. A young Iowa newspaper man and reformer, Gaston worked out the unique theories that became the colony plan. It was also he who organized the movement to recruit settlers and led them in November of 1894 to their promised land. The story of Fairhope’s origins is the story of both a man and his mission.

Fairhope will celebrate its centenary in 1994. No other American community established to demonstrate a secular reform philosophy has even approached this record of longevity.⁷ Fairhope’s claim to that achievement, however, must be qualified. A cooperative community advocating Henry George’s single-tax program to make land common property, the Fairhope colony was founded in 1894. It was called the Fairhope Industrial Association. Ten years later it changed its name to the Fairhope Single Tax Corporation. In 1908 the colony’s independent status was lost when the town of Fairhope was incorporated. The colony then became part of the town in a complicated arrangement that still puzzles strangers. Since 1908, when the municipality was created, there have been two Fairhopes; or, perhaps to put it better, the town of Fairhope has contained two major elements—the “colony” people, living on single-tax colony land and taking part in the demonstration of the Georgist principles, and the non-colony people, living on privately-owned land and having no formal relationship and no commitment to the single-tax colony.

Fairhope is today a charming city of nearly nine thousand persons, growing rapidly in a rapidly growing area of coastal Alabama. The Fairhope Single Tax Corporation owns about 30 percent of the land within the city limits (including the main business district) and some 2,300 acres of land in unincorporated parts of the county. Its declared purpose continues to be to demonstrate the virtues of George’s philosophy; with only minor alterations, the constitution the founders brought with them in 1894 remains in effect.

Over the last few decades the generally conventional values and policies of the municipality have come to dominate Fairhope. The community’s sense of identity is influenced in many ways by its utopian heritage, and most people who live there are proud of their city’s fame and unique history. But Fairhope as a town can no longer be defined by the utopian ideals of its pioneer settlers almost a century ago. This outcome was predicted by an area newspaper writer long ago. Reflecting in 1908 on the likely consequences of municipalization, he said, “Fairhope will be known hereafter as a town, and the name ‘colony’ will go out of use, except to describe certain local usages, such as ‘colony rents’ and ‘colony lands.’” ⁸But that prophecy badly misjudged the depth and tenacity of the colony idea. Fairhope’s fame, in fact, continued to spread after 1908 and for many years it was widely known as the home of the single-tax colony, a unique community distinguished by its radical ideas and institutions, as well as its creative and colorful personalities.

One Fairhoper wrote early in the century of the special bonds of community that attracted reformers to it and sustained it as a lively intellectual and cultural center. There was a “spirit of comradeship” there that she had not experienced elsewhere. It gave meaning to life and direction to one’s actions. Another early colonist rejected beautiful surroundings and material advantages as primary reasons for living in Fairhope. “Fairhope has an ideal,” he wrote; commitment to that ideal was the source of Fairhope’s real attraction.⁹ Born of the colonists’ quest for a humane, egalitarian society, the “spirit of comradeship” rooted in service to an ideal flourished long after the town was formed, reaching its apogee in the 1920s.

By that time evidence of the experiment’s success had many faces. The colony’s land policy attracted industrious settlers of modest means. Nowhere else could they acquire home, farm, and business sites without cost, being required only to pay into the common treasury an annual rental based on the land’s value. The natural beauty of the location was enhanced by cooperative development of the woodlands, ravines, and bay front—and was protected from private monopoly by a public policy that declared scarce resources to belong to all citizens. These policies nurtured a kind of democratic communalism. Few people were either rich or poor; hierarchy and pretension found unfertile soil; social intercourse was easy and informal; homes were simple but often innovative and appealing; architecture and town development reflected a society free of sharp class divisions.

The colony’s policies of free land, public improvements, community-owned utilities, and open park lands benefited colonists and non-colonists alike. Industrious working people of modest means formed the backbone of the town of Fairhope. But writers, actors, artists, and craftsmen also found the atmosphere congenial and initiated an enduring commitment to creative expression. A sprinkling of famous visitors—among them Upton Sinclair, Sherwood Anderson, Charless Ingersoll, Mrs. Henry Ford, Elizabeth Mead, Harold Ickes, Wharton Esherick, and Clarence Darrow—enriched the intellectual and cultural life of the community and fostered a cosmopolitan atmosphere. Not surprisingly, the community also had more than its share of mavericks, people who expressed strong opinions on how life ought to be lived, what was most healthful to eat, what forms of dress (or undress) were most natural, and how individuals ought to relate to one another and to their environment.

In 1907 a Minnesota school teacher named Marietta Johnson, drawn to Fairhope by its reformist philosophy, founded the School of Organic Education. She directed her school for three decades, became a leader of the national progressive education movement, and turned what she called the “Fairhope Idea in Education” into a modest national force. School and colony meshed to add dynamism and an expanded mission to the community. A follower of John Dewey, America’s leading philosopher of progressive education, Johnson argued that children reared on the competitive ethic of the American school system were unlikely to grow up to be the cooperative, reformminded, justice-oriented citizens Fairhope wished to produce. The single tax alone was not enough, she said; it needed an educational foundation. With enthusiastic colony support, her school worked to provide that foundation. Dewey himself came to visit in 1913 and liked what he saw: a demonstration of “how the ideal of equality of opportunity for all is to be transmuted into reality.” ¹⁰

Fairhopers believed that their model community, imperfect though it was, gave the nation an example to follow. But even at the height of its fame in the 1920s there were few signs of progress toward converting others and no program to accomplish that goal. The municipality itself made no effort to adopt the single-tax system and neighboring communities were similarly unmoved by the widespread recognition of Fairhope’s growth and popularity. The many favorable reports written about it inspired interest and admiration, but not emulation.

The Great Depression of the 1930s and the World War that followed were watershed years in Fairhope’s history. The depression years were a time of diminished funds, shrinking outside interest in both the colony and the school, and the passing of the old leadership. E. B. Gaston died in 1937, Marietta Johnson a year later. A new generation of leaders, many of them children of the pioneer families, kept the colony and the school functioning, but neither of these institutions would ever again be the dominant influence in the town it had once been.¹¹ With the coming of the war, shipbuilding, an air force base, and other war-related activities in nearby Mobile drew thousands of workers to south Alabama, and Fairhope’s population nearly doubled. This demographic revolution, started by wartime conditions, continued in the post-war years, and increasing numbers of men and women employed in Mobile made their homes on the eastern shore. Few of the newcomers were Fairhopers, understanding or sharing the sense of purpose that had earlier defined the town.¹²

Fairhope ceased to be mentioned in discussions of radical or utopian movements and was no longer a magnet for people looking to solve social problems. Instead, it took on more of the characteristics of southern small-town life, including the defense of segregation and the support of George Wallace during the civil rights era. After the Wallace era its politics turned increasingly conservative Republican.¹³ In the early 1970s it was featured as the only Alabama town in a book called Safe Places East, a guide for Americans who wanted to escape—not solve—social problems, and it now shows up regularly in lists of safe harbors for the golden years.¹⁴ A visiting New Yorker writer at the end of the 1970s, lamenting the passing of the old spirit of communitarian reform and the emergence of a new ethos, said that the people who lived in Fairhope seemed just like any other Americans.¹⁵

Such a facile observation highlights the ironies of Fairhope’s history, but misses entirely the contemporary complexity of its character. The single taxers may no longer set the tone of the community or dominate public policy decisions, but they continue to be influential. And, for the first time in years, membership is growing and the members are vigorously debating ways of revitalizing their demonstration and spreading knowledge of their single-tax philosophy. It may also be true that the dominant social thought of the town tilts rightward, but no other small southern city, apart from a handful of university seats, fosters such a wide variety of ideologies, or as much lively intellectual discussion, artistic expression, and literary and theatrical creativity.

The powerful influence of the colony heritage is evident in these and other facets of contemporary Fairhope. Nowhere, however, is it more apparent than in the continuing demonstration of the founders’ determination that scarce community resources should never be privately owned or developed for private gain. As the coastal areas along Mobile Bay and the Gulf of Mexico have fallen under the relentless assault of land speculators and developers, Fairhope stands more strikingly than ever before as an oasis, a tiny spot preserved from surrounding offenses and barriers to the people. Its celebrated park lands along the bluffs and the beaches below give vistas that cannot be closed—all because of the founding philosophy that land should be common property.

Ironically, Fairhope’s very success in attracting a steadily increasing flow of new inhabitants now threatens its future. There is no more unoccupied colony land to take up, and the demand for deeded land puts it out of the price range of persons of modest means who once would have found their futures on free colony land. Whether Fairhope can withstand these demographic pressures into the next century is an open question. They seem almost certain to intensify rather than ameliorate class divisions and to subvert rather than nurture bonds of community. This may therefore be a good time to inquire into Fairhope’s origins—to ask why and how it was created, and to consider afresh the solutions its founders offered to the universal and enduring problems of human community.