Alcander Longley

Background

Alcander Longley was born on March 31, 1832 in Oxford, Ohio, United States. He was the son of Abner Longley, a Universalist minister.

Career

Between 1843 and 1846 Longley's father was interested in a Fourierist phalanx at Clermont, Ohio, and the son early adopted Fourier's ideas. In 1852 he was connected with the North American Phalanx in Monmouth County, New Jersey, but left the Community, about 1854, to return to Cincinnati.

Shortly afterward, he joined his four brothers in establishing, at Cincinnati, a printing firm that specialized in reform literature. One of its publications, The Type of the Times, was partly in phonetic spelling. On his own account, Longley began in 1857 the publication of a small monthly, The Phalansterian Record. Although the firm of brothers seems to have been dissolved by 1860, he remained in Cincinnati as a printer and, in 1862, was a postoffice clerk there.

His first attempts at organizing Utopian colonies were along the lines of producers' cooperation, but, after two or three short-lived ventures, he abandoned cooperation for communism. In 1867 he and his family became probationary members of Icaria, the colony founded by Étienne Cabet in Iowa. Delighted as he was with the altruistic spirit of the Icarians, he, nevertheless, withdrew after a few months. In January 1868, he began the publication in St. Louis of The Communist, devoted to the propagation of his own program of social reform and to communistic activities all over the country. At first it consisted of only four pages, and, although advertised as a monthly, it appeared somewhat irregularly. In 1885 he changed the name to The Altruist, under which name he continued it until May 1917. For almost fifty years, in the face of all sorts of difficulties and discouragements, he persisted in issuing his paper and in proceeding with designs for the organization of ideal communities.

In the years 1868 to 1885 he made no less than five attempts to establish a communistic society in various parts of Missouri, but each failed within a comparatively short time. The weakness common to all his experiments was lack of capital. Immediately after the disruption of one colony he began his projects for another, and, as late as 1909, was planning still another communistic group at Sulphur Springs, Missouri. A printer of the older type, who was typesetter, compositor, and pressman as well as editor, he worked at his trade, during the intervals between experiments, in the composing rooms of one or another of the St. Louis newspapers.

In 1880 he brought together many of his theories on social reform in a book called Communism: the Right Way and the Best Way for All to Live. He also arranged, in 1878, a phonetic figure musical system, in which figures denoted the length of sound while the staff designated only the pitch, and he published The Phonetic Songster and Simple Phonography. Longley died in Chicago at the home of his daughter.

Achievements

• Alcander Longley was best known for the propagation of utopianism and attempts to form the communistic communities in the United States. He was also the founder of two periodicals: "The Phalansterian Record" and "The Altruist".

Works

• book

  • What is communism?: A narrative of the relief community : common property, united labor, and equal rights to all will immediately displace all ... the greatest plenty, purity, and peace

Politics

Longley was interested in the political means for the improvement of society and was an active member of the Socialist Labor party in St. Louis.

Views

Longley was an advocate of his own program of social reform and communistic activities all over the country. His program had nothing of the religious element characteristic of many American communistic experiments. He was an ardent believer in the equal rights and responsibilities of women. On marriage and the relations of the sexes his ideas were liberal but not radical. Under a capitalistic system he found that marriage was despotism, but he had no sympathy with the promiscuity of the Perfectionists or the celibacy of the Shakers. His colonists were to be "free and independent in the enjoyment of their affections and in the control of their own persons".

Connections

Longley was married three times. On November 19, 1854, he married Zelie Mottier, the daughter of John E. Mottier, a well-to-do grape grower of Cincinnati. Devoted to the ideals of communism, he used his wife's money for his various colonies, to feed the poor, and to help the unfortunate, even when it meant deprivation for his wife and their three children. At last, after about twenty years, she took the children and left him. His second wife, Genevieve, died, in 1891, soon after their marriage. About 1901 he married Susan Ella Jones of Paris, Kentucky, who was burned to death, on January 11, 1907, in spite of his heroic attempts to save her from the flames of an exploded lamp.

Father:

Abner Longley

Spouse:

Susan Ella Jones

Spouse:

Genevieve Longley

Spouse:

Zelie Mottier

References

• Historical Dictionary of Utopianism (Historical Dictionaries of Religions, Philosophies, and Movements Series)
• History of American Socialisms