Life in the Shaker community is a very industrious but a very peaceful existence. On the faces of those living in these communities there is the imprint of peace and purity. Weaving, preserving, teaching the young people who are taken under their charge, caring for the poultry and keeping the "family" homes scrupulously neat are the duties of the sisters. Farming, sheep-raising, the concoction of healing potions, among which witch hazel has attained worldwide celebrity, wood-sawing and carpentry are the avocations of the brothers and elders, and on a summer afternoon, elders, sisters, and the children, may be seen gathering apples or sitting on the doorstep chatting together very much as any ordinary family of ordinary farmer folk....
At Harvard, Massachusetts, the visitor who cares to see the life of a Community may get an interesting glimpse of the daily routine followed by these worthy but very singular people. The temporary guest sometimes finds the milk cart from the village the only means of conveyance to the Community but the journey is not unpleasant.
Once within the shadow of the ungainly, ugly buildings, he falls under the spell of a certain sort of picturesqueness. The Eldresses and Sisters, in their tight-fitting caps and their prim capes or kerchiefs are usually sweet-faced elderly women, who are really under the influence of their own belief in the "Spirit."
Many of the Communities have been forced to coalesce, because their numbers are insufficient to till the soil and keep the settlement self-supporting. The eyes of the young generation are turned worldward, and the serene-faced women and grave-eyed men who hold the remaining Communities feel that "Ichabod" is written over the portals of their doorways.
The reason for this is that the force which made the Communal system successful under their shrewd and provident management, - the religious idea - is dying. The socialism that is expressed by segregated groups of people dividing their property equally is a failure. The spiritual life and teachings of these people have been a good influence in American life. The Shakers have handed down to us an ideal, strained and impracticable, perhaps, but still and ideal of purity, and having done this, their mission is ended.
Bouve, Pauline Carrington. "The Shaker Society: An Experiment in Socialism," New England Magazine, July 1910.
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