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• 1 media/Horace_Greeley,_Vanity_Fair,_1872-07-20.jpg 2018-10-11T18:13:40-07:00 "Go West, Young Man" 5 The Union Colony and the fall of moral vegetarianism image_header 2018-12-04T13:47:20-08:00 The 1870 settlement of the Union Colony in northern Colorado represents a major turning point in the history of 19th century reform colonies. Nathan Meeker founded the community with a call to action which embraced Fourierism, upright morality, Protestantism, and temperance. Media magnate Horace Greeley espoused the virtue of this colony, and others like it, when he famously said "Go west, young man." (Remember, Greeley was active with the American Vegetarian Society and a practitioner of Grahamism--though he often neglected the vegetarian recommendations). Because of his influence, the area is now the city of Greeley, Colorado.
  
  This settlement is notable because, like other Fourier-inspired communes, the Union Colony promoted a broad swath of moral positions, however it left out vegetarianism. The support of Horace Greeley was not because this was a vegetarian colony, but because it practiced temperance, regular bathing, literacy, and sexual modesty--vegetarian would have led the Union Colony, like so many others, to failure. And this is not to say the Union Colony is unique; in fact the opposite is true, dozens of these temperance communities were created in the West after the Civil War. Greeley endorsed many of these other experiments in society as well, but Union Colony earned specific endorsement, notable because of Greeley's vegetarian leanings.  
  
  Everything but vegetables, please
  
  Like many of the settlements mentioned earlier, the Union Colony of Colorado built itself upon strong moral values with a vision to create a greater community in the West. Nathan Meeker, the founder of this settlement, had previously founded a "phalanx" in Trumbull County, Ohio, during the 1840s. This was a community built on Fourier's model of basic income, shared means of production, and common labor. Other settlements took a similar approach to new townships, creating a thorough outline of citizens' expectations and moral responsibilities as members of a community. However, the issue of vegetarianism was wholly dropped from the discourse.
  
  My sense is that the failure of vegetarianism was directly tied to the moral weight that followers attributed to the decision to eat meat. Dr. Alcott and Rev. Metcalfe regularly stretched the point, claiming that many moral evils of the world would not end without society first ending consumption of "flesh foods." In the vegetarian colonies that did come to power, the only records of punitive action against citizens is for violations of vegetarianism. This shows that the diet of members was more strictly regulated than other aspects of their life and that unequal weight was given to vegetarianism.
  
  This problem is, in some way, the same problem for modern vegetarians. This book will end with a Hank Green video on modern vegetarian culture. Think about how followers of vegetarians in the 1800s may have had very similar feelings.
  
• 1 2018-11-11T17:28:51-08:00 Conclusion 3 plain 2018-11-11T17:48:50-08:00 The vegetarianism that was practiced in the 19th century is different from that of today because by-and-large animal welfare, economics, and environmental concerns were secondary reasons for the plant-based diet, if considered at all. Protestantism, health, and ethical discipline were more widely considered, and this wave of American history created a new brand of moralism that encouraged the formation of these virtuous colonies well into the 1900s. But, as this book has demonstrated, the insistence on dietary restriction ultimately restricted the colonies.
  
  Later colonies were built throughout the West,  especially in the Plains and Front Range area of Colorado. While these communities still focused on morality, individual equality, abolitionism, temperance, etc., they did not restrict the diet of their citizens to a meatless existence. It is hard to challenge the meat eating majority culture, and many of these idealists came to realize this. Many proponents of the diet abandoned it for the convenience and tradition of meat eating.
  
  Regardless of these obstacles to a diet, each of the men and women thinkers involved in the movement created unique strands of moral liberalism that outlasted the vegetarianism they held most dear. This video describes precisely why these ideas failed. 
  
  

  The rest of Louisa May Alcott's quote from the Introduction supports this feeling:

  "The world was not ready for Utopia yet, and those who attempted to found it only got laughed at for their pains.”