1842 Sojourner Truth in Residence at Northampton Association of Education and Industry

The Northampton Association of Education and Industry was formed in 1842 as an experiment in communal living and social equality. The Association’s stated purpose was to reform the existing industrial system from a competition-based arrangement to one or cooperation. The community attempted to combine work, domestic life, and education within a society that would view people of all races, genders, and religious backgrounds as equals.

Cooperative ownership was attained through a joint stock company established by the Association’s founders. Stock holdings included farmland, houses, and a silk factory, all of which belonged to the people of the community. The founders of the Association were also leaders of the abolition movement, and as a result the community became one of the few institutions within the United States which accepted blacks as equals. Among the many free blacks and fugitive slaves was the famous abolitionist leader Sojourner Truth. Truth saw in the Association a community which accepted the ideals she had spent her life striving for.

Like those in the abolitionist movement, members of the labor movement arrived in Northampton to find a community which embraced the ideals they had been fighting for. All members of the community, be they male or female, participated in meetings where the community’s policies were decided by vote. One example of such a vote was the length of the workday. Throughout the country unions had to fight tooth and nail in order to achieve a decrease in work hours. In the Association, the issue was simply brought to vote. The people in the community brought their initially twelve hour workday down to eleven and eventually ten hours. Domestic work was treated equally to other work, and even the pay system was progressive. Though many of the Association’s founders initially intended for a wage system to govern pay in the community, the people voted to denounce wages altogether and adopt an arrangement of subsistence allowances and profit sharing.

Progressive education was another of the Associations impressive accomplishments. Girls and boys were both given an equal education, and were both engaged in vigorous physical exercise. This unique system even attracted boarding students from outside of the community whose parents wanted their children to have an education that combined work and study.

The Association proved that a society could exist which treated its citizens with fairness and equality. Over the course of its lifetime this experiment in social equality attracted a total of 240 members. Unfortunately, the staunch moral convictions of the community often caused poor businesses decisions which led to mounting debt and eventually the dissolution of the Association. Though Northampton Association of Education and Industry eventually was forced to end its progressive practices, it was by no means a failed experiment. The Association showed people across the country that a better way of life was not only possible, but attainable.