Maclure of New Harmony: Scientist, Progressive Educator, Radical Philanthropist

Epilogue

294 Epilogue His views were noble; his fellow-creatures were his family, and to carry out his large plans his ample means were munificently bestowed. His own personal wants were few and simple, and a very small part of his revenue sufficed to supply them. Although some of his views were visionary, they were benevolent, and he was one of the benefactors of his race. Benjamin Silliman A man larger than life, William Maclure was beset by contradictions. While he prided himself on his gruff, almost anti-intellectual pragmatism, he indulgedinextravagantdreaming ,steepedintheliberalideasoftheEnlightenmentinaRomanticage .Anendlesslycuriousandenergetictraveler,helived an uncommonly eventful life. Surviving a schooling that he felt did not prepare him for the real world, he emerged an able, robust young man, steeped inthemercantiletraditionofhisfamily,whoamassedafortunethatassured him a life of boundless possibilities. But commerce was not a sufficient challenge to fulfill his life, and so he sought something more. With remarkable courage,hechangedthedirectionofhislifebyretiringinhisearlythirtiesto devote his days to science and technology and the reform of society. Epilogue · 295 He began by making a serious study of geology, a branch of natural history that was in the formative stages of becoming a science of practical and theoretical interest. The subject appealed to Maclure because geological knowledge could be exploited for commercial and agricultural purposes, which interested him as a former businessman and suited his propensity for a descriptive, rather than an experimental, approach to science. Geological fieldwork obliged him to roam, and this he did relentlessly because he hungered for travel and new experiences that provided him with a sense of authority and mission. After assiduous exploration of the United States, he published a landmark work that merited him the enviablereputationas“fatherofAmericangeology”andthetimeinwhich he worked as the “Maclurean era of American geology.” In Maclure’s time, when the American republic was young and burgeoning and had little time or will to indulge in such a “useless,” esoteric interest as science, there was almost no support for those willing to devote their lives to its study, and only those with a private income could do so. Maclurerecognizedtheimportanceofsciencetothewelfareandprosperity of the nation, and so he brought foreign investigators and geologists to the United States and supported them, as he did many native-born Americans. He filled libraries with books and glass cases with specimens of rocks and minerals,andheboughtscientificequipmentforthosewhocouldusethem. He provided financial support for organizations of scientists such as the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, which might not have survived without him, and he furnished printing presses, which enabled them toprintsomeofthefirstAmericanscientificjournalsinwhichinvestigators could publish their results. In short, Maclure was an entire philanthropic foundation, at a time when there were none. However generous he was, he was rather impetuous and unsystematic in his giving, which was confined to the field of science and social reform through education. What he had accomplished would have been reason enough to rest and to assume the role of the munificent, grand old man of geology and the foreteller of the U.S. Geological Survey. But he harbored a greater ambition, more impossibly complex than he knew, for he believed that irrational man was perfectible. Maclure was a man of high moral principles and strongly held opinions who was influenced by the social thinkers of the day and the revolutions he had witnessed. He was outraged by the social injustice in Europe and America perpetrated by the wealthy and 296 · Maclure of New Harmony the Catholic Church, who used their power to abuse the great majority of the poor and the vulnerable. Having little or no “useful” education, the majority of citizens (whom he deemed “useful producers”) did not know where their best interests lay and were easily duped. In an age of reason, believingthathumanbeingsbehaverationally,hissolutiontotheproblem was to educate the masses about their own interests so that in democratic countries with universal suffrage they would vote intelligently and prevail because of their numbers. Moreover, they would be the leading group in society because they would be effective, expert, and productive, in contrast to the “useless” rich. The goal was to redistribute knowledge, power, and the wealth of the nation so that everyone received their fair share. After maintaining progressive schools in Paris, and attempting to do so in Spain, Maclure was the very first to bring a new, progressive Pestalozzian education to the United States to teach children to be “useful,” thinking citizens, establishing schools in Philadelphia and later in New Harmony that he stocked with special teachers, both American and European...