Northampton association of education and industry

The Northampton Association of Education and Industry was founded in 1841 near Northampton, Mass., as a utopian socialist community, by such men as Hall Judd (1817-1850), William Adam ( - ), David Mack (1804-1878), George William Benson (1808- ), who served as president, and Samuel Lapham Hill (1806-1882). A contemporary of Brook Farm, the Association was a middle-class experiment in transcendentalism and Fourierism that attracted world-wide attention. It stressed the importance of productive labor as a duty, enjoyment of the fruits of labor, self-improvement, racial equality and equality of the sexes, freedom of worship, individual dignity, and strong family relations. It decried the war-like atmosphere in the world and the evils of poverty and ignorance. The Association was short-lived (it dissolved in 1846), but resulted in the development of Florence, Mass., a thriving industrial town.

The Association, which grew out of the Northampton Silk Company, was comprised of a Stock Company and an Industrial Community. Children were required to devote a specific portion of each day to assigned labor when they were not attending the Association's highly-regarded school. Membership in the Association was based on the purchase of stock. Among notables active in the community were William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, and Sojourner Truth.

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