Although the oldest and the wealthiest of all the socialistic communities, there are only about six thousand Shakers in the United States, less than one-fourth of what there were in former times.

At Mt.  Lebanon, the first founded of the several societies in this country, there are seven families, or separate communities, each with its own home and buildings.  The present membership is about one hundred and twenty, nearly all women,—­scarcely enough men to provide the requisite deacons for each family.

Large and well-managed schools are provided to attract children from the outside world, and so recruit the diminishing ranks of the faithful; but while many girls remain, the boys steal away to the heathen world, where marriage is an institution.

Celibacy is the cardinal principle and the curse of Shakerism; it is slowly but surely bringing the sect to an end.  It takes a lot of fanaticism to remain single, and fanaticism is in the sere and yellow leaf.  In Massachusetts, where so many women are compelled to remain single, there ought to be many Shakers; there are a few, and Mt.  Lebanon is just over the line.

Celibacy does not appeal strongly to men.  A man is quite willing to live alone if it is not compulsory, but celibates cannot stand restraint; the bachelor is bound to have his own way—­until he is married.  Tell a man he may not marry, and he will; that he must marry, and he won’t.

The sect which tries to get along with either too little or too much marriage is bound to peter out.  There were John Noyes and Brigham Young.  John founded the Oneida Community upon the proposition that everything should be in common, including husbands, wives, and children; from the broadest possible communism his community has regenerated into the closet of stock companies “limited,” with a capital stock of seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars, a surplus of one hundred and fifty thousand, and only two hundred and nineteen stockholders.

In the palmy days of Mormonism the men could have as many wives as they could afford,—­a scheme not without its practical advantages in the monotonous life of pioneer settlements, since it gave the women something to quarrel about and the men something to think about, thereby keeping both out of mischief,—­but with the advent of civilization with its diverse interests, the men of Salt Lake, urged also by the law, are getting tired of more than one wife at a time, and the community will soon be absorbed and lost in the commonplace.  The ancient theory of wives in multiples is giving place to the modern practice of wives in series.

The story is told that a dear Shaker brother once fell from grace and disappeared in the maelstrom of the carnal world; in a few years he came back as penitent as he was penniless, with strange accounts of how men had fleeced him of all he possessed save the clothes—­none too desirable—­on his back.  Men were so scarce that the credulous sisters and charitable deacons voted to accept his tales as true and receive him once more into the fold.