[4] He was a disciple of James Pierrepont Greaves, a member of Alcott House at Ham Common in Surrey, and a contributor to The Dial.

[6]: 148  A month later, Alcott announced the community in The Dial: "We have made an arrangement with the proprietor of an estate of about a hundred acres, which liberates this tract from human ownership".

"The consociate family", as Fruitlands residents referred to themselves,[6]: 148  wished to achieve complete freedom by separating entirely from the world economy.

Referring to their vegan diet, Lane wrote, "Neither coffee, tea, molasses, nor rice tempts us beyond the bounds of indigenous production... No animal substances neither flesh, butter, cheese, eggs, nor milk pollute our tables, nor corrupt our bodies."

[2] Lane and Alcott also asked participants to wear only linen clothes and canvas shoes; cotton fabric was forbidden because it exploited slave labor and wool was banned because it came from sheep.

[8] Fruitlands ultimately failed the winter after it opened, largely due to food shortages and accompanying unrest in the inhabitants.

The title under which they were published was "A Voluntary Political Government," and in them Lane described the state in terms of institutionalized violence and referred to its "club law, its mere brigand right of a strong arm, [supported] by guns and bayonets."

Lane believed that governmental rule was only tolerated by public opinion because the fact was not yet recognized that all the true purposes of the state could be carried out on the voluntary principle, just as churches could be sustained voluntarily.