The children are kept in school until they are sixteen; and the people lamented their poverty, which prevented them from providing better education for them.
Members are received by a three-fourths' majority.
This is Icaria. It is the least prosperous of all the communities I have visited; and I could not help feeling pity, if not for the men, yet for the women and children of the settlement, who have lived through all the penury and hardship of these many years. A gentleman who knew of my visit there writes me: "Please deal gently and cautiously with Icaria. The man who sees only the chaotic village and the wooden shoes, and only chronicles those, will commit a serious error. In that village are buried fortunes, noble hopes, and the aspirations of good and great men like Cabet. Fertilized by these deaths, a great and beneficent growth yet awaits Icaria. It has an eventful and extremely interesting history, but its future is destined to be still more interesting. It, and it alone, represents in America a great idea—rational democratic communism."
I am far from belittling the effort of the men of Icaria. They have shown, as I have said, astonishing courage and perseverance. They have proved their faith in the communistic idea by labors and sufferings which seem to me pitiful. In fact, communism is their religion. But their long siege at fortune's door only shows how important, and indeed indispensable to the success of such an effort, it is to have an able leader, and to give to him almost unlimited power and absolute obedience.
THE BISHOP HILL COMMUNE.
I have determined to give a brief account of the Swedish colony at Bishop Hill, in Henry County, Illinois, because, though it has now ceased to exist as a communistic society, its story yields some instructive lessons in the creation and maintenance of such associations. These Swedes began in abject poverty, and in the course of a few years built up a prosperous town and settlement. They rashly went into debt: debt brought lawsuits and disputes into the society, and all three broke it up.
The people of Bishop Hill came from the region of Helsingland, in Sweden. In their own country they were Pietists, and Separatists from the State Church, mostly farmers, scattered over a considerable district, but united by their peculiar doctrines, and by the efforts of their preachers. I am told that they came into existence as a sect about 1830; in 1843 their chief preacher was a man of some energy, Eric Janson by name; and he taught them the duty of living after the manner of the Primitive Christian Church, inculcating humble and prayerful lives, equality of conditions, and community of property.
Their refusal to attend church, and to submit themselves to its ordinances, excited the attention of the government, which, probably also alarmed at the phrase "community of goods," began to persecute them with fines and imprisonment. Police officers were sent to break up their congregations; they imagined themselves threatened with confiscation; and in 1845 they sent one of their number, Olaf Olson, to the United States, to see if they could not here find land on which to live in peace and freedom. Olson's inquiries led him to Illinois; he selected Henry County as a favorable situation; and in 1846, on his report, the people determined to emigrate in a body, the few wealthy agreeing to pay the expenses of the poor. They say that when they were ready to embark, they were refused permission to leave their country, and Jonas Olson, one of their leaders, had to go to the king, who, on his prayer, finally allowed them to depart.
The first ship-load left Galfa in the summer of 1846, and arrived at Bishop Hill in October of that year. Others followed, until by the summer of 1848 they had eight hundred people on this spot—which they named from an eminence in their own country.
They appear to have spent most of their means in the emigration, for they were able during the first year to buy only forty acres of land, and for eighteen months they lived in extreme poverty—in holes in the ground, and under sheds built against hillsides; and ground their corn for bread in hand-mills, often laboring at this task by turns all night, to provide meal for the next day. A tent made of linen cloth was their church during this time; and they worked the land of neighboring farmers on shares to gain a subsistence. Living on the prairie, fever and ague attacked them and added to their wretchedness.