The secretary further writes: "We have no constitution or bylaws; ignore the idea of man's total depravity; and believe that all who are actuated by a love of truth and a desire to progress (and we will knowingly accept no others), can be better governed by love and moral suasion than by any arbitrary laws. Our government consists in free criticism. We have a unitary home."
COLONIES WHICH ARE NOT COMMUNISTIC.
COLONIES—NOT COMMUNISTIC.
I have noticed that not unfrequently Vineland, in New Jersey, and Anaheim, in California, are classed with Communistic Societies. They are nothing of the kind; and only one of the two—Anaheim, namely—was in the beginning even co-operative.
As, however, both these settlements were founded under peculiar circumstances, and as both show what can be achieved in a short time by men of narrow means, acting more or less in concert for certain purposes, I have determined to give here a brief history of the two places.
Anaheim.
Anaheim, the oldest of these two "colonies," lies in Los Angeles County, in Southern California, about thirty miles from the town of Los Angeles, and ten or twelve miles from the ocean, upon a fertile and well-watered plain. In its settlement it was strictly a co-operative enterprise.
In 1857 several Germans in San Francisco proposed to certain of their countrymen to purchase by a united effort a tract of land in the southern part of the state, cause it to be subdivided into small farms, and procure these to be fenced, planted with grape-vines and trees, and otherwise prepared for the settlement of the owners. After some deliberation, fifty men set their names to an agreement to buy eleven hundred and sixty-five acres of land, at two dollars per acre; securing water-rights for irrigation with the purchase, because in that region the dry summers necessitate artificial watering.
The originator of the enterprise, Mr. Hansen, of Los Angeles, a German lawyer and civil engineer, a man of culture, was appointed by his associates to select and secure the land; and eventually he became the manager of the whole enterprise, up to the point where it lost its co-operative features and the members took possession of their farms.
The Anaheim associates consisted in the main of mechanics, and they had not a farmer among them. They were all Germans. There were several carpenters, a gunsmith, an engraver, three watch-makers, four blacksmiths, a brewer, a teacher, a shoemaker, a miller, a hatter, a hotel-keeper, a bookbinder, four or five musicians, a poet (of course), several merchants, and some teamsters. It was a very heterogeneous assembly; they had but one thing in common: they were all, with one or two exceptions, poor. Very few had more than a few dollars saved; most of them had neither cash nor credit enough to buy even a twenty-acre farm; and none of them were in circumstances which promised them more than a decent living.