Communism In The United States.
Nowhere in the history of the world have we any example of successful communism. The ancient Cretan and Lacedemonian experiments, the efforts of the Essenes and early Christians, the modified communities of St. Anthony and several orders of monks, the schemes of the Anabaptists of the sixteenth century, together with all the experiments of modern times, have proved essential failures. Setting out with ideas of perfection in the social state, and undertaking nothing less than the entire abolition of the miseries of the world, the communists of all times have lived in a condition the least ideal that can be imagined. The usual course of socialistic communities has been to start out with a great flourish, to quarrel and divide after a few months, and then to decrease and degenerate until a final dispersion by general consent ended the attempt. During the short existence of nearly all such communities the members have lived in want of the ordinary comforts of life, in dispute about their respective rights and duties, at law with retiring members, and battling with the wilds and malarias of the countries in which alone anything like practical communism has been usually possible. The most successful (so far as any of these attempts can be called successful) have been those communities which have been founded on a religion and which have consisted entirely of members of one faith. But all political communism has utterly failed, and the name is little more than a synonym for the most egregious blunders, excesses and crimes of which visionary and unpractical people can be guilty.
The United States seem ill suited for the spread of communistic ideas, notwithstanding they contain almost the only socialistic communities to be found anywhere. Though the people are free to live in common if they desire, and although land and every facility are offered on easy terms for the realization of communism—which is not the case in Europe (and which is, therefore, the reason why the New World is chosen for communistic experiments)—yet there is felt no need of communism here. There are neither the political nor the social inducements for it which exist in Europe, and all efforts to excite an enthusiasm on the subject have invariably failed. Almost the only agitators are foreigners, and nearly all the existing communities are composed of foreigners. Of these, two only are political, the Icarian and the Cedar Vale, while the rest are religious.
The Icarian Community in Adams county, Iowa, about two miles from Corning, a station on the Burlington and Missouri River Railroad, is the result of an effort to realize the communistic theory of M. Cabet, a French writer and politician of some note. It is perhaps the most just and practical of all communistic systems; for the reader will remember that social systems are as numerous in France as religious systems are in this country, and take much the same place in the passions and bigotries of the people of France, where there is but one religion, as our various sects do here, where there are so many. The system of M. Cabet differs from the others in much the same manner as our religious sects differ from one another; which is not of much importance to the outside world, as they all contain the one principle of a community of goods. M. Cabet first promulgated his system in the shape of a romance entitled A Voyage to Icaria, in which he represented the community at work under the most favorable circumstances and in a high degree of prosperity. According to his system, all goods are to be held in common, and all the people are to have an equal voice in the disposal of them. Each is to contribute of labor and capital all that he can for the common good, and to get all that he needs from the common fund. "From each according to his ability—to each according to his wants," is the formula of principles. The practical working of the community will further illustrate the system.
In 1848, M. Cabet, with some three thousand of his followers, sailed from France for New Orleans, intending to take up land in Texas or Arkansas on which to establish a community, having the promise that he would soon be followed by ten thousand more of his disciples. After spending several months in reconnoitring, during which half of his followers got discontented and left him, he settled with about fifteen hundred at Nauvoo, Illinois, where they bought out the property of the Mormons, who had recently been driven from that place. There they commenced operations, establishing a saw- and grist-mill, and carrying on farming and several branches of domestic manufacturing. In a little while they sent out a branch colony to Icaria, in Adams county, Iowa, where they purchased, or entered under the Homestead Act, four thousand acres of land. In this place likewise they built a mill and went to farming and carrying on the more simple trades. In a little while, however, a quarrel arose in the principal community at Nauvoo in regard to the use and abuse of power, when, after a rage of passion not unlike that which they had exhibited in the Revolution of 1848 in France, M. Cabet, with a large minority, seceded and went to St. Louis, where they expected to form another and more perfect community. They never formed this community, however, and were soon dispersed. The community at Nauvoo, being now harassed with debts and with lawsuits growing out of the withdrawal of M. Cabet and his party, repaired to their branch colony at Icaria, where they have been ever since. Here they had likewise frequent disputes and withdrawals, often giving rise to lawsuits and a loss of property, until in 1866, when the writer first visited them, they were reduced to thirty-five members. Since that time they have picked up a few members, mostly old companions who had left them for individual life, until now they have about sixty in all. They own at present about two thousand acres of land, of which three hundred and fifty are under cultivation. They have good stock, consisting of about one hundred and twenty head of cattle, five hundred sheep, two hundred and fifty hogs and thirty horses. They still have their saw- and grist-mill, now run by steam, but give most of their time to farming. They preserve the family relation, and observe the strictest rules of chastity. Each family lives in a separate house, but they all eat at a common table. By an economic division of labor one man cooks for all these persons, another bakes, another attends to the dairy, another makes the shoes, another the clothes; and in general one man manages some special work for the whole. No one has any money or need of any. All purchases are made from the common purse, and each gets what he needs. The government is a pure democracy. The officers are chosen once a year by universal (male) suffrage, and consist of a president, secretary (and treasurer), director of agriculture and director of industry. They have no religion, but, like most of the European communists, are free-thinkers. They are highly moral, however, and much esteemed by their neighbors. Some of them are quite learned, and all of them may be pronounced decidedly heroic for the terrible privations they have undergone in order to realize their political principles, to which they are as strongly and sincerely devoted as any Christian to his religion.
Such is a sketch of the most perfect system and most successful experiment of political communism in the United States—not very encouraging, it will be confessed. The other example of political communism is the Cedar Vale Community in Howard county, Kansas, which needs only to be mentioned here, as it has as yet no history. It was commenced in 1871, and is composed of Russian materialists and American spiritualists. They have a community of goods like the Icarians, and in general their principles are the same. They had only about a dozen members at last accounts. Another and similar community was established in 1874 in Chesterfield county, Virginia, called the "Social Freedom Community," its principles being enunciated as a "unity of interest and political, religious and social freedom;" but we cannot discover whether it is yet in existence, as at last accounts it had only two full members and eight probationers. It will be seen from these examples that the prospects of political communism are far from promising. Its principal power has always been as a sentiment, and it can be dreaded only as an appeal to the destitute and lawless to rise in acts of violence. It has been powerful in France in revolutions, riots and mobs, and in this country in aiding the late strikers in their work of destruction.
The other existing communities are founded on some religious basis, being efforts on the part of their founders to secure their religious rights or to live with those of the same faith in closer relations. And although their measures have been similar in many respects to those of the political communists, they have resorted to them not on account of any political principles, but because they believed them to be commanded by Scripture or to grow out of some peculiarity of religious faith or duty. Most of them have been formed after the model of the society of the apostles, who had their goods in common, and because of their example. None, so far as we know, have ever proposed to establish communities by force or to have the whole people embraced in them. Held together by their peculiar religious principles, they have been far more successful (especially when under some shrewd leader whom they believed to have a spiritual authority) than when actuated purely by reason.
Perhaps the most successful of these religious communities is that of the "True Inspirationists," known as the Amana Community, in Iowa, seventy-eight miles west of Iowa City, on the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad. These are all Germans, who came to this country in 1842, and settled at first near Buffalo, New York, on a tract of land called Ebenezer, from which they are sometimes known as "Ebenezers." This tract comprised five thousand acres of land, including what is now a part of the city of Buffalo. In 1855 they moved to their present locality in Iowa. They pretend to be under direct inspiration, receiving from God the model and general orders for the direction of their community. The present head, both spiritual and temporal, is a woman, a sort of sibyl who negotiates the inspirations. Their business affairs are managed by thirteen trustees, chosen annually by the male members, who also choose the president. They are very religious, though having but little outward form. There are fourteen hundred and fifty members, who live in seven different towns or villages, which are all known by the name of Amana—East Amana, West Amana, etc. They have their property for the most part in common. Each family has a house, to which food is daily distributed. The work is done by a prudent division of labor, as in the Icarian community. But instead of providing clothing and incidentals, the community makes to each person an allowance for this purpose—to the men of from forty to one hundred dollars a year, to the women from twenty-five to thirty dollars, and to the children from five to ten dollars. There are public stores in the community at which the members can get all they need besides food, and at which also strangers can deal. They dress very plainly, use simple food, and are quite industrious. They aim to keep the men and women apart as much as possible. They sit apart at the tables and in church, and when divine service is dismissed the men remain in their ranks until the women get out of church and nearly home. In their games and amusements they keep apart, as well as in all combinations whether for business or pleasure. The boys play with boys and the girls with girls. They marry at twenty-four. They own at present twenty-five thousand acres of land, a considerable part of which is under cultivation. They have, in round numbers, three thousand sheep, fifteen hundred head of cattle, two hundred horses and twenty-five hundred hogs. Besides farming, they carry on two woollen-mills, four saw-mills, two grist-mills and a tannery. They are almost entirely self-supporting in the arts, working up their own products and living off the result. In medicine they are homœopathists.
The "Rappists" or Harmony Society at Economy, Pennsylvania, is composed of about one hundred members, being all that remain of a colony of six hundred who came from Germany in 1803. They were called Separatists or "Come-outers" in their own country, and much persecuted on account of their nonconformity with the established Church. They landed in Baltimore, and some of them who never found their way into the community, or who subsequently withdrew, settled in Maryland and Pennsylvania, where they are still known as a religious sect. Those who remained together purchased five thousand acres of land north of Pittsburg, in the valley of the Conoquenessing. In 1814 they moved to Posey county, Indiana, in the Wabash Valley, where they purchased thirty thousand acres of land, and in 1824 they moved back again to their present locality in Pennsylvania. In 1831 a dissension arose among them, and a division was effected by one Bernard Mueller—or "Count Maximilian" as he called himself—who went off with one-third of the members and a large share of the property, and founded a new community at Phillips, ten miles off, on eight hundred acres of land, which, however, soon disbanded on account of internal quarrels.
The peculiarity of this community is that there is no intercourse between the sexes of any kind. In 1807 they gave up marriage. The husbands parted from their wives, and have henceforth lived with them only as sisters. They claim to have authority for this in the words of the apostle: "This I say, brethren, the time is short; it remaineth that both they that have wives be as though they had none," etc. They teach that Adam in his perfect state was bi-sexual and had no need of a female, being in this respect like God; that subsequently, when he fell, the female part (rib, etc.) was separated from him and made into another person, and that when they become perfect through their religion the bi-sexual nature of the soul is restored. Christ, they claim, was also of this dual nature, and therefore never married. They believe that the world will soon come to an end, and that it is their duty to help it along by having no children, and so putting an end to the race as well as the planet.