ies 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 ro