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 p