of their neighbors.
They are industrious, simple in their dress and food, and very economical.
They use neither tobacco nor pork, and are homoeopathists in medicine. In
religion they are orthodox, with the usual latitude of mystics. They have
no ceremonies, say "thou" and "thee," take off their hats and bow to nobody
except God, refuse to fight or go to law, and settle their disputes by
arbitration. At first they prohibited marriage and had their women in
common, like the Perfectionists. In 1828, however, they commenced to break
their rules and take wives. Now they observe the marriage state. Their
officers are elected by the whole society, the women voting as well as the
men.

The Bethel and Aurora communities--the former in Shelby county, Missouri,
forty-eight miles from Hannibal, and the latter in Oregon, twenty-nine
miles south of Portland, on the Oregon and California Railroad--were
founded in 1848 by Dr. Kiel, a Prussian mystic, who practised medicine a
while in New York and Pittsburg, and subsequently formed a religious sect
of which these communists are members. He was subsequently joined by some
of "Count Maximilian's" people, who had left Rapp's colony at Economy,
which this closely resembles except as to celibacy. He first founded the
colony in Missouri, where he took up two thousand five hundred and sixty
acres of land, and established the usual trades needed by farmers. In 1847
there were the inevitable quarrel and division. In 1855 he set out to
establish a similar community on the Pacific coast. The first settlement
was made at Shoalwater Bay, Washington Territory, which was, however,
subsequently abandoned for the present one at Aurora. There are now about
four hundred members at Aurora, who own eighteen thousand acres of land,
and have the usual shops and occupations of communists mentioned above,
carrying on a considerable trade with their neighbors. The members of both
communities are all either Germans or Pennsylvania Dutch, and thrive by the
industry and economy peculiar to those people. Their government is
parental, intended to be like God's. Kiel is the temporal and spiritual
head. Their religion consists in practical benevolence, the forms of
worship being Lutheran. They are thought to be exceedingly wealthy, but if
their property were divided among them there would be less than three
thousand dollars to each family, which, though more than the property of
most other communities would average, is