but small savings for twenty
years. They preserve the usual family relations.

The Bishop Hill Community, in Henry county, Illinois, was formed by a party
of Swedes who came to this country in 1846 under Eric Janson, who had been
their religious leader in the Old World, where they were greatly persecuted
on account of their peculiar religious views. They suffered great hardships
in effecting a first settlement, some of them going off, in the interest of
the community, to dig gold in California, and others taking to
stock-raising and speculating. In this they were quite successful, so that
jobs and speculations became the peculiar work of this community. They took
various public and private contracts; among others, one to grade a large
portion of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad and to build some of
its bridges. In 1859 they owned ten thousand acres of good land, and had
the finest cattle in the State. In 1859, however, the young people became
discontented and wished to dissolve the community. They divided the
property in 1860, when one faction continued the community with its share.
In 1861 this party also broke up, separating into three divisions. In 1862
these again divided the property after numerous lawsuits. A small fraction,
I believe, still continues a community on the ruins. In this community the
families lived separately, but ate all together. They had no president or
single head, the business being transacted by a board of trustees. Their
religion was their principal concern.

Such are the strictly communistic societies in the United States. It will
be seen that they are each of such very peculiar views that they are
specially fitted by their very oddity for a life in common, and specially
disqualified from the same cause to extend or embrace others; for while
their community of oddity makes them, by a necessarily strong sympathy, fit
associates to be together, it separates them by an impassable gulf from the
appreciation and sympathy of the rest of mankind, who are interested only
in the ordinary common-sense concerns of life.

Besides these, there are several other colonies which, though not
communistic, have grown out of an attempt to solve some of the questions
raised by socialism. They are for the most part co-operative. The following
are the principal: The Anaheim colony in California, thirty-six miles from
Los Angelos, which was formed by a large number of Germans in 1857, who
banded togeth