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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 together and purchased a large tract of land, on which they successfully cultivate the vine in large quantities. The property is held and worked all together, but the interests are separate, and will be divided in due time. Vineland, New Jersey, on the railroad between Philadelphia and Cape May, is another. It was purchased and laid out by Charles K. Landis in 1861 as a private speculation, and to draw the overcrowded population of Philadelphia into the country, where the people could all have comfortable homes and support themselves by their own labor. Some fifty thousand acres of land were purchased, and sold at a low rate and on long time to actual settlers and improvers. As a result, some twelve thousand people have been drawn thither, who cultivate all this tract and work numerous industries besides. No liquors are allowed to be sold in the place, so that the population is exceptionally moral as well as industrious, and offers a model example of low rates and good government. A successful colony exists also at Prairie Home in Franklin county, Kansas, which was founded by a Frenchman, Monsieur E. V. Boissière. It is designed to be an association and co-operation based on attractive industry; a large number of persons contributing their capital and labor under stringent laws, the proceeds to be divided among them whenever a majority shall so desire. I might mention other associations of this kind, which are, in fact, however, only a variety of partnership or corporation.

It strikes me, however, that this is the only practical remedy for the evils which are aimed at by the communists, as far as they are remedial by social means. If a number of working people, with the capital which their small savings will amount to (which is always large enough for any ordinary business if there be any considerable number of them), can be induced to organize themselves under competent leaders, and work for a few years together as faithfully as they ordinarily do for employers, they might realize considerable results, and get the advantage of their own work instead of enriching capitalists. But the difficulty is, that this class have not, as a rule, learned either to manage great enterprises or to submit to those who are wisest among them, but break up in disorder and divisions when their individual preferences are crossed. The first lesson that a man must learn who proposes to do anything in common with others (and the more so if there be many of them) is to submit and forbear. With a little schooling our people ought, to a greater extent than at present, to be able to co-operate in large numbers in firms and corporations where the members and stockholders shall themselves do all the work and receive all the profits, and so avoid the two extremes of making profits for capitalists and paying their earnings to officers and directors.