to start out with a great flourish, to quarrel and divide after a few months, and then to decrease and degenerate until a final dispersion by general consent ended the attempt.  During the short existence of nearly all such communities 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 romance entitled A Voyage to Icaria, in which he represented the community at work under the most favorable circumstances and in a high degree of prosperity.  According to his system, all goods are to be held in common, and all the people are to have an equal voice in the disposal of them.  Each is to contribute of labor and capital all that he can for the common good, and to get all that he needs from the common fund.  “From each according to his ability—­to each according to his wants,” is the formula of principles.  The practical working of the community will further illustrate the system.