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 probationers.  It will be seen from these examples that the prospects of political communism are far from promising.  Its principal power has always been as a sentiment, and it can be dreaded only as an appeal to the destitute and lawless to rise in acts of violence.  It has been powerful in France in revolutions, riots and mobs, and in this country in aiding the late strikers in their work of destruction.

The other existing communities are founded on some religious basis, being efforts on the part of their founders to secure their religious rights or to live with those of the same faith in closer relations.  And although their measures have been similar in many respects to those of the political communists, they have resorted to them not on account of any political principles, but because they believed them to be commanded by Scripture or to grow out of some peculiarity of religious faith or duty.  Most of them have been formed after the model of the society of the apostles, who had their goods in common, and because of their example.  None, so far as we know, have ever proposed to establish communities by force or to have the whole people embraced in them.  Held together by their peculiar religious principles, they have been far more successful (especially when under some shrewd leader whom they believed to have a spiritual authority) than when actuated purely by reason.

Perhaps the most successful of these religious communities is that of the “True Inspirationists,” known as the Amana Community, in Iowa, seventy-eight miles west of Iowa City, on the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad.  These are all Germans, who came to this country in 1842, and settled at first near Buffalo, New York, on a tract of land called Ebenezer, from which they are sometimes known as “Ebenezers.”  This tract comprised five thousand acres of land, including what is now a part of the city of Buffalo.  In 1855 they moved to their present locality in Iowa.  They pretend to be under direct inspiration, receiving from God the model and general orders for the direction