The Douglas independent. [volume] (Roseburg, Or.) 187?-1885, 1880-12-11
The Rugby Colony.

The Rugby Colony.
The English colony which Mr.. Thos.
Hughes and his friends propose to found
in Tennessee has been misunderstood as
being an enterprise exclusively English
which was to maintain itself as English,
cultivate English traditions and feelings
and aim to be little England in the
midst of the United States, in the same
way that Plymouth was new England
in the wilderness of 1920 The Ameri-
can and English critics of the scheme
showed at once that such an undertaking
must fail because the movement springs
from no religious or social theory, but ia
merely an industrial enterprise. The
result would inevitably be the mingling
of the colony with the American life
around it, and gradual absorption in the
great American community. But when
this had been all cogently set forth and
reasoned to logical conclusion, Mr..
Hughes made o speech at the opening of
the town, so to speak, in which he stated
that such was not the intention, that the
gates of the colony would stand wide
open to the entry of industry and intel
ligence from severy quarter, and that
while in its beginning it was necessarily
English, 1--WE hope that this will very
soon cease to be so.
It is, in fact, merely an escape from
the narrower opportunities of life in
older communities, and its hope and aim
apparently are to give more and fairer
chances to capable and well-meaning
people than they are likely to find at
home. There is price to paid, indeed,
for so great gain, and that price is sep
aration from the association OF older re-
gions and at home, and the formation Of
new ties with strangers. There is an
other price to be paid also, which is in
evitable, and that is the attempted en-
trance of the shiftless and impracticable.
No body of persons can found o simple
industrial community which is designed
to lessen the friction of the great contest
for existence without being beset by o
swarm of drones who hope somehow to
be helped without helping themselves.
There is perhaps to be added to this
price list the slight unnaturalness which
seems to belong to the impression of such
endeavors. This is not, indeed, what
can be called an original feeling, because
from the community in some form our
modern society has sprung. But indi-
vidualism and every man for himself
have become so wholly the principle of
our society that there is now q shrinking
from any return to any form of COM
munism.
OF this Mr.. Hughes Is well aware, and
in his very tranquil and sensible speech
he alludes to the odium which attaches
to the word community, and repudiates
entirely all sympathy with the State
communism of which we have had some
ugly teachings in this country, and of
which Lasalle and Marx are leaders in
Europe. Indeed, the Rugby community
is to be neither political nor religious,
but simply Arcadian. 1t proposes no
reorganization of society, no revision of
fundamental laws. 1t accepts with per-
feet contentment the laws relating to
property and to family life as they exist,
and hopes to make the business of living
under those laws somewhat easier. The
colonists intend to lay out pretty town,
with due provision for parks and gar.
dens, and to erect suitable, simple, and
attractive buildings. They mean also to
apply cooperation to the supply of
many of the fundamental and constant
necessities of daily life, economizing
health and labor and expense, and
thereby greatly increasing the common
stock of vigor and rational enjoyment;
and they consecrate the colony to perfect
religious freedom.
It is thus unique enterprise. The
colony will avail itself of the results of
experience elsewhere, and begin with the
taste and foresight which are usually
wholly wanting, or which are entirely
contemned in the beginnings of such
communities. Towns and villages are
chance growths. They gather around
some water-power, or mine, or spring, or
natural advantage, or they are agricul
tural centres growing without purpose
or plan. There is scarcely pretty or
pleasant town or village which little
forethought would not have made very
much more charming. The village i'm
provement societies are signs of the
wish to remedy congenital defects of rural
communities. Where there is beauti-
full shore, of q river or lake, it has been
generally sequestered to private and in
dividual use, and is lost to the commu-
nifty. If the natural beauty of thousands
of towns had been developed for the
common benefit, it would be found that
profit and pleasure are different phases of
the same fact, for property IN an at
tractive community is more valuable
than in one which IS not so.
But when, as ut Rugby, it is proposed
to add to this cheap and easy care for the
common pleasure the Tightening of the
common labor by the introduction of a
kind of cooperation whose value is in
contestable, the only question that re-
mains is whether the colonists who will
have the taste and intelligence of the
few leaders, or will yield to them the
control. The hope of the colony, as Mr..
Hughes expressed it, is that it will be
community of natural, not of artificial or
conventional, ladies and gentlemen.
This is the natural hope of generous
enthusiasm. = Harper's Magazine.