The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1885-05-04
IAN INFIDEL EXPERIMENT.
A Town Started and Maintained Upon
the Basis of Liberal" Infidelity.
The True Inwardness of the COlOny-A Fraud
and O Failure Of the Worst Kind-Ini-
del Theories Tested by Practice.

del Theories Tested by Practice.
Lexington tsfo) Letter in ST. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Rev. Clark Braden, who has been in the city
for several days arranging for a. visit to Liberal,
Mo-, gave to your correspondent the following
facts concerning that place and its people. His
visit there was to engage in debate similar to
the one held in February last He introduced
the subject by reading the following standing
advertisement of the place, published in the Lib
eral:
Liberal is a thriving town of about 500 peo
pie, all of whom are sober, trustworthy and in
dustrious 1t is the only town of its size in the
United States withoutaa priest preacher. church,
saloon, God Jesus or the devil We have now,
and have maintained from the first, Sunday
evening entertainments, which have grown to be
of such interest that none of our people will
miss single evening if they can help it.
We have also a Sunday instruction school,
which is the center of attraction-a
place where old and young meet and discuss
every subject that can be suggested. To
once attend this school will insure an interest
that will bring each one back forever after.
Last, but not least, we have established nor
NAL school, at which Liberals all over the land
can educate their children in every department
of literature and education, and at the same
time have them in the best of Liberal society,
with the advantages Of our Sunday instruction
school and our Sunday evenings entertainments.
All that is required TO insure new citizen is for
some Liberal to come and stay with us over
Sunday, and it is certain to bring about trans
action at the land Office. This fact speaks for
itself too plainly to need much comment. We
large circulating library. All are welcomed to
our town and treated with Difference and cor
diality. We have live little paper called the
l. LIBERAL, published at 81. 80 per year. All desir-
ing information concerning this new departure
OF town can address the Liberal at Liberal,
Barton county, Mo-"
This closes the extract Now. for the town.
paradise has appeared many times in the infidel
papers of the country during the last four years.
1t has been scattered broadcast in circulars, in
real estate papers and other channels, all over
Missouri and adjoining States. The press of
the country has copied it, and has commented
on it, and has given much notoriety to the in
fdel New Jerusalem Doubtless there are
thousands of infdels in the United States and
Canada who regard Liberal as pious Catholics do
Rome, or as devout Mohammedans regard
Mecca, and for the same reason-they have
never seen it. AS the Queen Of Sheba visited
Jerusalem, so /, February last, visited Liberal
to see whether the half had been told After
a sojourn of three weeks, during which con-
versed with people who had lived in the
region before Liberal was thought of;
with the man who erected the first building
in Liberal; with scores Of residents of various
callings, and equally various opinions,
learned these facts, which, in the language
of our Declaration of Independence, i submit
to candid world They should be known, for
Liberal is the first attempt in the United States
establish community
anti-religious basis. The results of the expert
ment are worthy careful consideration. They
60 long way toward answering the mooted
question: Can society be based on an irrelig-
iouS or an anti religious basis and be permanent
and successful
Before the war there was little knot of in
fdes in the town of Paris, in eastern Illinois.
Their leader was the notorious D. NJ. Bennett
renegade preacher, who had been kicked out of
the church for misconduct Bennett started an
infidel sheet, which he afterward moved to New
York city, where it became notorious as the
Truth Seeker, and Bennett became infamous for
spending nineteen months in the penitentiary
for circulating obscene literature G. H. Walser
one of Benefits associates in Paris, some years
ago tried to make an infdel community out of
Lamar, the county-s seat of Barton county. Find
ing there was too much religious influence in the
community to be crushed out, he laid off the
land on the Kansas City and Memphis railroad,
which passes through Barton county. Flaming
announcements of the new infidel paradise were
made, and all infideis were invited to flock to
this infdel Canaan, flowing with the milk and
honey of infdelity. The new town had unusual
advantages. The nearest town was seventeen
miles away, and all others were more than
twenty-five miles distant 1t had around it an
unusually fertile country, underlaid with coal,
and peopled by unusually intelligent thrifty
farmers. There must be town where Liberal
stands, or near it. After all the putting and ad
vertising, gratuitous and otherwise and with all
the notoriety and eclat of such an unusual
effort, during period of nearly five years, there
are now within one mile of the depot in Liberal
about 500 inhabitants and 200 OF these are in the
rival town of Denison. There is not in the town
a building that cannot be erected for So, 0O0
not half dozen cost $1,000 great majority of
them cost less than $1,000 There is not
store with $4,000 stock; not a factory; not
school-house. The two hotels are cheap dens of
the lowest character-one is vacant and the
other soon will be. Of those who have visited
the place prospecting more have left without
locating than have remained. Fully as many of
those who did locate have left as now remain.
"Nine-tenths of those now in town would leave
if they could sell their property More property
has been lost by locating in the town than has
been made in it. Public schools and infidel
meetings have been held in rented buildings ex
cept what were held in Universal Mental Lib
erty Hall, the stupendous title of a building
about the size of smokehouse, which it closely
resembles. The ''lively" paper is a four column
sheet, printed one page at time, on a ram
Stacking old job press that looks old enough to
be contemporaneous with the discovery of print
ing. The type had been condemned for the
foundry when Walser purchased it years ago.
The paper is about as legble as if it had been
printed on a curry comb. The matter is cheap
low-fung abuse of Christianity. The paper is a
fair specimen of the public spirit, liberality, in
tcllectual and educational condition of the place.
The town is as badly collapsed as the printing
Office. Property cannot be sold for near its
cost There many vacant lots, from which
buildings have been moved, fifteen having been
moved at time.
1.-THE present Liberal normal institute is one of
the wonders of the age. Rooms were rented in
three different buildings that were not erected for
school purposes and were not suitable for them
Into these rooms man and his wife were placed
Pupils of the school district whose parents were
infidels, were sent to them. and the whole con-
Germ was run entirely by the public-school fund,
which, in violation of law, was used to run a
most intolerantly narrow Sectarian school of the