The St. Johns herald., 1894-03-01
SUCCESSFUL SOCIALISM.
A Peculiar and Prosperous Com
 munity of Iowa.
Although It Was Started as an Experi- ment. the Colony Has Grown ard EIourished-A Remarka-
 ble People.

Most socialistic experiments in this country have fallen fiat, but there are a few remarkable exceptions, says the St. Louis Republic. One of these is situated in Iowa county, Ia., and is called the Amana society, or Commu- nifty of True Inspiration. This social istic society has stood the test of time,
 for it is very nearly as old as the state
 of Iowa. Indeed, it traces it's early Be- ginning back to the German Pietists of the seventeenth century. But in this country and in Iowa it was incorpo- rated in 1859.
 This society is shining example. It has succeeded. It numbers now about seventeen hundred souls and they are all healthy and happy and fast grow ing rich. They own some twenty-five thousand acres of land, all cultivated up to the highest notch and well supplied with live stock, and they have mills and manufactories of al most every description. They carry on these many enterprises with the energy and skill of a peo- pie who believe that all must wori.. Not even the old are exempt from the universal law. You may visit Anna a society any day except Sunday and you will find everybody at work, one equal to the other, men and women, some in the fields or vineyards, some in the factories, and large contingent, most of these women, as it happens, in the large cooperative kitchens, where the meals are served. They are "brothers' and sisters" together, as they say. They all eat the same food, wear the same blue jeans or blue calico, live in houses equally free from paint, and when they die each one is giver the same kind of a wooden slab to mars his resting place. A few do, indeed, pos sess their own families, but even this is discouraged, and life of ceIibacy held up instead as the highest ideal
 They are simple, plaln folk, but they are always apparently cOntented and happy. A visitor will be surprised to find so large proportion of old peo- pie among them, for very few die of youth or middle age, and few are ever sick. There are no cases of nervous prostration here, and insanity and sui eide are unknown. Nor has any mem Der of the community ever filled fel- on's cell.
 This appears like a beautiful illus tration of the good things attendant upon socialism and NJ. Zola's panacca of ''ineessant work, :" and it seems too bad for the sake of the theory that the Amanites do not base their success upon these principles. They claim. rather, that socialism and ''incessant work" are only the means by which they attain higher good. This higher good is freedom in observing their own religion.
 This religlon of theirs, however, is so pure and beautiful that one readily sees it is a potent factor of their sue cess. Like their lives, it is without establishment or show. It teaches them to speak the truth, to do no mur- der, not even in war, to love one an- other, and to listen often for the ''in- ward voice. of revelation. Thus they 1 live. like the patriarchs of old, "a pc culiar people" not for the sake of ex- pertinent, but because they desire so to do, and with al their peculiarity | they find themselves happy and pros porous.