The Communistic Societies of the United States Part 35

And they gradually got out of debt. Not one failed. The sheriff has never sold out any one in Anaheim; and only one of the original settlers had left the place when I saw it in 1872. They have no dest.i.tute people.

Their vineyards give them an annual _clear_ income of from two hundred and fifty to one thousand dollars over and above their living expenses; their children have enjoyed the advantages of a social life and a fairly good school. And, finally, the property which originally cost them an average of one thousand and eighty dollars for each, is now worth from five to ten thousand dollars. They live well, and feel themselves as independent as though they were millionaires.

Now this was an enterprise which any company of prudent mechanics, with a steadfast purpose, might easily imitate. The founders of Anaheim were not picked men. I have been told that they were not without jealousies and suspicions of each other and of their manager, which made his life often uncomfortable, and threatened the life of the undertaking. They had grumblers, fault-finders, and wiseacres in their company, as probably there will be among any company of fifty men; and I have heard that Mr. Hansen, who was their able and honest manager, declared that he would rather starve than conduct another such enterprise.

They were extremely fortunate to have for their manager an honest, patient, and sufficiently able man; and such a leader is indeed the corner-stone of an undertaking of this kind. Granted a man sufficiently wise and honest, in whom his a.s.sociates can have confidence, and there needs only moderate patience, perseverance, and economy, in the body of the company, to achieve success. Nor could I help noticing, when I was at Anaheim, that the experience and training which men gain in carrying to success--no matter through what struggles of poverty, self-denial, and debt--such an enterprise, has an admirable effect on their characters. The men of Anaheim were originally a very common cla.s.s of mechanics; they have stepped up to a higher plane of life--they are masters of their own lives. This result--namely, the training of families in the hardier virtues, their elevation to a higher moral as well as physical standard--is certainly not to be overlooked by any thoughtful man.

_Vineland._

Vineland was not a co-operative enterprise. It is the land-speculation of a long-headed, kind-hearted man, who believed that he could form a settlement profitable and advantageous to many people, and with pecuniary benefit to himself. Until the year 1861, the southern part of New Jersey contained a large region known as "the Barrens," and very spa.r.s.ely settled with a rude and unthrifty population. The light soil was supposed to be unfit for profitable agriculture; and the country for miles was covered with scrub pine and small oak timber, used chiefly for charcoal, and as fuel for some gla.s.s factories at Millville and Gla.s.sborough. Much of this land was owned in large tracts, and brought in but a small revenue. When the West Jersey Railroad, connecting Cape May with Philadelphia, was completed, it ran through many miles of these "Barrens," and some of the owners, tired of a property which in their hands had little value, were ready to sell out.

Charles K. Landis had conceived the idea of forming a colony, upon certain plans which he had matured in his own mind. His attention was attracted to this region, and after examining the soil and the general character of the region, he bought sixteen thousand acres in one parcel.

To this he added, soon after, another purchase of fourteen thousand acres, making thirty thousand in all. He has bought lately (in 1874) twenty-three thousand acres more.

The country is a rolling plain, densely overgrown with small wood, with one or two streams running through it; with water obtainable at from fifteen to thirty feet every where, and perfectly healthy. Mr. Landis took possession in August, 1861, and at once began to develop the land according to his own ideas. He laid out, first, the town site of Vineland, in the centre of the tract; next had the adjacent plain surveyed, and laid out into tracts of ten, twenty, and fifty acres; laid out and opened roads, so as to make these small parcels accessible; and then he began to advertise for settlers.

His offer was to sell the land, lying within thirty-four miles of Philadelphia by railroad, in tracts of from ten to forty or sixty acres, at twenty-five dollars per acre, guaranteeing a clear t.i.tle, and giving reasonable credit, but requiring the purchasers to make certain improvements within a year after buying. These consisted of a house--which need not be costly--the clearing of some acres of ground, and the planting of shade-trees along the road-side, and sowing a strip of this road-side with some kind of gra.s.s. It was also stipulated that if the owner, in after-years, neglected his road-side adornment, it should be kept in order by the town at his cost.

Mr. Landis had procured the pa.s.sage of a law prohibiting the straying of cattle within the limits of the towns.h.i.+p in which his estate lay; and consequently the new settlers were not obliged to build fences. This was an immense saving to the people, who came in mostly with small means.

Vineland has to-day between eleven thousand and twelve thousand people; it has about one hundred and eighty miles of roads; and it is probable that the "no fence" regulation, as it is called, has saved the inhabitants at least a million and a half of dollars.

He prevented in the beginning, with the most solicitous care, the establishment of bar-rooms or dram-shops on the tract; the Legislature gave permission to the people of the towns.h.i.+p, by an annual vote, to decide whether the sale of liquor at retail should be allowed or forbidden, and they have constantly forbidden it, to their immense advantage.

He endeavored as soon as possible to establish factories in the village, and succeeded so well in this that there has long been a local market for a part of the products of the place.

He founded and encouraged library, horticultural, and other societies, helped in the building of churches, and paid particular attention to obtaining for the people facilities for marketing their products advantageously.

In all these concerns he sought the advantage of the settlers on his lands, knowing that their prosperity would make him also prosperous.

But one other part of his plan appears to me to have been of extraordinary importance, though usually it is not mentioned in descriptions of Vineland. Mr. Landis established the price of his own uncultivated lands at twenty-five dollars per acre. At that price he sold to the first settler; and that price he did not increase for many years. Any one could, within two or three years, buy wild land on the Vineland tract at twenty-five dollars per acre. This means that he did not speculate upon the improvements of the settlers. He gave to them the advantage of their labors. It resulted that many poor men bought, cleared, and planted places in Vineland on purpose to sell them, certain that they could, if they wished, buy more land at the same price of twenty-five dollars per acre which they originally paid.

In my judgment, this feature of the Vineland enterprise, more than any other, changed it from a merely selfish speculation to one of a higher order, in which the settlers, to a large extent, have a common interest with the proprietor of the land. He might have done all the rest--might have laid out roads, proclaimed a "no fence" law, prevented the establishment of dram-shops, helped on educational and other enterprises--and still, had he raised the price of his wild lands as the settlers increased, he would have been a mere land speculator, and I doubt if his scheme would have obtained more than a very moderate and short-lived success. But the undertaking to sell his wild land always at the one fixed price, not only gave later comers an advantage which attracted them with a constantly increasing force, but it gave the poorer settlers an occupation from which many of them gained handsomely--the improvement of places to sell to new-comers with capital. The result showed Mr. Landis's wisdom. Improved property, cleared and planted in fruit, has always borne a high price in Vineland, and has almost always had a ready sale, but there has never been any feverish land speculation there.

In twelve years the founder of Vineland was able to collect upon his tract--which had not a single inhabitant in 1861--about eleven thousand people. Most of these have improved their condition in life materially by settling there. Many of them came without sufficient capital, and no doubt suffered from want in the early days of their Vineland life. But if they persevered, two or three years of effort made them comfortable.

Meantime they had, what our American farmers have not in general, easy access to good schools for their children, to churches and an intelligent society, and the possibility of good laws regarding the sale of liquor.

Vineland was settled largely by New England people. They are more restless and changeable than the Germans of Anaheim: less easily contented with mere comfort. The New-Englander seems to me to like change, often, for its own sake; the German too frequently goes to the other extreme, and so greatly abhors change that he does without conveniences which he might well afford. Anaheim and Vineland differ in these respects, as the character of their inhabitants differs. But in both, no one can doubt that the people have been greatly benefited by the colonizing experiment; that they not merely live better, but have a higher standard of thinking as well, and are thus better citizens than they would have been had they remained in their original employments and abodes.

Some of the striking practical and moral results of the Vineland plan of colonization were set forth by Mr. Landis in a speech before the Legislature of New Jersey last year; and the following extracts from this address are of interest in this place. He said:

"When I first projected the colony, in 1861, what is now Vineland lay before me an unbroken wilderness. Nothing was to be heard but the song of birds to break the silence, which at times was oppressive. It was necessary that the fifty square miles of territory should be suddenly, thoroughly, and permanently improved. The land was in good part to be paid for out of the proceeds of sale. One hundred and seventy miles of public roads and other improvements were to be made, and the improvements were to be such as to insure the prosperity of the colonist in future years, as my outlay was in the early start of the settlement, and my returns were not to be realized for years to come. If the settlement should not be prosperous in these years to come, I could never realize my reward, and besides, ruin, involving character and fortune, stared me in the face. It was by no temporary efforts or expedients that I could succeed, but by fixing upon certain principles, calculated to be creative, healthful, and permanent in their influences--principles which, while they benefited each colonist day by day, would have a growing influence in developing the prosperity of the colony. What were these principles?

"1. That no land should be sold to speculators who would not improve, but only to persons who would agree to improve in a specified time, and also to plant shade-trees in front of their places, and seed the road-sides to gra.s.s for purposes of public utility and ornamentation.

"2. That no man should be compelled to erect fences, that his neighbor's cattle might roam at large; but that the old and s.h.i.+ftless and wasteful system should be done away with.

"3. That the public sale of intoxicating drinks should be prohibited, and that this prohibition should be obtained by leaving it to a vote of the people.

"By the first principle, the continual improvement of the land was secured. Employment was furnished to laborers at remunerative prices.

The value of the land was increased by the mutual effort of the colonists. The value of my land was also enhanced, and it was made more and more marketable.

"By the second principle, a vast and constant expense was saved--greater than the cost and annual interest upon all the railroads of the United States. Stock was improved, the cultivation of root crops was encouraged, and the economizing of fertilizers.

"By the third principle, the money, the health, and the industry of the people were conserved, that they might all be devoted to the work before them.

"I am in candor compelled to say that I did not introduce the local-option principle into Vineland from any motives of philanthropy. I am not a temperance man in the total-abstinence sense. I introduced the principle because in cool, abstract thought I conceived it to be of vital importance to the success of my colony. If in this thought I had seen that liquor made men more industrious, more skillful, more economical, and more aesthetic in their tastes, I certainly should then have made liquor-selling one of the main principles of my project."

"The question then came up as to how I could give such direction to public opinion as would regulate this difficulty. Many persons had the idea that no place could prosper without taverns--that to attract business and strangers taverns were necessary. I could not accomplish my object by the influence of total-abstinence men, as they were too few in numbers in proportion to the whole community. I had long perceived that there was no such thing as reaching the result by the moral influence brought to bear on single individuals--that to benefit an entire community, the law or regulation would have to extend to the entire community. In examining the evil, I found also that the moderate use of liquor was not the difficulty to contend against, but it was the immoderate use of it.

"The question, then, was to bring the reform to bear upon what led to the immoderate use of it. I found that few or none ever became intoxicated in their own families, in the presence of their wives and children, but that the drunkards were made in the taverns and saloons.

After this conclusion was reached, the way appeared clear. It was not necessary to make a temperance man of each individual--it was not necessary to abridge the right or privilege that people might desire to have of keeping liquor in their own houses, but to get their consent to prevent the public sale of it by the small--that people in bartering would not be subject to the custom of drinking--that they would not have the opportunity of drinking in bar-rooms, away from all home restraint or influence; in short, I believed that if the public sale of liquor was stopped either in taverns or beer saloons, the knife would reach the root of the evil. The next thing to do was to deal with settlers personally as they bought land, and to counsel with them as to the best thing to be done. In conversation with them I never treated it as a moral question--I explained to them that I was not a total-abstinence man myself, but that on account of the liability of liquor to abuse when placed in seductive forms at every street corner, and as is the usual custom that followed our barbarous law that it incited to crime, and made men unfortunate who would otherwise succeed; that most of the settlers had little money to begin with, sums varying from two hundred to one thousand dollars, which, if added to a man's labor, would be enough in many cases to obtain him a home, but which taken to the tavern would melt away like snow before a spring sun; that new places were liable to have this abuse to a more terrible extent than old places, as men were removed from the restraints of old a.s.sociations, and in the midst of the excitement of forming new acquaintances; and that it was a notorious fact that liquor-drinking did not add to the inclination for physical labor. I then asked them--for the sake of their sons, brothers, friends--to help establish the new system, as I believed it to be the foundation-stone of our future prosperity.

"To these self-evident facts they would almost all accede. Many of them had witnessed the result of liquor-selling in the new settlements of the Far West, and were anxious to escape from it. The Local-Option Law of Vineland was not established, therefore, by temperance men or total-abstinence men only, but by the citizens generally, upon broad social and public principles. It has since been maintained in the same way. Probably not one tenth of the number of voters in Vineland are what may be called total-abstinence men. I explain this point to show that this reform was not the result of mere fanaticism, but the sense of the people generally, and that the people who succeed under it are such people as almost all communities are composed of. This law has been practically in operation since the beginning of the settlement in the autumn of 1861, though the act of the Legislature empowering the people of Landis Towns.h.i.+p to vote upon license or no license was not pa.s.sed until 1863. The vote has always stood against license by overwhelming majorities, there being generally only from two to nine votes in favor of liquor-selling. The population of the Vineland tract is about ten thousand five hundred people, consisting of manufacturers and business people upon the town plot in the centre, and, around this centre, of farmers and fruit-growers. The most of the tract is in Landis Towns.h.i.+p.

I will now give statistics of police and poor expenses of this towns.h.i.+p for the past six years:

POLICE EXPENSES.

1867.................... $50 00

1868..................... 50 00

1869..................... 75 00

1870..................... 75 00

1871.................... 150 00

1872..................... 25 00

POOR EXPENSES.

1867.................... $400 00

1868..................... 425 00

1869..................... 425 00

1870..................... 350 00

1871..................... 400 00

1872..................... 350 00

"These figures speak for themselves, but they are not all. There is a material and industrial prosperity existing in Vineland which, though I say it myself, is unexampled in the history of colonization, and must be due to more than ordinary causes. The influence of temperance upon the health and industry of her people is no doubt the princ.i.p.al of these causes. Started when the country was plunged in civil war, its progress was continually onward. Young as the settlement was, it sent its quota of men to the field, and has paid over $60,000 of war debts. The settlement has built twenty fine school-houses, ten churches, and kept up one of the finest systems of road improvements, covering one hundred and seventy-eight miles, in this country. There are now some fifteen manufacturing establishments on the Vineland tract, and they are constantly increasing in number. Her stores in extent and building will rival any other place in South Jersey. There are four post-offices on the tract. The central one did a business last year of $4,800 mail matter, and a money-order business of $78,922.

"Out of seventy-seven towns.h.i.+ps in the state, by the census of 1869 Landis Towns.h.i.+p ranked the fourth from the highest in the agricultural value of its productions. There are seventeen miles of railroad upon the tract, embracing six railway stations.