The Jeffersonian

RUSKIN.

Ruskin, Tennessee, was founded by the leading socialists of the United States. A writer who recently visited the place gives the following account of it and the reasons for its failure.

At first the colonists were swindled by worthless land at a high price, but this error was corrected by getting better land and moving the buildings five miles. Robert Shilling says:

I visited the colony after it had been in existence some years and I never met a number of more intelligent, wide awake and progressive people. One might say that they were the pick and flower of the progressive element of the country. They conducted their affairs in the line of modern socialism, everything being conducted in common, even the kitchen and dining room. Their laws included the initiative, the referendum, the recall-in fact, every up-to-date reform.

Yet the conditions existing at the time were simply horrible. The membership was 65, but the population, including women and children, was 213. The seven original members with their wives had fourteen votes. By "judicious" wire pulling and intriguing these fourteen held enough additional votes to control the colony and elect themselves and their adherents to office and pleasant positions. At the dining room the favorites had the best food and the opposition was stinted. The colony held regular monthly business meetings, but the arbitrary rule of the ring caused such continuous and vicious quarreling that the monthly meetings were entirely abolished, and only one meeting a year was held to elect trustees, and this board "managed" things to suit themselves until the next annual election. Although a special meeting of the members could be called at any time, the "opposition" found it useless to call such a meeting, because the ring would control anyhow.

The working of the model was worse. Each member was required to pay an admission fee of $500, and then he could pick out a piece of land, 50 by 100 feet, on which the colony built a house worth $500 -not more, as a finer house would cause envy and heartburn on the part of the rest. One man selected a piece of land and when spring came, he wanted to raise vegetables and flowers on his land, but found that in his ignorance he had located on a gravel bed in the creek bottom that would not grow weeds, even. He appealed to the trustees to permit him to cultivate another piece of land, and though there was plenty of idle land, the request was refused on the ground that it was a special privilege.

One man bought a cow to have fresh milk in quantities for his sick wife. He had to dispose of it, by order of the trustees, because it was special privilege. Another asked leave to buy a goat and was refused for the same reason. None should have more than another, though he was willing to work over time for the sake of beautifying his home with flowers and have fresh vegetables.

When, by the admission of additional members, the ring was overthrown, these people appealed to the courts and the bubble burst.

There is no longer Ruskin colony.

When the attention of prominent socialists, Eugene V. Debs among them, was called to this experience, their reply was that Ruskin being surrounded by the "competitive" system, it was no criterion of socialism, but if socialism were universally introduced it would be successful.

Peoria Star.