CHAPTER IV

UTOPIAS IN AMERICA


America has long been a gigantic Utopia. To every immigrant since the
founding of Jamestown this coast has gleamed upon the horizon as a
Promised Land. America, too, has provided convenient plots of ground,
as laboratories for all sorts of vagaries, where, unhampered by
restrictions and unannoyed by inquisitive neighbors, enthusiastic
dreamers could attempt to reconstruct society. Whenever an eccentric
in Europe conceived a social panacea no matter how absurd, he said,
"Let's go to America and try it out." There were so many of these
enterprises that their exact number is unknown. Many of them perished
in so brief a time that no friendly chronicler has even saved their
names from oblivion. But others lived, some for a year, some for a
decade, and few for more than a generation. They are of interest today
not only because they brought a considerable number of foreigners to
America, but also because in their history may be observed many of the
principles of communism, or socialism, at work under favorable
conditions. While the theory of Marxian socialism differs in certain
details from these communistic experiments, the foreign-made nostrums
so brazenly proclaimed today wherever malcontents are gathered
together is in essence nothing new in America. Communism was tried and
found wanting by the Pilgrim Fathers; since then it has been tried and
found wanting over and over again. Some of the communistic colonies,
it will appear, waxed fat out of the resources of their lands; but, in
the end, even those which were most fortunate and successful withered
away, and their remnants were absorbed by the great competitive life
that surrounded them.