ng luxury of the rich,
seems to them to cry aloud to Heaven for the creation of a new social
organization. They proclaim the necessity of sweeping away the
institution of private property, and insist that this great revolution,
accompanied by universal education, free trade, a perfect administration
of justice, and a due limitation of the numbers of the community, would
put an end to half the self-made distress of humanity.

The various communistic experiments in America are the most interesting
in modern times, opportunities being naturally greater there for such
deviations from the normal forms of regulations as compared with the
closely organized states of Europe, and particularly in the means of
obtaining land cheaply for social settlements with peculiar views. They
have been classified by Morris Hillquit (_History of Socialism in the
United States_, 1903) as (1) sectarian, (2) Owenite, (3) Fourieristic,
(4) Icarian.

1. The oldest of the sectarian group was the society of the Shakers
(q.v.), whose first settlement at Watervliet was founded in 1776. The
Harmony Society or Rappist Community was introduced into Pennsylvania by
George Rapp (1770-1847) from Wurttemberg in 1804, and in 1815 they moved
to a settlement (New Harmony) in Indiana, returning to Pennsylvania
again in 1824, and founding the village of Economy, from which they were
also known as Economites. Emigrants from Wurttemberg also founded the
community of Zoar in Ohio in 1817, being incorporated in 1832 as the
Society of Separatists of Zoar; it was dissolved in 1898. The Amana
(q.v.) community, the strongest of all American communistic societies,
originated in Germany in the early part of the 18th century as "the True
Inspiration Society," and some 600 members removed to America in
1842-1844. The Bethel (Missouri) and Aurora (Oregon) sister communities
were founded by Dr Keil (1812-1877) in 1844 and 1856 respectively, and
were dissolved in 1880 and 1881. The Oneida Community (q.v.), created by
John Humphrey Noyes (1811-1886), the author of a famous _History of
American Socialisms_ (1870), was established in 1848 as a settlement for
the Society of Perfectionists. All these bodies had a religious basis,
and were formed with the object of enjoying the free exercise of their
beliefs, and though communistic in character they had no political or
strictly economic doctrine to propagate.

2. The Owenite communities rose under the influence of Robert Owen's
wor