THE illHIGATIOS AGE. 65 



Hon. David Boyd has told the story in a most entertaining way in his 

 history of the colony and I love to study those scenes in the Tribune 

 office, and the gatherings at Cooper Institute, when the readers of 

 "old Horace's" beloved newspaper rallied so promptly to his call. 

 But there is space now only to set out the main facts in the briefest 

 way. 



The famous Colorado colony was formed in response to the same 

 spirit as that which animated Fourier and Brisbane and Ripley a gen- 

 eration earlier. There was the same demand for a high ideal, the 

 same purpose to make better conditions for average humanity by 

 planting settlements in the country. But Socialism had entirely dis- 

 appeared. The unit was no longer the whole community, but the in- 

 dividual family and home. Co-operation there was from the begin- 

 ning co-operation in organizing the forces at New York; in purchas- 

 ing and subdividing the lands as a whole; in building the works of ir- 

 rigation, the first and most vital of public utilities; in planning and 

 making a beautiful town; in developing and maintaining, from the 

 hour of their settlement in the wilderness, such social and civic insti- 

 tutions as would have done credit to the ripest community in New 

 England. 



Greeley is no instance of individual settlement as the term is gen- 

 erally understood. It was an organized community and a true colony, 

 animated by a great purpose and inspired by devoted leadership. If 

 the irrigation works, originally estimated at 20, 000 and finally cost- 

 ing over 400,000, had not absorbed all the capital of the community, 

 including the large amount realized from their common ownership of 

 the townsite, it seems probable that co-operative industry would have 

 been developed on a much larger scale. There might have been 

 stores, banks, and factories suited to the place and time, for the peo- 

 ple had the spirit, the brains, and the capital. 



The net result of Greeley is Success. This is the historic contrast 

 which it presents to the Phalanx experience, which was ruled by the 

 same spirit and participated in by some of the same individuals. 

 There is as much to be learned from the one example as from the 

 other. Both teach us that there are plentj 7 of people who are willing 

 to engage in the effort to make better institutions at the cost of hard 

 ship and sacrifice. Both teach us that we cannot make a new civiliza- 

 tion out of hand, or run counter to the inbred traits of human nature 

 and the economic forces of the time. Fourier undertook too much and 

 failed. The Colorado community, no less strenuous for better condi- 

 tions, went as far as it was practicable to go at the time, and suc- 

 ceeded. Greeley is not Paradise, but only a way station on the road 

 to that far terminal. 



The Greeley colony is well worth an entire chapter, or indeed a 

 volume, and the lessons both of its industrial and social life will be 



