THE GREELEY COLONY OF COLORADO 



isolated. Refined society and all the advantages of an 

 old country will be secured in a few years ; while, on the 

 contrary, where settlements are made by old methods 

 people are obliged to wait twenty, forty, or more years/' 



This prospectus was published in the New York Trib- 

 une of December 14, 1869. with a hearty editorial indorse- 

 ment. Spite of radical departures in the matter of 

 private landholding and individual industry, the vital 

 spirit of Fourierism lived and breathed through the cau- 

 tious lines of the announcement. There was still the 

 high ideal of social and civic life, of industrial indepen- 

 dence, of a scheme of labor which should give to the la- 

 borer an equitable share of what he produced. There 

 was still the plan of co-operation in achieving things for 

 the common benefit. There was still the craving for a 

 society composed of sober, temperate, industrious people. 

 The common household had been discarded for the family 

 home and hearth-stone, but for the barbarism and isola- 

 tion of life on great farms there had been substituted the 

 association of homes in the village centre, with the best 

 social and intellectual opportunities. Behind the new 

 plan, as behind the old, stood the patient energy and faith 

 of Meeker and the glorious optimism of Greeley. 



The announcement had met with a prompt and en- 

 thusiastic response at the hands of several hundred peo- 

 ple, who had organized the Union Colony of Colorado at 

 a meeting held at the Cooper Institute in New York, 

 where Horace Greeley had presided. A committee had 

 selected twelve thousand acres of railroad and govern- 

 ment land in the valley of the Cache la Poudre, twenty 

 miles northwest of Denver, on the line of railway then 

 building to Cheyenne. The pioneers of the colony were 



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