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Show A Peculiar and Prooporoua Community Com-munity of Iowa. Althonc.li It Va Htarte.1 ae an Kipeil- ment. the Colony lias drown and "nourished A Ite'niarlos- ble l'eiple. Most toclallstlc expcrlmcnta in this country liavo fallen fiat, but (hero nro a fow remarkable exceptions, snyn the St. Louis Republic. Ono of theso Is situated in Iowa county, la., and Is called tho Amnnn society, or Community Commu-nity of True Inspiration. This socialistic social-istic society has stood the tcstot time, for It Is very nearly as old ns tho Btato of Iowa. Indeed, it traces its early bo-ginning bo-ginning back to the ficrman Pietists of the seventeenth century. But in this country and in Iowa it wits incorporated incorpo-rated In 1830. TUIh society in n shining oxaroplo. It has sucecci'.'d. It numbers now about seventeen hundrvd souls and thuy ore all healthy and happy nnd (nst growing grow-ing rich. They own somo twenty-five thousand acres of land, all cultivated up to tho highest notch and well 'supplied with live stock, nnd they hnvo mills und manufactories of almost al-most every description. They carry on those many enterprises with thu cnorgy and skill of a people peo-ple who bclluvu that all must work. Not even tho old aro exempt from the unlvursal law. You may visit Amaua society any duy except Sunday and you will find everybody nt work, ono eipinl to the other, men and women, somo In tho fields or vineyards, wimo In tho factories, and n large contingent, most of theso women, as It happens, In the largo co-operative kitchens, where the meals nro served. They uro "brothers" and "slstors" togother, as they say. They all oat the samo food, wear the same bluo jonns or blue calico, live In houiiia equully free from paint, and when they die each ono la given tho same kind of u wooden slab to uiarlt his rusting place A few do, Indued, possess pos-sess tboir own families, hut oven this is diaoouragod, and u life of celibacy held up instead us the highest Ideal. They aro'a simple, plain folk, but they are always apparently contented and harp A visitor will bo surprised to find -ii lori,'e a proportion of old people peo-ple am,, i ft.', m for very few die of youth in middle oge, and fow nro ever l slcl '1 'urc are no cases of nervous probtriition here, and insanity and suicide sui-cide an unknown. Nor has any mom-bar mom-bar of i.ie community ever filled a fcl-' fcl-' on'b cell Tin. i.ppears liko a beautiful lllus- i tratiou uf the good things attendant ; upou '.oclallam nnd M. Zola's panacea ; of 'liuunant work," anil It seems too bad for the sako of tho theory that tho Amanita do not base their success upon these principle)). They claim, rather, that socialism and "Incessant work" are only tho means by which thoy attain u higher good. Thia higher good Is freedom lit observing their own rollirion. This rollgion of theirs, however, Is so pure and beautiful that ono readily si'oh It la a potent factor of their suo-cevi. suo-cevi. I.ll.o their lives, it is without embellishment or show. It teaches them to i pi (ik tho truth, to do no inur-di inur-di i', nut even In war, to love ouu an other, und to listen often (or tho "Inward "In-ward voice" of revolution. Thus thoy Hie, like the patriarchs of old, "ii peculiar pe-culiar people," not (or tho sake o( experiment, ex-periment, but becnusa they desire so I to do. and with nil their peculiarity thov find themselves happy nnd pros-pee |