CHAPTER XIII

COMMUNIA, IOWA^1

T

he hospitable soil of the young America before the Civil

War nurtured many immigrant Utopias. Among the

thousands who had resolved to try their fortunes in the

New World there were many who hoped to establish an entirely

new social order. There was room in the United States for almost

any kind of experiment in group living; if neighbors were not

always hospitable, they at least could afford to be tolerant, for in

the broad Mississippi Valley there was land enough for practically

every kind of experimenter with social reform.^2

Though Weitling's Communia had its own unique history, it

was but one of many colonies that are part of the general pattern

(^1) The existing monographs on Weitling's activities deal almost wholly with
the European aspect of his career. Very little has been written about Communia,
and many details of its history probably will remain obscure. Clark, in his mono­
graph on "A Neglected Socialist," locates the colony in Wisconsin and says it
came to an end in 1853; Friedrich Muckle, in Die grossen Sozialisten, refers to it
as "Kolumbia." Iowa historians have done almost nothing on the subject. Com­
munia is mentioned in W. J. Petersen's "History of Northeastern Iowa," Iowa
Journal of History and Politics (Iowa City), XXXI (1933), 80, and in Ralph
Albertson, "A Survey of Mutualistic Communities in America," ibid. (1936),
XXXIV, 406. The History of Clayton County, Iowa (Chicago, 1882) devotes
two pages to the colony. The account contains numerous inaccuracies. Reminis­
cences by descendants of the colonists, written long years after the colony's dis­
solution, reveal the merits and the defects of such material. See an article by Mrs.
Frank Liers, in Clayton County Register (Elkader, Iowa), August 21, 1930, and
one by Kathleen M. Hempel, in Cedar Rapids Gazette, November 23, 1930.
Other brief newspaper articles are to be found in Clayton County Register,
March 26,1931, and July 22,1936.
(^2) See Carl Wittke, We Who Built America: The Saga of the Immigrant (New
York, 1939), chap, xii, on "Immigrant Utopias."