246 THE UTOPIAN COMMUNIST
ately in buying coffee, yard goods, and dishes for the colony. In
a communication to the "dear brethren" in New Orleans, dated
January 16, 1852, Weitling requested the cash in their treasury
for the colony and asked for expressions of confidence in his
leadership. Minsky, the Polish barber, sent money regularly to
prepare for the day when he could go in person to the Iowa
Utopia. A young German communist announced his intention to
invest $400 in the venture. In a letter to an ardent supporter in St.
Louis, Weitling asked a friend to recruit a millwright, a brick-
maker, a carpenter, two shoemakers, and two masons for the
colony and reported that an architect and a fine musician who "can
fiddle for our dances" already were en route to Iowa. In an out
burst of boyish enthusiasm, he announced that the leader himself
would join the merrymakers in the colony, and dance "to whisky
punch and buttermilk."
Before the end of the year, however, Weitling's enthusiasm had
cooled somewhat, and he cautioned prospective colonists not to
expect to move immediately into a "Paradise" or "Robinson
Crusoe Island." The colony was still a wilderness in a wilderness
he said, and could only succeed with men and women of great
industry and self-denial, who were organized under an "industri
ous, temperate, truthful, honest leader" and equipped with a defi
nite plan. Weitling knew that hitherto only those colonies had
succeeded whose members were bound by religious ties into a
homogeneous brotherhood, and he was a little concerned whether
"the rational freedom of freethinkers" would be able to set an
"example of harmony" and build colonies which would flourish
like those based on "superstitions and religious fanaticism."
In 1852, Weitling visited Communia for the second time.
Coming up the river to Galena, he traveled on through Dubuque,
Guttenberg, and Clayton and walked from there to the colony.
The flora and fauna and the minerals of the region interested
him greatly, and he described them in detail for the readers of
Die Republik der Arbeiter.
In Communia he learned that the large houses were inhabited