Icarian Community

CABET, BETTANNIER

Posted By: Anne Hermann (email)
Date: 4/18/2009 at 00:04:46

Adams County Free Press, Corning, Iowa, February 21, 1895.

THE FRENCH COLONY

This Organization About To Be Mutually Dissolved

Our readers in the vicinity of Corning are all familiar with the communistic society known as the Icarian Community situated about three miles east of this city. A feeling has pervaded the community for some time until at last it has been amicably and mutually agreed upon, that it is for the best interests of all concerned that the colony be dissolved and steps have been taken to secure a division of the property. We understand that various considerations such as the rights of heirs of deceased members of the colony, have rendered it advisable to have a receiver appointed and matters adjusted in a legal manner, but that it is a voluntary act upon the parts of all interested and no animosities whatever exist.

A brief retrospective glance over the affairs and history of this organization may interest many, and we herewith give a brief sketch of the inception of the Icarian Community. Just previous to the French Revolution an advanced guard of socialists, under the direction of E. Cabet, founder of the Icarian Society, departed from France and settled in Texas, near the Red River. Privations and dissatisfactions soon led them to abandon this territory and they journeyed to New Orleans. Meantime, Cabet, who was still in France, learning of the change from Texas, immediately sailed for New Orleans and assumed personal supervision of the colony. From New Orleans they migrated to Nauvoo, Illinois, which had just been abandoned by the Mormons after the assassination of Joseph Smith. Here the community flourished for a time, but later internal misunderstandings led to a change of base to the present location in Adams county. This was about 1855. In the following year the founder of Icaria died in St. Louis, whither he and a number of his adherents had gone.

The faction in Iowa were charted under the laws of Iowa as “Icaria.” In 1876 its liabilities were $4000 and its assets were computed at about $60,000. Another rupture between factions occurred, however, in 1879. Previous to this time the community had grown until about eighty-five persons were numbered as its adherents. At the time of the last division a good many of one faction departed for California, while some remained upon land allotted them.

Almost all the intervening time from 1879 until the present date our friend E. F. Bettannier has been president of the colony. He has proven a wise, capable officer and skillfully conducted an enterprise which many businesses men would not care to undertake. The community is perhaps the only one in the United States, if not in the world, which is conducted upon such ultra socialistic principles. We know of a German settlement in Iowa county which is similar to Icaria in some respects, but the citizens of Amana are far more conservative than inhabitants of Icaria. Here departmental heads have always been chosen and the entire business of the community conducted as though it were one large family. A common table furnished food for all, one person purchased all supplies in wearing apparel, another performed a like office in superintending agricultural operations, and so on. At one time the settlement published a organ, La Revue Icarien, and numerous other industries were represented.

The objects and tenets of the community are well set forth in a few paragraphs from their constitution, as witness the following: “It is established in the interest of entire humanity, in devotion to its well-being, in order to present to it a system of society capable of rendering it happy, and to prove by experience that communism based upon complete solidarity is realizable and possible.”

A common fund supplied the wants of all and a common treasury received the earnings and savings of all. A general assembly of Icarians, irrespective of sex, over twenty-one years of age constituted the legislative authority, while executive power was vested in three trustees. Admission into the community was gained by the applicant putting his possessions into the common fund and conforming to the constitution. Withdrawals were permitted by the party desiring to sever his connection with the society giving one month’s notice of the same, whereupon the general assembly took into consideration the services he had rendered the community and all attendant circumstances, and bestowed upon him two-thirds of the amount originally invested and a reasonable compensation for his services while a member.

Members of this community were free to follow their own inclinations in regard to religious dogmas and exercised the greatest liberties in all matters that did not interfere with any of the socialistic tenets. About $10,000 in personal property and 1000 acres of land will be divided between the members, we understand.