History of American Socialisms - dana ward's homepage

AMERICAN SOCIALISMS.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.
MANY years ago, when a branch of the Oneida Community
lived at Willow Place in Brooklyn, near New
York, a sombre pilgrim called there one day, asking for
rest and conversation. His business proved to be the
collecting of memoirs of socialistic experiments. We
treated him hospitably, and gave him the information
he sought about our Community. He repeated his
visit several times in the course of some following years,
and finally seemed to take a very friendly interest
in our experiment. Thus we became acquainted with
him, and also in a measure with the work he had
undertaken, which was nothing less than a history
of all the Associations and Communities that have
lived and died in this country, within the last thirty
or forty years.
This man's name was A. ]. Macdonald. We remember
that he was a person of small stature, with
black hair and sharp eyes. He had a benevolent air,
but seemed a little sad. We imagined that the sael