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family.” Many of Owen’s philosophies were parallel to those of the Illuminati.
Owen’s long term goal was to “cut the world into villages of 300 to 2,000 souls,” in which,
“the dwellings for the 200 or 300 families should be placed together in the form of a
parallelogram.” According to his philosophy, “individualism was to be disallowed,” and “each
was to work for the benefit of all.” A colony established along those lines in Ireland failed, so in
1824, Owen sailed to America, where he bought several thousand acres from George Rapp’s
pietistic Harmony Society, in Posey County, Indiana. In 1825, with 1,000 settlers, he started his
“New Harmony Community of Equality.” It was a model town of non- profit making stores.
Other settlements like this were started in America and Scotland, and communism was born.
However, Owen was a weak leader, had few skilled workmen, and had to put additional duties
on the few competent workers that he had, in an attempt to insure success. In 1826, he adopted a
Constitution that condemned private property and organized religion.
However, Owen had failed to take into account human nature, something he had fought so
hard for in earlier years, when he advocated better housing for workers, better education for
children, and the elimination of unhealthy living conditions. Even though he failed in an attempt
to merge all the trade unions into a “Great Trades Union,” his reforms completely transformed
the town of New Lanark, Scotland. In 1827, Owen resigned as manager, and dissolved the
colony, because he was forced to change his thinking. He wrote: “No societies with common
property and equality could prosper. In order to succeed it was needful to exclude the
intemperate, the idle, the careless, the quarrelsome, the avaricious, the selfish...”
His son, Robert Dale Owen (1801-77), was a leader in the Workingman’s Party in 1829,
which evolved down through the years into the U.S. Communist Party.
In 1817, a group of German separatists, led by Joseph M. Bimeler, settled near the
Tuscarawas River in Ohio, naming their society after one of the few Biblical plain cities that
escaped the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. In 1819, they were incorporated as the Society
of Separatists of Zoar. All property was held in common; factories and shops were managed by
an elected Board of Trustees. They prospered during the 1850’s, establishing the town of Zoar,
having over 10,000 acres, and $1 million worth of assets. After Bimeler’s death in 1853, interest
declined, and the town dissolved in 1898.
There were other communistic settlements, such as Harmony, PA (1805); Nashoba,
Tennessee (1825); the Cooperative Store at Toad Street (1844); and the Cooperative Society of
Oldham (1850), set up by the Rochdale Pioneers, which also failed.
Some groups today can trace their roots to the 19th century communes. In the 1830’s, Joseph
Smith, who founded the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints (the Mormons), moved
his followers from New York, to Ohio, then to Missouri, and finally to Utah, because of religious
persecution. He believed that a form of communal Christianity existed during the time of the
Apostles.
John Humphrey Noyes (“Father Noyes”), after establishing a colony at Putney, Virginia, in
1846, set up another in Oneida, New York, in 1848, which featured common property ownership
and child rearing, selective ‘breeding’ of babies, and a society in which every woman was
considered to be the wife of each man, and every man the husband of each woman. By 1874,
there were 300 members. Noyes went to Canada in 1879 after threats of prosecution, and the
colony discontinued their unusual sexual practices. They reorganized as a joint stock company,
which is still operating today.
Christian Metz, head of the 17th century German Protestant sect known as the Community of
True Inspiration, settled on a farm near Buffalo, New York, in 1842, where they established a