Mencius Moldbug recommended Charles Nordhoff’s The Communistic Societies of the United States (1875) to anyone interested in seasteading, but what caught my eye was the story of the origin of Anaheim, California — now home to Disneyland — which, it turns out, was not a communistic society but a co-op:
In 1857 several Germans in San Francisco proposed to certain of their countrymen to purchase by a united effort a tract of land in the southern part of the state, cause it to be subdivided into small farms, and procure these to be fenced, planted with grape-vines and trees, and otherwise prepared for the settlement of the owners. After some deliberation, fifty men set their names to an agreement to buy eleven hundred and sixty-five acres of land, at two dollars per acre; securing water-rights for irrigation with the purchase, because in that region the dry summers necessitate artificial watering.The originator of the enterprise, Mr. Hansen, of Los Angeles, a German lawyer and civil engineer, a man of culture, was appointed by his associates to select and secure the laud; and eventually he became the manager of the whole enterprise, up to the point where it lost its co-operative features and the members took possession of their farms.
The Anaheim associates consisted in the main of mechanics, and they had not a farmer among them. They were all Germans. There were several carpenters, a gunsmith, an engraver, three watch-makers, four blacksmiths, a brewer, a teacher, a shoemaker, a miller, a hatter, a hotel – keeper, a bookbinder, four or five musicians, a poet (of course), several merchants, and some teamsters. It was a very heterogeneous assembly; they had but one thing in common: they were all, with one or two exceptions, poor. Very few had more than a few dollars saved; most of them had neither cash nor credit enough to buy even a twenty-acre farm; and none of them were in circumstances which promised them more than a decent living.
The plan of the society was to buy the land, and thereupon to cause it to be subdivided and improved as I have said by monthly contributions from the members, who were meantime to go on with their usual employments in San Francisco. It was agreed to divide the eleven hundred and sixty-five acres into fifty twenty-acre tracts, and fifty village lots, the village to stand in the centre of the purchase. Fourteen lots were also set aside for school-houses and other public buildings.
With the first contribution the land was bought. The fifty associates had to pay about fifty dollars each for this purpose. This done, they appointed Mr. Hansen their agent to make the projected improvements; and they, it may be supposed, worked a little more steadily and lived a little more frugally in San Francisco. He employed Spaniards and Indians as laborers; and what he did was to dig a ditch seven miles long to lead water out of the Santa Anna Kiver, with four hundred and fifty miles of subsidiary ditches and twenty-five miles of feeders to lead the water over every twenty-acre lot. This done, he planted on every farm eight acres of grapes and some fruit-trees; and on the whole place over five miles of outside willow fencing and thirty-five miles of inside fencing. Willows grow rapidly in that region, and make a very close fence, yielding also fire-wood sufficient for the farmer’s use.
All this had to be done gradually, so that the payments for labor should not exceed the monthly contributions of the associates, for they had no credit to use in the beginning, and contracted no debts.
When the planting was done, the superintendent cultivated and pruned the grape-vines and trees, and took care of the place; and it was only when the vines were old enough to bear, and thus to yield an income at once, that the proprietors took possession.
At the end of three years the whole of this labor had been performed and paid for; the vines were ready to bear a crop, and the division of lots took place. Each shareholder had at this time paid in all twelve hundred dollars; a few, I have been told, fell behind somewhat, but were helped by some of their associates who were in better circumstances. If we suppose that most of the members had no money laid by at the beginning of the enterprise, it would appear that during three years they saved, over and above their living, somewhat less than eight dollars a week — a considerable sum, but easily possible at that time in California to a good and steady mechanic.
It was inevitable that some of the small farms should bo more valuable than others; and there was naturally a difference, too, in the village lots. To make the division fairly, all the places were viewed, and a schedule was made of them, on which each was assessed at a certain price, varying from six hundred to fourteen hundred dollars, according to its situation, the excellence of its fruit, etc. They were then distributed by a kind of lottery, with the condition that if the farm drawn was valued in the schedule over twelve hundred dollars, he who drew it should pay into the general treasury the surplus; if it was valued at less, he who drew it received from the common fund a sum which, added to the value of his farm, equaled twelve hundred dollars. Thus A, who drew a fourteen-hundred-dollar lot, paid two hundred dollars; B, who drew a six-hundred-dollar lot, received six hundred dollars additional in cash.
The property was by this time in such a state of improvement that money could readily be borrowed on the security of these small farms. Moreover, when the drawing was completed, there was a sale of the effects of the company — horses, tools, etc.; and on closing all the accounts and balancing the books, it was found that there remained a sum of money in the general treasury sufficient to give each of the fifty shareholders a hundred dollars in cash as a final dividend.
When this was done, the co-operative feature of the enterprise disappeared. The members, each in his own good time, settled on their farms. Lumber was bought at wholesale, and they began to build their houses. Fifty families make a little town in any of our Western States, suflncently important to attract traders. The village lots at once acquired a value, and some were sold to shopkeepers. A school was quickly established; mechanics of different kinds came down to Anaheim to work for wages; and the colonists in fact gathered about them at once many conveniences which, if they had settled singly, they could not have commanded for some years.
They were still poor, however. But few of them were able even to build the slight house needed in that climate without running into debt. For borrowed money they had to pay from two to three per cent. per month interest. Moreover, none of them were farmers; aud they had to learn to cultivate, prune, and take care of their vines, to make wine, and to make a vegetable garden. They had from the first to raise and Bell enough for their own support, and to pay at least the heavy interest on their debts. It resulted that for some years longer they had a struggle with a burden of debt, and had to live with great economy. But the people told me that they had always enough to eat, a good school for their children, and the immense satisfaction of being their own employers. ” We had music and dancing in those days; and, though we were very poor, I look back to those times as the happiest in all our lives,” said one man to me.
And they gradually got out of debt. Not one failed. The sheriff has never sold out any one in Anaheim; and only one of the original settlers had left the place when I saw it in 1872. They have no destitute people. Their vineyards give them. an annual clear income of from two hundred and fifty to one thousand dollars over and above their living expenses; their children have enjoyed the advantages of a social life and a fairly good school. And, finally, the property which originally cost them an average of one thousand and eighty dollars for each, is now worth from five to ten thousand dollars. They live well, and feel themselves as independent as though they were millionaires.
Now this was an enterprise which any company of prudent mechanics, with a steadfast purpose, might easily imitate. The founders of Anaheim were not picked men. I have been told that they were not without jealousies and suspicions of each other and of their manager, which made his life often uncomfortable, and threatened the life of the undertaking. They had grumblers, fault-finders, and wiseacres in their company, as probably there will be among any company of fifty men; and I have heard that Mr. Ilansen, who was their able and honest manager, declared that he would rather starve than conduct another such enterprise.
They were extremely fortunate to have for their manager an honest, patient, and sufficiently able man ; and such a leader is indeed the corner-stone of an undertaking of this kind. Granted a man sufficiently wise and honest, in whom his associates can have confidence, and there needs only moderate patience, perseverance, and economy, in the body of the company, to achieve success. Nor could I help noticing, when I was at Anaheim, that the experience and training which men gain in carrying to success — no matter through what struggles of poverty, self-denial, and debt — such an enterprise, has an admirable effect on their characters. The men of Anaheim were originally a very common class of mechanics; they have stepped up to a higher plane of life — they are masters of their own lives. This result — namely, the training of families in the hardier virtues, their elevation to a higher moral as well as physical standard — is certainly not to be overlooked by any thoughtful man.
