taken from these sites: this one and this one
On May 1, 1914, the Llano del Rio Colony, a socialist utopian community, was established north of Los Angeles in the southeast Antelope Valley. Among its founders was Indiana native Job Harriman, an idealistic and charismatic young lawyer who had unsuccessfully run on the first-ever Socialist Party platforms for Vice President in 1900 and mayor of Los Angeles in 1911. Thwarted by political efforts to effect social change, Harriman and his fellow visionaries instead thought they could accomplish their utopian goals via the colony's cooperative economic system. Llano del Rio was promoted nationally by the socialist magazine The Western Comrade, and the cooperative thrived for several years-its population exceeding 1,000 people in 1916-until its long-term water supply was diverted by an earthquake fault.
In 1917 about 200 participants moved the colony to Stables, Louisiana, a defunct lumber town, and renamed it New Llano. Despite numerous internal hurdles and external criticism, the colony for more than two decades made its mark as a social experiment. It had one of the country's first Montessori schools; it was renowned for the production and sale of high-quality food and other items; it was where the national socialist paper The American Vanguard moved its headquarters; it hosted a fertile intellectual and cultural climate, replete with orchestras and theater groups; it set up satellite colonies in Gila, New Mexico, and Fremont, Texas; and its innovative social services-including low-cost housing, Social Security, minimum-wage pay, and universal health care-were decades ahead of their time. Though financial woes and infighting forced the colony into bankruptcy in 1939, Llano del Rio is today considered Western American history's most important non-religious utopian community.
A Brief History of Llano del Rio Cooperative Colony
Llano's story begins when, in 1900, the newly unified Socialist Party selected two Indiana natives to head up their Presidential ticket. Eugene Debs was selected as their Presidential candidate. His running mate, described by novelist Jack London as "the best socialist speaker on the coast," was an idealistic and prominent young lawyer named Job Harriman. After Harriman's unsuccessful vice-presidential bid, he returned to California and ran for mayor of Los Angeles in 1911. This was an era wrought with poor economic conditions for the average American. Big business controlled the work force and the worker was just beginning to find his voice. Disenchantment with businesses' labor practices was so great that both the labor unions and the Socialist Party threw their support behind Harriman. Harriman was favored to win the election. But a curious turn of events destroyed Harriman's chance to become the first Socialist mayor of Los Angeles.
The McNamara brothers, active labor unionists, were accused of blowing up the Los Angeles Times building. The Times owner, Harrison Gray Otis, was a prominent and powerful figure in California, and he was violently anti-union. The bombing case made national headlines. Harriman represented the McNamara brothers, and no less than Clarence Darrow joined him in their defense. Unbeknownst to Harriman, Darrow was strong-armed into cutting a deal with the prosecution. Just days before the mayoral election which Harriman was favored to win, Otis and the Times forced the brothers to confess -- and Harriman lost the election.
Disillusioned with trying to affect change through the political system, the charismatic Harriman and a number of other socialists decided that economic change could best be achieved by giving Americans an opportunity to experience a socialist way of life firsthand in a cooperative colony.
In 1914, these visionaries established the Llano del Rio Colony, 45 miles north of Los Angeles, in the Antelope Valley. There, although hounded by Otis and the Times, and overwhelmed by prospective colonists disillusioned with the American political system, the colony prospered until it was discovered that an earthquake fault diverted much of the water the colony had counted on for its growth. Surrounding land barons refused to sell water to the colony, and Harriman and his colleagues scouted the country for another site. In 1917, 200 of the 600 original California colonists chartered a train and moved the entire colony to the former lumber town of Stables, Louisiana and changed its name to New Llano.
For the next 20 years the colony evolved its own brand of cooperativism, southern style. The colony not only coexisted with, but thrived alongside their neighbors in west Louisiana. In doing so, Harriman and the Llano colony accentuated the dreams of socialist Utopian believers in America and around the world.
Though life was not easy at the colony, no one starved either physically or intellectually. The colony was one of the first groups in America to adopt the Montessori teaching method. A prominet socialist, feminist, and architect, Alice Constance Austin helped design the California community. A leading national socialist paper, The American Vanguard (aka The National Ripsaw) moved its operations to New Llano. Theodore Cuno, one of the founders of Labor Day, made New Llano his home until his death. Cuno endowed the colony with a substantial library, one of the best in Louisiana. The colony produced many high-quality items, from shoes to machine tools to popular foodstuffs, and people came from as far away as Texas to buy the reasonably priced, well-made goods. There were numerous colony orchestras and theatrical groups which performed at the colony roof garden, free of charge, to fellow colonists and their neighbors. In fact, surviving colonists today still recall the intellectual life and cultural activities at New Llano as oneof the most important successes of their cooperative venture.
In California they were tested politically; in the south they struggled with their own idealism. One colonist described the discussion about whether to admit African-Americans to the colony; having just been run out of California for their economic beliefs, the colonists decided that being Socialist was aggravation enough to their new neighbors. But one young woman at the time remembers her family's close relations with the Black community nearby. The colony's relation with one prominent African-American, scientist George Washington Carver, was their salvation. At one point the colony suffered from malnutrition and Carver is credited with pointing out to the transplanted farming colonists better soil and crop use pertinent to the south.
Llano's social programs, which in their day were considered un-American, were another source of pride. Seventy-five years later, similar programs have been instituted and borne much fruit in America. The minimum wage, Social Security, low cost housing, welfare, and a move toward universal health care were all instituted at Llano far ahead of the rest of America.
The colony remained in Louisiana for 22 years, adapting to new physical, social, and economic conditions. Then, in 1939, a series of financial problems and internal dissention forced the colony into receivership. Several years later writer Aldous Huxley, living at the defunct California colony, wrote about Llano's legacy. He likened Harriman's dream to that of Ozymandias, "Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Louisiana's New Llano Colony
By Beverly Lewis & Rick Blackwood
[published in Louisiana Cultural Vistas, the quarterly magazine for The
Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities. Winter 94-95 (vol. 5, #4)]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which humanity is always landing." -- Oscar Wilde
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On that map referred to by the late Irish writer is a spot in west Louisiana
where the hopes and ideals of over 10,000 people came together to create America's
longest lived socialist community, the Llano del Rio Cooperative Colony.
For a whole generation, the Llano Colony practiced what the rest of the American
Left preached: a livable wage, an eight-hour work day, an end to child labor,
quality education and cultural opportunities, social security, affordable housing,
and food and health care for all in return for an honest day's work -- ideas
considered not just radical but subversive in their day. Perhaps the most surprising
fact of all this is that the Llano del Rio Cooperative Colony, founded in 1914,
lasted so long not in its initial home of California, a state with a reputation
for tolerance and liberality, but in conservative, rural Louisiana.
In California the colony's voting strength marginalized and alienated its ranching neighbors, a cause of rising tension. The colony board realized that for Llano to survive it would have to move. In 1917 a specially chartered train transported over 200 colonists, their households, and their many industries to a defunct lumber mill town in west Louisiana called Stables, soon renamed New Llano. Many were excited by the new location; however, the move put a great economic strain on the colony, from which it never quite recovered.
Two Leaders/Two Styles of Leadership
Llano del Rio's successes were due in part to two very different men who became the General Managers of the colony and also the social commitment of the colony's western and subsequent southern locations.
Llano (pronounced `Yaw-no') Colony was the brainchild of Job Harriman, a prominent socialist, lawyer, and seminarian, who served as Eugene Debs' vice-presidential running mate on the Socialist ticket in 1900. For many years Harriman experienced first hand that few socialist victories were won at the ballot box. To Harriman's way of thinking, the mainstream press and big business had a way of putting the worst possible spin on what socialism was all about.
It became evident to Harriman "that a people would never abandon their means of livelihood, good or bad, capitalistic or otherwise, until other methods were developed which would promise advantages at least as good as those by which they were living." This idea evolved into the Llano colony, a self-supporting socialist experiment designed to provide "equal wages, equal educational and social advantages, and equal comforts, including housing and commissary furnishings." Harriman found ready backers. Capital was raised by selling stock to members who joined the colony, and land was purchased. From the beginning, Llano del Rio was a corporation, in its own way as American as apple pie.
Celebrated author Jack London considered Harriman to be "the best socialist speaker on the West Coast." Another colleague described him as a man "of rare eloquence, deep sincerity, and irresistible personal charm." Harriman's powers of persuasion were such that within three years more than 1,000 residents flocked to Llano, far too many to sustain with the site's limited water resources.
In theory the Llano del Rio Cooperative Colony was supposed to be a self-sufficient cooperative. New members were required to purchase 2,000 shares of colony stock, paying at least 25 percent up front (this fee was reduced in Louisiana.) Membership money bought goods the colony needed to get the enterprise underway. Everyone over the age of 18 had a job. Usually jobs were assigned, but people were allowed to change jobs if they proved competent. In California, the colony advertised wages of $4 a day (the usual rate in California in 1914 was $2.50 a day), but the advertised rate could not be met until the colony was self-sufficient. In the interim, the wage became $2 a day -- one dollar would be applied to food and housing, another to unpurchased stock, if there was money available. This was usually not the case.
The first years in Louisiana were the toughest. Harriman, suffering the final stages of tuberculosis, was soon forced to return to California. Many others departed in the first year, leaving a core group behind to salvage what was left. From within this group emerged George Pickett, the man who would be the colony's only other General Manager until it went into receivership in the late 1930's.
Pickett's and Harriman's management styles couldn't have been more different. Whereas the intellectual Harriman envisioned Llano to be a totally self-supporting cooperative in keeping with its status as a social experiment, Pickett, a former insurance salesman and real estate agent, saw an opportunity to bring into the colony desperately needed cash by making their goods available to their neighbors. Harriman had been the charismatic leader who sparked the flame; Pickett was the man who figured out how to stake it. In retrospect, George Pickett was better suited to make these changes than Job Harriman. Pickett's abilities were rewarded with fierce loyalty among these early colonists.
The Louisiana Economic Experiment
The opening of trade immediately established a rapport with New Llano's neighbors by bringing new industries and skills to the rural hill country. Louisiana's first artesian ice plant became one of the colony's most successful ventures. People from as far away as Texas traveled to the colony to purchase blocks of ice. The colony opened the first library in Vernon Parish, considered one of the best in the state at that time. The blacksmith shop had an exclusive contract to do the metal work for the Kansas City Southern Railroad in that part of the country. Residents today can still recall how brand new shoes from the colony cobbler shop were as comfortable as if they'd been worn for two years. New Llano's veneer plant turned out some of the finest woodwork in Louisiana. Then, too, New Llano was also the first town in Vernon Parish to have electricity.
The colony did not have hard and fast rules about how outside purchases were transacted. If someone from Leesville brought in grain to be milled, the colony would either take its percentage of the grain or accept cash. This cash provided the colony with funds for necessities like oil and fuel. Fortunately for parish residents, prices at New Llano were extremely reasonable because there were no employee wages or profit-gouging to jack up the products' cost.
There was another factor in the parish's acceptance of the cooperative colony, and that was the political sympathies that lingered in the hill country from the end of the 19th century. Forty years before Llano's arrival in Vernon Parish, the lumber business had been one of the South's most profitable industries.
Like many other big businesses in its day, the industry was unregulated. The lumber owners controlled every aspect of their companies, including the workers: wages were paid in script (as company money was called) whole populations were carted around from one mill town to the next, the workers were often in debt to the company-owned stores. As a result, some of labor's first union organizing occurred in Louisiana, and west Louisiana became the site of one of the first labor strikes in America.
During this period, Louisianians supporting the unions considered themselves part of the Populist Party. By 1900 many west Louisianians were counting themselves socialists. In fact, during the 1900 presidential election, Louisianians registered more socialist votes per capita than almost any other state in the country, -- the very ticket that featured Eugene Debs and Job Harriman. "Big Bill" Haywood of The Industrial Workers of America (also known as the `Wobblies') and Emma Goldman, a prominent activist and Communist, made frequent stops at rallies in western Louisiana. In spite of the "divide and conquer" practices of the lumber companies moving their workers around, the long and bloody labor strikes continued for decades, attesting to the fervor and commitment the disenfranchised workers felt for the social reforms the unions championed.
By 1916, a year before the Llano colony moved to Vernon Parish, the I.W.W. finally gave up. This was due in part to the fact that much of the old growth timber in the region had been harvested. Profits fell and the companies began to sell off what they could.
In 1917, when the Gulf-Anderson Lumber Company arranged s sale of one of their abandoned mill towns to the Llano socialists, there was some apprehension on the part of the California colonists about their reception into their new Southern home. Although the word "socialist" was not foreign to the Louisiana colony's neighbors, it had taken on new connotations since the May and November revolutions in Russia. However, Llano soon recognized that the lifestyle the cooperators brought with them incorporated many of the social reforms they themselves had fervently supported against the lumber companies.
Innovative Social Services
The social services and programs at the colony proved to be decades ahead of their time. The services were free and staffed by the members themselves. Seventy-five years before the Family Leave Act was passed, colony mothers had the option of taking up to six months off work after the birth of a child. When they returned to work, child care was provided. Years ahead of its time, a feminist revolution touched down in west Louisiana. Women, as well as men, were free to work in any area they were capable. For some women, this was in the sawmill; others chose more traditional jobs like cooking in the cafeteria or working in the sewing room.
Education was of primary importance to the colony. After four hours of study, the older children worked four hours in some related industry, applying knowledge they had learned in the classroom. So successful was this distributive approach to education that it was common for colony children who had occasion to attend public schools to skip two grades. School children might learn about construction, design irrigation systems, or operate and print a newspaper. Alternative opinions were encouraged in classroom discussions, even if they differed with the teacher's All that was asked was that the student know how to substantiate his or her position. Adults, too, availed themselves of night classes on topics as varied as philosophy, psychology, and the latest scientific farming techniques, sometimes augmented by visiting lecturers.
Medical care was available to any colonist who needed it, but it was often a mixed bag. New Llano was served by a chiropractor, Doc Williams, the only medical professional in residence. However, he was highly regarded by the colonists and later in Leesville where he and his wife Cecil practiced following the country's demise. Older people, no longer able to work, were cared for by the community. The colony's health environment seemed, on the whole, a good one. During 1918, when people throughout the parish were felled by the flu epidemic, not one colonist died. Colonists also attributed their relative good health to various factors, including goats' milk, and a near-vegetarian diet.
Llano del Rio faded into oblivion upon its demise but it was famous in its own time. Over 10,000 people called Llano home at one time or another. In 1933, Senator Morris Shepard from Texas introduced Senate Bill 1142 to establish a federal corporation to organize self-sustaining agricultural and industrial cooperative communities financed by bond issues in an effort to alleviate the unemployment problem during the Depression. The only cooperative representative to address the Senate Subcommittee was George Pickett.
Despite its utopian aim, Llano del Rio was not a perfect world. Leadership positions remained predominantly male. There were restrictions on membership. Some colony families had outside income they used to purchase luxury items like butter and store-bought dresses, causing resentment from colonists without such resources.
Victim of the Times
Human nature and its history ultimately took its toll on the colony. The colony's history was sandwiched in between two of the country's worst depressions. Both depressions impelled many to consider Llano a viable alternative to an unstable life on the outside. The difference in the Louisiana experiment was that the Llano in California had the momentum of being a new enterprise. In the late twenties, the colony in Louisiana enjoyed some of its most prosperous years. It established several satellite colonies, including a produce farm in Premont, Texas, a cattle ranch in Gila, New Mexico, and a highly profitable rice ranch in Elton, Louisiana. Not surprisingly, then, when the Depression hit in 1929, New Llano was overextended, and, like so many businesses around the country, faced financial ruin.
The colonists tried a variety of ways to get out from under debt and this factionalized the members. By 1937, Llano's records and enmities were so complicated, the community was financially paralyzed. It filed for bankruptcy and was placed into receivership. The receivership itself proved a messy state of affairs. The first receiver was declared `incompis mentis' and removed. The colony assets were so grossly undervalued and undersold at the receiver's sale in 1939 that lawsuits ensued for the next 40 years.
As history goes, the Llano del Rio Cooperative Community has been written off as a failure, like so many other Utopian communities. But was the colony a failure? As Dr. Robert Hine, a history scholar, pointed out, "How do you call Llano a failure? When two-thirds of American businesses fail within their first three years, do you call capitalism a failure? Llano lasted 25 years," a good run for any corporation.
During the next two generations, Americans enacted the Social Security Act, a minimum wage law, the family Leave Act, and other social legislation, reforms we take for granted today. And while Democrats and Republicans take credit for enacting these reforms, what is lost to history is the fact that these ideas did not originate with these mainstream groups. such causes were initially proposed and championed long before they became politically popular by those who took great risks of being blackballed, beaten, deported, jailed, and ostracized. Socialists, communists, labor unions, and cooperative communities like Llano del Rio all played their roles in bringing the need for reform into American consciousness.
Who Came and Who Could - Demographics of the Colony
By Beverly Lewis
[published in Louisiana Cultural Vistas, the quarterly magazine for The Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities. Winter 94-95 (vol. 5, #4)]
People who joined the New Llano came from all walks of life, from most states in the union, and from many foreign countries. Because the cost to join in California was so high, members tended to be from the middle-class or upper middle-classes. A number of members paid on installment plans or traded their way into the colony allowing many from lesser incomes to be able to join.
A cross-section of the male population reveals seventy percent hailed from farming and business sectors. The rest considered themselves professionals, factory and construction workers, clerks, and miners. No statistics list women's professions before they entered the colony, but surviving records indicate that several among them were architects and professors.
A fair number of these people considered themselves intellectuals and were philosophically attracted to Harriman's socialist experiment. Principally, the colony advertised in socialist newspapers, so most of the members were of a socialist bent. However, membership in any party was not a requirement nor was a union card.
Race and ethnicity were certainly factors in the colony's demographics, particularly when the colony moved to the South. The colony's bylaws had no official word on any racial restrictions, but an official letter penned during the California period specifically indicated that "Mongoloids and Negroids" were not admitted. However, the colony did accept Jews, which was considered a very progressive step at the time.
Colonists making the move to Louisiana were philosophically torn about the race issue in the South. A number felt that no one who wanted to join should be turned away, especially Blacks, with whom the colonists intellectually sympathized. It is unclear if the migrating colonists themselves knew the extent of labor union activity in west Louisiana but they expressed concern that coming in as a group of Yankees and socialists might already be rocking the boat. Many feared that playing the race card in the South might scuttle the whole venture.
Individual stories from the Louisiana colonists indicate that positive relations did exist with nearby Black communities. Colonist Stephen Baldwin had just stepped off the train in New Llano with his family when he encountered a Black family distraught over the impending breach birth of a family cow. Baldwin assisted in delivering a healthy calf, and from that time he was referred to as Doctor Baldwin by the Black community. Baldwin's daughter, Rhea Cunningham, remembers walking into Leesville with Black friends and having them say goodbye before they approached the town and moved to the other side of the street. Llano's General George Pickett would occasionally lecture in the nearby Black community.
Colony Time Line