UPTON SINCLAIR'S EXPERIMENT.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLI, Issue 95, 24 April 1907, Page 3

UPTON SINCLAIR'S EXPERIMENT.

Mr Upton Sinclair, the Socialist aUf thor of "The Jungle " has been -con-, ducting during the past six months a highly interesting experiment, of which he gives an account in the "World's Work." On nine and a-half acres of land afr Englewood, near New York, he has established what is called the Helicon Home Colony, where about fifty people live together on a communistic basis. They earn their separate livings in the city, and are reaiiy joint lodgers of a co-operative hotel, which they own themselves/and conduct according to their own liking, and for their own profit. A good deal of difficulty was experienced in launching the scheme, the element of congeniality amongst members assuming a far larger importance than its author had anticipated. . It was , a delicate matter to exclude many woukl-be members merely because other - members thought that they would not be able to get on with them, but it was done. Again the Socialists received an ugly shock when -icy found they had to pay from £600 to £800 an acre for the freehold of their new Utopia, which they have reckoned on obtaining at one twentieth of this cost. Nor was their first experience of communistic comforts very encouraging. The three-storey* building, containing a hall* social rooms, a large pipe organ, a swimming pool and bowling-alley, a theatre, billiard-room, studio, and thirty-five bedrooms, which they had chosen for their common dwelling place was in the plasterers' hands when they arrived to take up their habitation "We were tumbled in, bag and baggage; we could not even unpack, we , had no furniture and no food, and no fire and no cook; we lived on biscuits and milk, and we would spend hours hunting for a teaspoon to eat with." But order was gradually evolved out of chaos, and the vote of the majority was found quite an amicable and satisfactory method of settling any differences of opinion in regard to management. There is complete social equality for lodgers and for servants within the home. One may reside in the colony indefinitely without becoming a member, but only members—persons who have fulfilled a month's residence, been elected by a four-fifths majority, and paid an initiation fee of £s—possess the right to vote. Mr Sinclair thinks that up to the present the experiment has proved a distinct success. With his wife and little boy he can live in the colony for £200 a year, which he seems to think is; highly satisfactory. But six months is a very short probation.