AN EXPERIMENT IN COMMUNISM.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XLVI, Issue XLVI, 24 January 1911, Page 2

AN EXPERIMENT IN COMMUNISM.

Revolution long since became a hah 'with, the people of Paraguay, and th news that the Minister of War ha: placed. himself in the Presidential chai at Asuncion will excite very little con cern among the nations, comments tht Lytitelton "Times." The only real 'claim of the troubled republic upon the interest of this part of the world lies in t'he fact that it contains the New Aus tralia Colony, the result of a curious experiment 'in communism. » Seventoer years have- passed since a group of Aus tralian people decided to apply to them selves ,in a little State of their own. all the doctrines of Marxian Socialism) They secured from, the Government o f Paraguay a grant of 450,000 acres o land deep in the interior of the republiand agreed to establish npon it 80( families within four years. The fnnda mental rules of the settlement were to b. the common ownership of the soil, thi equal division of expenses and ; profit? without regard to sex, age, office or phy sical or mental capacity, the absolu't-: equality of the sexes, and the individual .freedom of members an iregard ti: "thought, religion, speech and leisure.' The communists were faced by grave difficulties from the first. Their colon;, wias .situated thirty miles from any riveT or railway, in a district traversed only by .rough, bullock tracks, and they could find no market for the produce of their cultivations. Some of the members became discontented after a short experience of the simple life and returned to the outside world with harrowing accounts of the trials and hardships they had undergone. The mised number of families was never se cured, but the colony has continued, and indeed made progress, in spite of all its troubles. It contains about one hundred and-fifty British subjects today, and its fertile fields provides a wonderful variety of grains, fruits and vegetables. The sale of cattle a/nd horses enables the settlers; to pay for the few necessaries of life which they canf. not grow or manufacture themselves, and -fjhe "public tiniclude a steam sawmill, a grain distillery and two rum stills. The original list of "fundamental rules' 'has been modified, but the colony is still maintaining a sytem of common ownership. Whether its organisation would survive the apr proach of a . railway and an influx of busy individualists is a question upon which widely divergent opinions have been expressed.