More Utopias.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5260, 16 May 1895, Page 1

More Utopias.

The quality of hope which "springs eternal in the human breast," appears to have special vitality in the matter of land settlement schemes, and not all the positive knowledge of past and current failures will make men lose their sublime faith in the doctrine that humanity has the power to work out its social salvation on the laud of this planet. We are almost daily receiving news of the sad condition of the "New Australia" settlers, and a number of returned colonists have brought harrowing accounts of the hardships endured in Paraguay. So far as can be judged, however, the sufferings of the New Australian pioneers have been no greater than those that had to be undergone by the early settlers in New Zealand, or that have still to be faced by men and women in the back country of America or Australia in the effort to carve homes out of the wilderness. Too great expectations and too little courage and experience have characterised those depressed New Australian settlers who are now soliciting and obtaining sympathy; and there is no doubt that with the liberal assistance afforded by the Paraguayan Government many of the colonists will . achieve a success as conspicuous as the failures now recorded. Among the evidences of human faith in the virtues of land settlement is a movement now going on for the formation of a special colony at Semicamingue, in the Province of Quebec. The scheme has been launched in connection with a large contingent of settlers of French birth or extraction who have gone to Canada from Michigan, and have been gathered together by a priest named Father Paradis. Among the colonists are two hundred bachelors and an equal number of maidens, who are severally engaged to be married, but their weddings have not yet taken place because of poverty. Father Paradis, to urge each couple to join the colonists, promised to give each a farm, and to have a great marriage ceremony in public in April last, when the whole four hundred were to be married at the same time. This is a Berious undertaking, and we can only hope that Father Paradis may succeed in establishing a Paradise on earth, which, unlike the paradise above, is based upon "marrying and giving in marriage."

la the State of Michigan, from which the settlers referred to above have migrated, there is a. settlement experiment of an interesting kind now in progress. It has been formed by some thirty-seven men with their wiveß and families, and is called the Hiawatha settlement. Its basis is a sort of modified communism, whioh is almosi identical with what is called collectivism. The idea is that tha settlers shall join their capital in order to purchase and own together the machinery— farming or otherwise — and materials necessary for production, and that, working together, each shall have a Bhare of what ib produced, the share being determined by the labour, &c, of the producer. "It is a doctrine of this association that there is no other basis for ownership than that of production, or an honest exchange of absolute equivalents, and that all business transactions which involve the obtaining of something for nothing are essentially wrong, and that all property rights based on such transactions are morally void." The parties who have joined together to carry out. this new experiment of settling upon land, insist that each man has naturally a right; to what his own labour may produce, and that by no trick of commerce nor echeme of exchange can he ever establish a property right in anything which represents no effort of his own. According to the principles agreed to by the Association, the sale or use of intoxicants, as well as gambling and its .allied vices, are forbidden, while the people have joined in a declaration of common faith, and unanimously voted to make their Association emphatically a religious body. According to latest accounts, the Association, with over 8000 acres of land, had 127 souls under its care, and had started farming operations and domesticmanufactures, such as knitting and shoemaking. All interested in the eolation of social problems will wish this experiment success.. Its projectors have, however, fallen into one of tbe errors of the New; Australians, in making total abstinence a test condition. It will be remembered that this led to the first disruption in the New Australia settlement. Then tbe Hiawathans have a difficult task to perform in the matter of the religious test ; but Lane, the leader of the New Australians, maintained that the original cause of division in his band was the lack of sinceriiy in " the religion of the movement." It is to be hoped thst the Hiawatha settlement may have a happier

experience.