Date of Award

Summer 1951

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

History

First Advisor

Walter Prichard

Abstract

After failing to gain political power through the ballot box, a group of California socialists, led by Job Harriman, founded the Llano Cooperative Colony in 1914. Here these Marxians hoped to reap the benefits of cooperation and eliminate the injustices of capitalism. They expanded rapidly until 1917 when there were over 1100 members and numerous industrial and agricultural activities. Then this desert community failed because of a water shortage and a new colony was started in west-central Louisiana.

In Louisiana, steady progress was made toward self-sufficiency despite hardship and privation. Several schisms shook the colony to its foundations, but George Pickett, the new leader, kept the colony together. With the coming of the Great Depression, the colony expanded its membership and attempted to found other colonies, but financial difficulties and strife finally led to revolution and bankruptcy. By 1937, most of the colony's property had been sold and its existence ended.

The colony has been both extravagantly praised and unjustly vilified and most of the printed material on the colony is biased. Interviews and personal papers have helped in interpreting slanted source materials. I have tried to present a balanced history of the colony. The social and educational life of the colonists has been considered as important as their political and economic institutions. And their aims and hopes are given as much emphasis as their accomplishments.

My conclusions are basic and elementary. The colony was born out of a fierce devotion to social justice, but it was unable to eliminate the human frailties of envy, hatred and greed which lay beneath its internal difficulties. Also, the genius of America was traveling another road and would neither understand nor tolerate these few who unavailingly pointed in other directions.

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