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Letters
To the Editor:
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In my article on Edward Bellamy's influence in Oregon (OHQ 104:1, Spring 2003), I mentioned ads for the Nehalem Valley Cooperative Colony that appeared in the Weekly Nationalist of Los Angeles in 1890 (p. 84). I suggested that little information is available on this colony. Some clarification of this is required, as additional information has come to light. |
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As early as 1901, the Nehalem Valley Cooperative Colony was identified among utopian experiments in America. In an examination of "Cooperative Communities in the United States" that appeared interestingly in the Bulletin of the Department of Labor (No. 35, July 1901, pp. 563–646), Rev. Alexander Kent is one of the first to include this colony among lists of much more well-known communities. In particular, Kent focuses on a number of communities that were established in the last decade or so of the nineteenth century, a period he describes as being "more prolific of schemes and efforts to get out of the competitive struggle, with its pitiful extremes of wealth and poverty, into the cooperative life, with its promise of freedom from these ills, than any prior period in our history." (565) Kent includes several utopian experiments that were not examined in the early surveys of such communities, including those by Charles Nordhoff, John Humphrey Noyes, and William Hinds (Charles Nordhoff, John Humphrey Noyes, History of American Socialisms [1870]; The Communistic Societies of the United States [1875]; William A. Hinds, American Communities [1878]). One of these settlements is the Nehalem Valley Cooperative Colony. The entry reads:
This became the corporate name of the Columbia Cooperative Colony, organized at Mist, Columbia County, Oreg., on December 5, 1886. Its principal objective was "homes and employment for members," with "justice to all." It was socialistic in aim, and held property collectively. The membership fee was $500 in money or material. It had about fifty members, of various nationalities, representing many laboring trades, but engaged chiefly in lumbering. Men worked eight hours a day and showed no disposition to shirk or lean. Sex relations were normal. The causes given for dissensions and withdrawals were "inexperience" and "other interests."
The colony is said to have failed because of "surrounding opposition and lack of funds." (642)
This basic description, with some variations in dates, has been repeated in various modern compilations of American communal experiments, including Robert S. Fogarty's Dictionary of American Communal and Utopian History (1980), where it is listed under Columbia Co-operative Colony (p. 214), and Foster Stockwell's Encyclopedia of American Communes, 1663–1963 (1998, p. 143). That the colony adopted Bellamy's beliefs is not clear, and further investigation is needed not only on that aspect but on the colony overall. |
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In addition to the Nehalem Valley Cooperative Colony, Kent also lists another similar experiment in Oregon in the late nineteenth century. The Union Mill Company is described by Kent in this way:
The Union Mill Company was organized in 1892, at Nehalem, Tillamook County, Oreg. It was socialistic in aim, but made all workers equal in regard to salary. All property outside of stock was held in common. Stock was $100 per share, and only stockholders could be members. The principal industry was lumbering, carried on cooperatively under the eight-hour rule. There was no infringement on the family life.
Failure is attributed to "a stringency in the money market." No information has been received as to the number of members or the amounts invested. (642)
Both Stockwell and Fogarty include the Union Mill Company in their compilations, with the latter including some additional information that "In 1891, Daniel Cornen and his wife Catherine filed the deed to the Union Mill Company" (216). The relationship of the Union Mill Company and the Nehalem Valley Cooperative Colony, if any, is unclear. Yaacov Oved, in his Two Hundred Years of American Communes (1988), includes these two communes among the four documented in Oregon in the nineteenth century. The other two are the Aurora Colony and New Odessa. To these can be added the Bellamy Colony examined in my article, and research continues to locate additional utopian communities in Oregon. |
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| James J. Kopp
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| Lewis & Clark College |
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