Letters From Grandpa #284
LETTERS FROM GRANDPA # 284
Dearest grandchild,
Today’s letter will be of special interest to our 5 children. It will deal with Alcander Longley’s Reunion Community which was founded just a few miles from our home. While this information is readily available on the internet, the following information comes from a history assignment by Jeff Wells while he was a student at MSSC in Joplin. It is dated Dec. 16, 1999.
Longley was an avowed communist who began publishing his paper The Communist in St. Louis in 1868. Longley arrived in Carthage, Mo. April 12, 1868. His party consisted of 6 adults, one wagon, 5 work horses, 2 colts, a wagon load of grapevines, dwarf trees, shrubbery, and personal baggage. His goal was to establish a communist community in Jasper County. To this end he purchased 160 acres about 11 miles west of Carthage for $1,600 at 10% interest. The property is on the N.E. corner of the intersection of highways #96 and #43. It includes the present home of our good friend Ron Jones, and joins the property of two other good friends, Lynn Pitts, and Ron Lawver. Longley had already tried to establish 5 other communist communities but all had failed. This was his 6" attempt.
Longley’s Jasper County experiment also failed. He reported its’ demise in the Feb. 1871 edition of The Communist. One member of this utopian community named Frey (an emigrant from Russia) said: “The Reunion Community was born in sin and died in the most repulsive way”. He described life in the community as “The most hellish life that could be imagined”. Longley, however, never gave up. He tried and failed 3 more times to establish communist communities before he died. The three other failed communities were: (1) The Friendship Community near Buffalo in Dallas, Co. (2) The Mutual Aid Community near Glen Allen in Bollinger, Co. (3) The Altruist Colony near Sulfur Springs.
In spite of his failures, Longley remained proud of his beliefs and published two books advocating communism. The first was “Communism: the right way, and the best way for all to live” (1880). The second was: “What is Communism?” (1890). Sadly, his wife, Zelie, left him with their 3 children after 20 years of marriage. He remarried twice but both wives died soon after they were married. Longley himself died in 1918 after failing 9 times to establish a communist utopia.
One reason our local community failed was the lack of money. Longley complained that people were either too poor or too stingy to give. Their wealthiest member was William Chestnut and Longley resented it when he was voted president. Chestnut and his wife left the community Nov. 1, 1869 which compounded their financial problems. In the June 1870 issue of The Communist Longley said the community consisted of 15 adults and 10 children all living together in a two story frame house.
Another problem involved a philosophical split. One faction advocated “free love and open marriage”. The other, to which Longley belonged, believed in traditional marriage. Longley wanted the community members to indoctrinate their neighbors about the beauty of communism but free love and open marriage raised a red flag in the neighborhood.
It is interesting to note that the vacuum created by abandoning God left the door open for Satan to enter the community via spiritualism and seances. It seems the leader of this faction was a 51 year old bachelor named Briggs. He described himself as a “hygienic physician and surgeon”. In addition to conducting seances Briggs supported a variety of other causes including vegetarianism, grahamism,
hydropathy and women’s rights. Briggs lived in the attic with a plaster skeleton and Longley’s printing press.
Had Longley lived a little longer he would have learned the secret of how to make communism work. In 1917 the revolution in Russia provided the answer. You don’t “ask” people to contribute money, you “kill them and take their money by force”. You don’t “buy” property, you “kill the owners and take their property by force”. If people don’t agree with your policies you put them in prison where there are either “reeducated” or “executed”.
Chairman Mao said it succinctly: “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun”.
The fact that Longley didn’t kill anyone explains his failure. Here is the “body count” of “successful” communist communities compiled by Scott Manning in Dec. 2006: Mm China — 73,237,000 USSR - 58,627,000 Russian Federated Socialist Republic — 6,210,000 Korea — 3,163,000 Cambodia — 2,627,000 Afghanistan — 1,750,000 Vietnam — 1,670,000 Ethiopia — 1,343,610 Yugoslavia - 1,072,000 Chinese Soviet Republic — 700,000 Mozambique — 700,000 Romania — 435,000 Bulgaria — 222,000 Angola — 125,000 Mongolian People’s Republic — 100,000,000 Albania — 100,000,000 Cuba — 73,000 German Democratic Republic — 70,000 Czechoslovakia — 656,000 Lao People’s Democratic Republic — 56,000 Hungary — 27,000 Poland — 22,000 Yemen - 1,000 Total — 149,469,610 men, women, and children killed in cold blood to make communism work.
Kody Fairchild, writing in the Libertarian Republic (Sept. 1, 2016), said “The Communist Manifesto, written in 1848, is currently the most assigned economics book on US college campuses...” Unfortunately, your college professors probably won't explain to you why Longley failed and Mao succeeded.
I love you,
Grandpa Boyce