People's Pilot, Volume 3, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 July 1893 — Bellamy’s Idea Practiced in Ohio. [ARTICLE]

Bellamy’s Idea Practiced in Ohio.

Zoar. 0.. is the abiding place of a mystic band of German Communists who hold all property in common, the place being a miniature kingdom within itself. The people, who call themselves Zoarites, own 7,000 acres of land, which all lies in one body, about half of the tract being in* a high state of cultivation. The original Zoarite purchase was 10,000 acres, but 3,000 have since been sold at a high figure. Every article, implement, device, contrivance, or machine used, wrought with, or employed in Zoar is of Zoarite manufacture, and the same may be said of every article worn or eaten, with the exceptions of coffee, tea and spices. The shoes the Zoarites wear are made by their own shoemakers, from leather prepared by their own tanners from hides taken from cattle bred and raised on the great community cattle farm. The coal which warms them and cooks their food is dug from their own mines, and is burned in stoves cast in their own foundry, from iron smelted in their own furnaces from ore found in abundance on their own lands. They have community tailors, bakers, weavers, buttermakers, cheesemakers and all other useful artisans and tradesmen. The tailor uses nothing but Zoarite cloth made by Zoarite weavers from wool sheared from Zoarite sheep. The same can be said of the whole catalogue of manufacturers, which certainly gives to Zoar dlstinc-

tlve characteristics unknown to any other American city or community.