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The New Australia Movement:
Paradise in Paraguay?

MORE ABOUT CO-OPERATION.

Worker (Brisbane, Qld.)
Date: August 8, 1891
Page Number: 4

The Alice River co-operators are still struggling along under handicap caused by lack of funds. A recent letter says that after six weeks work "we have a real solid show— vines, orange trees, guavas, a couple of mulberry trees, pine-apples, &c, and in the kitchen garden 10 dozen rhubarb, over a couple of thousand cabbages, peas, schalots, beans, &c., &c. . . . I am convinced from the number of workers here who are thoroughly in earnest that if not a success the affair will die very hard and what worse will we be for having tried?" Permanent improvements include about 20 acres of clearing, splendid fences, large piggeries, and other structures.
     A petition from the Alice River co-operators has been conveyed to Sir S. W. Griffith in which they appeal to the Government for a loan of £50 per head to get the plant necessary to cure bacon, carry on other important industries and generally make good their hold on the soil. In the petition the men stated that they did not want the fee simple of the land, only security of improvements. The necessity of encouraging settlement in Queensland, the capabilities of the bushmen and the desirability of at least subsidising the Alice River attempt as an experiment in colonisation having been put to Griffith, he stated that he was himself in favour of helping the settlers, although there was a strong feeling in Parliament against State-aided settlement. He promised to do all he could to assist and said that he would see Mr. Cowley about sending Professor Shelton to report on the soil and situation if it were found that anything could be done, reasonably pointing out that if the Government decided to make a new departure it must be assumed that there was a fair prospect of success. He also stated that he recognised the representations which had previously been made on behalf of the Alice River men re the necessity of securing joint ownership of joint improvements and that he had drafted clauses which would give to co-operating selectors power to legally contract for joint ownership and joint responsibility. It is certainly to be hoped that nothing will be left undone which can give cooperative settlement a chance, though the present Parliament is hardly likely to do anything progressive.
     The Alice River settlement receives fair words from everybody but little assistance as yet from outside the somewhat interested Barcaldine district. The New Australia proposal, which receives nothing but abuse from the capitalistic section of society, meanwhile, seems to keep steadily on as a decided movement. Anyway, nearly a dozen letters advocating it were received by the WORKER during July, among them two which are worth
giving in full as indicating the way some bushmen look at things :—
     Editor WORKER :— Men who have started at the Alice River to try and solve the unemployed question and to prove to the croakers and ravens who rant and rave about Socialism that co-operation is not a myth but a reality, and any person visiting the new settlement will feel convinced that under a system of cooperation the people will live happier and better than under the accursed competitive system; what is of still greater import to the majority, it will prove conclusively that if the workers had a fair show they could employ themselves and have all they produce instead of being dependent upon some capitalistic bloodsucking parasite for the right to live.
     These men started a few weeks ago with out money or tools or means of any description and a person has to see to believe the amount of work that has been done in the short space of time they have been there and the very primitive appliances at their command, and only for the liberal support accorded them by the Barcaldine people it would be an impossible task to surmount the difficulties they have to contend with. Yet our precious Government will do practically nothing to help them ; but what can we expect from a squatting, six-and-eight- penny pettifogging Government? The men who compose it are the wrong sort to help the workers to become independent. It will suit these creatures of capitalism better to keep us in subjection and degradation and live on our sweat and blood to increase their profits so that they may live in riot, luxury, and debauchery.
     It is amusing to read some of the pars in the daily and weekly press regarding the Argentina scheme and stating that people need not leave Queensland to form a co-operative settlement. Well, I am not a bit surprised at them writing such articles. I imagine that if a number of men form these settlements in different parts of the country, that the land around and adjoining them will become more valuable than it is at present, and the owners of the surrounding selections will have done nothing to produce this value. Of course it is easily understood why such articles are written, as the writers are interested parties and believe in bettering themselves at the expense of others. If the settlement at the Alice River or others like it should turn out to be failures and the settlers should have to leave through want of funds or Governmental trickery, I take it that it is within the right of any man to think that there are numbers of "sharks" who would jump the settlements and thereby ruthlessly rob men.
     As for co-operative settlements being successful in Queensland or in Australia, I am very doubtful, I feel convinced that when the Workers think of the show we have had in the past, at the present time, and are likely to have in the future from the capitalists and their tools, there is nothing left for us to think other than that it will be almost impossible to make true co-operation here a success.
     To my mind it seems the height of folly to attempt to co-operate in Queensland under existing conditions, but it is to be hoped these will soon be altered. The men who govern us, or rather-own us, make the land laws (as they do all other laws) to suit them selves or their own particular syndicate or class, and consequently if they saw that the workers were bettering their condition by co-operating and thereby lessening the capitalists' profits it does not require much thinking on the part of any man to imagine what capitalism would do. If slippery Sam or some other Capitalistic tool did not introduce some new Land Bill, possibly they might rake up another George IV Act or impose some conditions on the settlers that they might not be able to comply with. The military and the foreign hirelings who boss them might be brought out west again to give Queensland's gallant defenders a chance to have another bloodless war amongst the settlers' potatoes and pumpkins.

John Meehan, Barcaldine.

Editor WORKER,— Will you kindly permit me sufficient space to say a few words about the much abused New Australia Co- operative Settlement Scheme. Abused by a certain section of the community simply because they recognise that it is thoroughly workable. By its adoption and success, which I think is beyond question, the chances of the mass who now live in idleness, though able to work, receiving dividends derived from the labour of others are likely to be hampered. These men sit up and howl against it with all the force of a corrupt and capitalistic Press, trying to make themselves and everyone else believe it is only a dream, and by telling us that the Argentine is a terrible place, where the people are dissatisfied and fond of war and gore.
     But I think it is just the place we require to settle, as the Government gives every facility to settlers, besides being well watered and in a good climate. And we would in one sweep cut the bridges between our old association and the usurpers who are trying to tyrannise over a section of the community who are willing and able to work under fair and just conditions here in Queensland. And we would form new associations, likewise a new system, which it would be impossible to inaugurate here under present conditions for a very long time, for a settlement of that kind would always be an eyesore, and very much covetod by the cent per cent powers that reign here. And then our paternal Government, which I for one despise, might send a Harding or Cooper along to administer British justice, or else Gatlings and Nordenfeldts to blow us up for illegally assembling, or conspiracy against the Government. It has been proved beyond a doubt that if every man in the world under fifty years of age who is able to work did his share towards raising or manufacturing what we now require to live as we do, that no one need work more than one hour and a-half per day. But instead of this, under present conditions, the majority work from eight to sixteen hours per day, women and children sometimes included. Why? Simply to provide luxuries for the minority who live in idleness and domineer over the workers. And the reason I am going to support this New Australia scheme through thick and thin is because I am one of those individuals that has worked hard for the last fifteen years to make dividends to make the rich man richer, and I see nothing about dividends in the Argentine scheme, or any clause saying that if I earn a pound some one else must get 15s. for letting me work.

Wm. Saunders.

The library at Alice River Co-operative Settlement

Queensland’s first communal experiment resulted from acute industrial unrest, the same events that gave us ‘Waltzing Matilda’ and ‘The Shearers’ War’. In mid-1891, as the Shearers’ Strike collapsed, 72 shearers, aged between 17 and 63, formed The Alice River Co-operative Settlement near Barcaldine. The commune’s rules were closely modelled on the New Australia constitution drawn up by William Lane. Without title to the land, they laid out Liberty, Freedom and Union streets, and built huts, a library and reading room, kitchen and dining room, toolshed and piggery. They cleared 10 hectares, planting vegetable gardens and a vineyard. Many worked on neighbouring properties, but all income went to a common fund.

Sir Samuel Walker Griffith
(1845–1920)

Cultural Heritage: Welsh

Religious Influence: Anglican, Congregational

Occupation: chief justice, high court judge, Member of Lower House, premier

Sir Alfred Sandlings Cowley
(1848–1926)

Cultural Heritage: English

Religious Influence: Baptist, Presbyterian

Occupation: company director, Member of Lower House, plantation manager, pro-conscriptionist, separationist, sugar cane farmer, sugar refiner

Professor E.M. Shelton
Principal of Queensland Agricultural College
c 1897

When the government sought to establish a department of agriculture, it asked the commissioner of agriculture in the United States to suggest a suitable person to appoint as “instructor of agriculture” to take charge of the spread of technical information and education. In February 1890, E. M. Shelton arrived. He was a graduate of Michigan Agricultural College and taught at Kansas Agricultural College. In his first published report, Shelton argued for the need for an agricultural college in Queensland, and one was established in 1896. The college bore the influence and inspiration of the American model of agricultural colleges with their practical bent.

True Gardens of the Gods: California-Australian Environmental Reform, 1860-1930 
By Ian R. Tyrrell

George Rogers HARDING
(1838–1895)

Cultural Heritage: English

Occupation: barrister, chief justice, judge, legal scholar

Sir Pope Alexander COOPER
(1846–1923)

Religious Influence: Anglican

Occupation: barrister, chief justice, crown/public prosecutor, judge, lieutenant-governor, Member of Lower House, public servant, university chancellor

Gattling

Nordenfeldt

LAND SETTLEMENT MOVEMENTS.

Worker (Brisbane, Qld.)
Date: October 31, 1891
Page Number: 3

William LANE
(1861–1917)

Cultural Heritage: English

Occupation: journalist, newspaper editor, political activist, utopian

In May 1890 he began the community-funded Brisbane weekly The Worker, the rhetoric of which became increasingly threatening towards the employers, the government, and the British Empire itself. The defeat of the 1891 Australian shearers' strike convinced Lane that there would be no real social change without a completely new society, and The Worker became increasingly devoted to his New Australiautopian idea.

The Workingman's Paradise, an allegorical novel written in sympathy with the shearers involved in the 1891 Shearer's Strike, was published under his pseudonym John Miller in early 1892. In the novel Lane articulated the belief that anarchism is the noblest social philosophy of all. Through the novel's philosopher and main protagonist he relates his belief that society may have to experience a period of State socialism to achieve the ideal of Communist anarchism.

"NEW AUSTRALIA."
A CO-OPERATIVE SETTLEMENT SCHEME.

The Brisbane Courier (Qld.)
Date: May 11, 1891
Page Number: 6

(By an intending settler, in the S. D. Telegraph)
...
     Mr. Walker, who goes to South America for the purpose of inviting tenders, so to speak, from the various South American Governments, is at present in Sydney. His plan of operations, so far as he can forecast them at present, is to ascertain as nearly as possible without personal visitation the most suitable sites for the settlement, and to communicate the rosult of his investigations to headquarters. Meanwhile the association has been increasing in funds and numbers, and by the time his first despatch arrives in Australia a party of experienced bushmen will be ready to join him. Their duty will be to inspect the various localities recommended to their mate, and decide the respective merits of each. The final decision will probably fall to the lot of an agricultural scientist.
     Land once acquired practical operations will begin forthwith by the despatch of a pioneer corps containing the departments necessary for making ready for general settlement. The board of trustees will supervise migration and endeavour in every possible way to lighten the attendant hardship. It will see that every member is provided with all personal necessaries and that carriage is available as far as possible for distinctly personal effects. The rules provide that no person over 15 years of age shall embark unwillingly, and that all persons over l8 shall be at full liberty to leave the sottlemcmt at any time. One other rule is too important to overlook. It reads as follows :—

Without projudice to the liquor question, members shall place themselves to teetotalism until the initial difficulties of settlement have passed and the constitution been established.

     The co-operative settlement will be as far as possible a little world in itself. Obviously, the inhabitants must be on speaking terms with outside barbarians. It would be impossible for them to make everything they will require, and it is equally unlikely that they would be capable of consuming everything they will make. Still as far as possible, on the strength of the variety of trades that such a community is sure to include, it will live independently of the rest of the world. That, of course, is essential to the experimental nature of the project. It will involve an economic loss. Anything making for the elevation of humanity in an age like the present would do that. Self-sacrifice implies an economic loss. But under a generally prevailing system of State co-operation the gain to the community would find its complement in the gain to the individual, and even in the Argentine settlement the loss resulting from commercial isolation will be to a large extent counterbalanced by the harmonious move- ments of the industrial machine. Where absolute co-operation prevails, where those who won't work shan't eat, whore no man is employed in frustrating the labours of other labour, where bagmen, middlemen, and opposition storekeepers have all been consigned to oblivion, one can afford to pay for emphasising a lesson in humanitarianism. Thus whilst wool-growing, horse-breeding, and cattle-raising will necessarily form the basis of production, and builders and carpenters will be hard at work long before the main body of emigrants have left Australia, when the community has once settled down if any of my readers are passing that way they may expect to find a great variety of trades in full swing; mechanics who are not yearning to don black coats and turn auctioneers ; printers who no longer quarrel for "fat;" furniture-makers who don't care a rap for Chinese competition; bootmakers who are affected by prison labour in the States; tailors who don't send fevers wrapped up in brown-paper parcels to the homes of their customers. Hard work and hard fare is the lot of all pioneers, and those who find their way to "New Australia" will not expect to "stand on velvet. This much is certain, however, that under ordinarily favourable circumstances, nay, in the absence of any downright blunder on the part of the leaders, the advantage of a numerous and fairly well provided organisation should insure them against many of the hardships of pioneer life. And when at length the initial difficulties of settlement are over they may reasonably expect to reap, one after another, those advantages that they believe to be incidental to the co-operative state. Domestic life will be lightened of its drudgery from the outset. Mondays no longer redolent of steam and soapsuds, public laundries saving the wretched husband's cuffs and collars and public kitchens his digestion! This at least, maybe taken for granted—that whatever can be done better, as most things can on a co-operative basis will be transferred from the back of the individual to that of the community. In other words, every, thing that can be socialised will be socialised. There are some things one cannot socialise, and well-wishers of the movement will be glad to hear that its leaders have no intention of trifling with the Anglo-Saxon prejudice in favour of family life. Even a co-operator's house must be his castle.
...

CO-OPERATIVE COLONISATION.

Worker (Brisbane, Qld.)
Date: July 11, 1891
Page Number: 3

...
     It will be interesting, now that co-operative settlement is attracting attention in Queenland, to know of some of the American ventures :— Among the latest and largest is that of Sinaloa, founded in Mexico, by English-speaking settlers from the U.S. on the basis of collective ownership and management for public utility and convenience. It was started four years ago and great hardships were endured at first but it struggled through the incubation period and is reported steadily prospering. The difference between Sinaloa and the projected New Australia is that in the latter the co-operation will be complete, the Government more purely democratic, the division more equal and women more fully recognised.
     The Shakers were established in 1792. They practice celibacy, keeping their numbers up by adopting orphan children ; they are good people and have accumulated a large property by economy and without painful toil. Their church property alone was valued at 90,000 dols, in 1870. There are eighteen communities of Shakers.
     The Harmony Society, founded in 1805, is at Economy, Penn. Although these people have practised celibacy for years they are distinct from the Shakers; but like them they are wealthy and long-lived.
     The Zoar Community is at Zoar, Ohio. This community was established in the year 1817.
     Bethel Community, at Bethel, Shelby County, Missouri, and the Aurora Community, at Aurora, Oregon, are offshootos of older communities.
     The Amana Community, at Amana, Iowa, was organised in 1842. This is the largest of the communities. They are said to cultivate 50,000 acres of land. There was a thriving oommunity at Lenox, Madison County, N.Y. —the Oneida Community. This was the most prosperous of the communities, but by State laws it was compelled to give up some of its practices relating to marriage, and to avoid this they removed to Canada. It is stated that this community began with a debt of forty thousand dollars and became worth more than a million dollars.
     The Icarian Community, at Cloverdale, California, is really the only democratic community that has had a life in the U.S. This community is not founded on a religious belief, and none is demanded of the members who first settled in Texas, in 1848, coming from France. A gentleman suggested to them that they go to Nauvoo, Illinois, and occupy the lands and buildings then just vacated by the Mormons. This they did, renting the place of the agent left in charge of the property. It was also suggested that they employ some skilled person to direct their labour, which they did. As a result, they cleared 65,000 dols. the first year. This is a very important fact in connection with such an effort ; the manager should be skilled. The Icarian Community, after living in Iowa, removed to the more agreeable climate of California, and are said to be happily situated.
     In all those communities that have succeeded the members have been people with honest hearts, but not people with education and refinement ; they have been composed of the English weaver, the German peasant and the French mechanic. These have been brought together and have been held together by their necessities.
     There have been forty-seven communities in the United States that have disorganised. These in every instance have been composed of those who were well off, educated and even refined. They were not brought together by their necessities, but with motive "to lead a better life." These proved the saying: "They that are whole need not a physician."

Topolobampo, Sinaloa, was the site of a radical "utopian" colony from roughly 1884 to 1894.

Shakers

The United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing, known as the Shakers, is a religious sect originally thought to be a development of the Religious Society of Friends. Founded upon the teachings of Ann Lee, Shakers today are mostly known for their cultural contributions (especially their style of music and furniture), and their model of equality of the sexes, which they institutionalized in their society in the 1780s.

The Harmony Society was a Christian theosophy and pietist society founded in Iptingen, Germany, in 1785. Due to religious persecution by the Lutheran Church and the government in Württemberg, the group moved to the United States. The Society existed for one hundred years; roughly from 1805 until 1905. Members were known as Harmonists, Harmonites, or Rappites.

Historic Zoar Village

Zoar was founded by German religious dissenters called the Society of Separatists of Zoar in 1817. It was a communal society, with many German-style structures that have been restored and are part of the Zoar Village State Memorial.

Amana Colonies

The Amana Colonies are a group of settlements of radical German Pietists in Iowa, USA, comprising seven villages. Calling themselves the Ebenezer Society or the Community of True Inspiration, they first settled in New York state near Buffalo in what is now the Town of West Seneca. However, in order to live out their beliefs in more isolated surroundings they moved west, to east-central Iowa (near present-day Iowa City) in 1856. They lived a communal life until the mid-1930s. Due to this, the Amanas are sometimes mistaken for Amish.

Icarians

The Icarians were a French utopian movement, founded by Étienne Cabet, who led his followers to America where they established a group of egalitarian communes during the period from 1848 through 1898.
A new colony of "Icaria Speranza" was established by Jules Leroux (brother of French socialist philosopher Pierre Leroux) and Armand Dehay, who in 1881 moved from Jeune Icarie to an area just south of Cloverdale, California. This settlement disbanded in 1886.

SMOKE-HO.
Worker (Brisbane, Qld.)
Date: September 19, 1891
Page Number: 3

SMOKE-HO.
Worker (Brisbane, Qld.)
Date: October 17, 1891
Page Number: 2

SMOKE-HO.
Worker (Brisbane, Qld.)
Date: November 17, 1891
Page Number: 2

Mr. A. Walker, agent of the New Australia Co-operative Settlement Association, writes that he has the choice of several splenidid settlement localities in South America. One offer made is 500 acres picked land per adult, £6 per head towards passage and low railway rates for 25 years. He expects to get better.

Review.
The Maitland Mercury & Hunter River General Advertiser (NSW)
Date: May 5, 1892
Page Number: 2

The Working Man's Paradise : An Australian Labour Novel. By JOHN MILLER. Sydney : Edwards, Dunlop, and Co.

Judged as a novel this performance must be regarded as a failure. It has no plot, and indeed no story, strictly speaking...

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SMOKE-HO.
Worker (Brisbane, Qld.)
Date: May 28, 1891
Page Number: 4

Messrs. Wm. Saunders and Chas. Leek left Sydney on Tuesday last for South America, via New Zealand and Cape Horn. They go as prospectors of the New Australia Cooperative Settlement Association which has been offered nearly half a million acres on free settlement conditions by one of the South American governments.
...
Both men are earnest and determined and confident that the settlement they are working for will be a great success and productive of immense good not only for those taking part in it but for the Labour movement at large.

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