Page 20 - C.A.L.L. #39 - Spring 2015
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anarchism as its guiding philosophy, there would be no rules governing
spawned five newspapers, grew to behavior within the community.
250 inhabitants, eventually owned
over 200 acres and gave rise to a Visitors noted its absences: There
major free-speech fight that went were no churches, no saloons and no
all the way to the U.S. Supreme sales of alcohol or tobacco at the
Court. local stores. Yet there were no rules
forbidding any of those things.
Back in 19th century Washington,
the three families’ experience at The residents loved to gather at
Glennis informed the way they set Liberty Hall, a meeting house owned
up Home. The founders did not want by the community. There they would
to repeat the mistakes have dances with music
of the socialist and merrymaking until the
community, where wee hours. Most of all, the
everything was community liked to bring
centralized and rules speakers into the hall,
governing the where they would gather
inhabitants’ behavior for nights of intense
were passed after many discussion. The speakers
hours of unpleasant might be famous political
meetings. activists such as Emma
Goldman or the Wobblies’
Instead, Home’s Big Bill Haywood. They
founders decided on a might be residents of
bare minimum of formal Home, like James Morton,
rules and hoped for a spirit of who loved to read aloud the verse of
mutual cooperation. They formed a the English poets Percy Shelley and
land trust. All of Home’s property William Wordsworth.
was owned in common through the
Mutual Home Association. New Most families survived through a
people who wished to join the combination of labor. Some stayed
community paid the association $1 at Home farming, raising livestock
and then paid for the right to use and children. The latter attended
two acres of the land as they the community’s school. Others
wished. Each individual or family did, would leave the community for
however, own whatever months at a time to work for wages
improvements — such as houses or in the outside world, sending money
stores — they built on their two- back to the husbands, wives and
acre plot. Also they owned the fruits children at Home.
of that land, whatever they
produced through their own sweat Reprinted from Real Change News,
by harvesting trees, planting crops Seattle, Wash.
or raising animals. Beyond that,
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