Ruskin Colony

RUSKIN COLONY. A “cooperative village” first located in 1894 in Ruskin, Tennessee, near Tennessee City, the Ruskin Colony was one of the most highly publicized of the Utopian communities of the 1890s and one of the centers of J. A. Wayland’s socialist journalism empire. Named for the British utopian John Ruskin, the colony was conceived by Wayland (1854–1912), an Indiana native who, after a successful career as proprietor of country newspapers in Indiana and Missouri and success in job printing and real estate speculation, became a socialist in Colorado in the 1880s. Wayland believed that the Ruskin Colony, with all members equal shareholders, would serve as a model for the “co-operative commonwealth.”

Wayland aspired to convince --as well as demonstrate-- Americans of the advantages of socialism. His first socialist paper, the Coming Nation, was started at Greenburg, Indiana, in 1893 and grew quickly to twenty-five thousand subscribers. Wayland hit upon a scheme to prove to his fellow citizens the viability of socialism by using the paper as the main industry in a socialized town. He moved the paper and some of its employees to western Tennessee and accepted members who paid $500 to join the Ruskin Cooperative Association. Wayland wrangled with the cooperators and was thrown out after one year. The members took over operation of the paper, moved the colony to a better site several miles away, built some small cottage industries, and thrived for a while on the constant influx of new members and new capital. The Coming Nation was edited after Wayland by A. S. Edwards, then by Herbert Casson, and it and the Ruskin Colony started to fail in 1899. An attempt to save it was made by amalgamation with another group in a move to Ware County, Georgia, where the colony disbanded in 1901.

Broom, Isaac. The Last Days of the Ruskin Cooperative Association. Chicago: Charles H. Kerr, 1902.

Brundage, W. Fitzhugh. A Socialist Utopia in the New South: The Ruskin Colonies in Tennessee and Georgia, 1894-1901. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1996.

Butler, Francelia. “The Ruskin Commonwealth: A Unique Experiment in Marxian Socialism.” Tennessee Historical Quarterly. 23(December 1964), pp.333-42.

Shore, Elliott. Talkin’ Socialism. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1988.