Ruskin Colony

The idea that new settlements such as Ruskin would eventually bring forth a revolution referred to as the "co-operative commonwealth" stood in contrast to socialists who believed that it was more important to do political and social organizing within the cities, the centers of industry.

According to W. Fitzhugh Brundage in the book A Socialist Utopia in the New South: "The wastefulness and ugliness of competitive individualism, so glaringly apparent in late nineteenth-century cities, would be replaced by the efficient creation and collective control of wealth and technology" in this new settlement.

The eventual breakup of the Ruskin colony was due to several elements, the most problematic being the unequal distribution of membership rights of colonists complicated by the "shareholder"-type initial investment fees.

The colony eventually became mired in constant litigation over issues of property, with charter members who were now being pushed out of Ruskin seeking to dismantle the group through legal means.

The final auction of the Ruskin Colony site at Cave Mills, and most of the communal property, left the remaining members with only a fraction of what they had spent five years struggling to build.

The 240 members moved what they did have, which still included the newspaper and the printing apparatus for it, 613 miles on a chartered train to their new home in Georgia, where they merged with the Duke Colony in Ware County and formed the Ruskin Commonwealth.

Ruskinites were plagued with disease, unprofitable business ventures, and a continual slide into poverty that eventually led to the auction of the property by the county sheriff to settle its debts.