ABSTRACT
Hot apocalyptic denunciations of city life were contributed by John Miller to Seed Time. He wrote from Cosme, an experimental settlement in Paraguay, describing modern cities in July 1895 as ‘Rosewatering their leprousness with modern buildings, and lighting their darkness through the dungeon windows of public parks’. ‘Do we not all know’, he asked, ‘that the modern city is unnatural, and that street and road and lane and alley have not been twisted further from their original significance than man has in them from his normal life.’ ‘Socialism or no Socialism’, Miller declared, ‘reform or no reform, the city must go.’ Other accounts of the Cosme Colony were published by Seed Time in January, April and October 1896. It was listed in the Labour Annual for 1896, and extracts from its reports were published in the Clarion. So when William Lane came to England in July 1897, readers of Seed Time, on reading the announcement that inquiries to him should be addressed to the Paraguayan Consulate, were well appraised of the reasons for his visit and the significance of his experiment.
