ABSTRACT
The first communitarian experiment in Washington State was called the Cooperative Colony in Puget Sound. The founding members were mostly intellectuals from the eastern United States, among them Harvard graduates, who were acquainted with European cooperative movements and socialist utopianism. The communitarian framework included mainly industrial enterprises: The first was a large sawmill that began to operate in 1887. The background was the Utopian literature of Edward Bellamy and Lawrence Gronlund who had both advocated the advantages of a communitarian society on a national and community level. During the first year foundations for a communitarian settlement were laid. Equality was named after Bellamy's second novel, published in 1897 following Looking Backward. Equality was meant to be one of the many colonies spread out over Washington State, a cornerstone of the future socialist commonwealth. In September 1898, the Cooperative Brotherhood at Burley was legally registered in Washington State.
