Heading: (Utopian colony)
Author: Littlefield, George Elmer
Title: Letter by Christian Socialist Minister to a prospective resident in his first Co-operative
Place Published: Westwood, Massachusetts
Publisher:Ariel /The Co-Operative Fellowship and Ariel Press
Date Published: 1906
Description: Autograph Letter Signed, on Ariel stationery. 2 pp. To Mrs. Stoddard. September 27, 1906Prominent Christian Socialist Minister and leader of the Boston Socialist Party explains to a would-be resident of his first "Fellowship Farm", 15 miles southwest of Boston, the cost and "moral, social, educational, financial" benefits of the collective property, being a "great chance for security and profit and good comradeship" with "food for the multitude" - a "good and right and safe movement".He names as a founding member Dr. George Galvin, an activist reformer who established the first emergency hospital in the U.S. and ran for Mayor of Boston on the Socialist ticket, with his friend Jack London coming East to speak for the movement. Over the next 13 years, Littlefield established five Socialist colonies throughout the country, based on the principle of families growing their own fruits and vegetables, shared Socialist style. A year after World War I, Littlefield moved to California to establish his fifth Fellowship east of Los Angeles. Then he looked northward to Santa Barbara, where he purchased a large property beautifully situated, looking out on the Pacific Ocean in what was to become the city's Mesa neighborhood, where 200 families established the last Fellowship Farm, the commune having its own small Red Rose Press, a library, co-op store and arts and crafts department. It survived for a few years before it quietly dissolved. Littlefield remained in Santa Barbara, where he died 20 years later, in his 86th year. His autograph letters are rare.

Marginal discoloration, fold marks; good to very good.