The Agitator, edited by Jay Fox, began as a project of the Home Colony, a Washington state radical and anarchist intentional community established on an isolated part of the Puget Sound in the 1890s. Here, the introductory issue describes the colony to readers.

‘Home’ from The Agitator. Vol. 1 No. 1. November 15, 1910.

A census of Home shows a population of 213 in 68 homes. There are 75 children, an average of a little over one for each home. The lowest average of children for any community in the world.

There are three co-operative stores; a hall, school, print shop, a bi-monthly paper, a wharf and warehouse. To the outside world Home is a colony of cranks “Crank” is a very convenient term with which to brand those who don’t follow the calf path of convention. In reality it is a colony of very sensible people who mind their own business to a greater extent, and therefore are not quite so busy as the residents of other communities in which we have lived.

Fifteen years ago three pilgrim families landed here, built shacks on the shore and began hewing their way into the dense forest of giant evergreens. Like the pilgrims of old their principal capital was a hardy courage. But, unlike the plymouth rockites, they did not set up a code of law. They bought some land, took two acres each and left the rest for others who, tired of the tangle of civilization, would come seeking refuge in the woods. Others came and, as like attracts like, they too were of the no rule order of intellect, and presently there was an Anarchist colony; and magazine writers were coming to study this new order of genus homo for the diversion of their silk robed readers. Anarchists with land and homes, dynamiting stumps instead of kings! Marvelous revelation for magazinedom.

This colony differs from other colonies in that it was not started with the object of proving anything. It grew naturally, as all things should grow; and having grown in this way whatever it does prove counts. A colony evolved under the high pressure of fixed ideas seldom proves anything but a failure. Where is Ruskin, Burley, Equality, etc., those flowers of the utopian mind? All gone to seed.

Home has proven one thing very clearly: that the only sound rule to start a colony on is freedom. Home is not perfect, mistakes have been made, there is room for improvement. Yet it stands out in bold relief a living, practical example of the beauty, the wisdom of applied freedom.

“Liberty under the law,” said Governor Morris to the old colonists. “Liberty THE law” say the Home colonists. The old colonists burned witches, the Home colonists burn stumps. It is truly surprising the amount of freedom a neighbor may indulge in without blighting ones’ morals or potato patch. It has been asserted that the people of Home have no morals, that the place is a seething mess of immorality, and therefore the exercise of freedom can do no harm. But morality is merely a state of mind, a matter of opinion, age or geography.

Home is very nicely situated on the placid waters of Puget Sound, where the climate is mild, but watery in winter; yet it has the disadvantages common to all densely wooded countries. Clearing land is intensely hard work. Only great strength and courage dare attempt the cutting and rooting up of the big trees, many of them six to eight feet in diameter.

The cry, “back to the land,” sounds well and the greater part of the people that are now flocking to the cities like moths to the lamp, must eventually return to the land, but under the present system where the workers are deprived of the use of modern tools two acres and liberty means very hard work.

The Syndicalist began as The Agitator, based in the Washington state anarchist community of Home. With writers like Earl Ford, JW Johnstone, and William Z Foster it was inspired by the revolutionary syndicalism of the French CGT, they felt they were political competitors to the IWW and in early 1912, Foster and others created the Syndicalist Militant Minority Leagues in Chicago with chapters soon forming in Kansas City, Omaha, Minneapolis, St. Louis, Denver, Seattle, Tacoma, Vancouver, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. They renamed The Agitator The Syndicalist as the paper of the Syndicalist League of North America with Jay Fox as editor. The group then focused on the AFL. The Syndicalist ceased publication in September 1913 with some going on to form the International Trade Union Educational League in January 1915. While only briefly an organization, the SLNA had a host of future important leaders of the Communist movement. Like Foster, Tom Mooney and Earl Browder who were also members.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/agitator/v1n01-nov-15-1910-agitator.pdf