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The Socialist Expedition to Texas

Karl Bürkli, in: Eidgenössische Zeitung, No. 245–246, 4–5 September 1858. (Part I = No. 245, 4 Sept., pp. 981–982; Part II / Conclusion = No. 246, 5 Sept., pp. 985–986.)

Completeness: This is the entire two-part article — Part I from "Prompted by an article in the Patrie…" to "(To be continued.)", Part II from "But the measure of adversities…" to the "Karl Bürkli" signature. Both endpoints were checked against the page scans. All eleven image files in ../images/ (two full pages, two viewer screenshots, seven column crops = the two PDFs) show the same two newspaper issues; no further Texas writing by Bürkli is held in the repo.

English translation of german_clean.md. The aim is faithful but readable English; period terms are kept (e.g. "negro slavery", "phalanstery"). Square brackets [ ] enclose translator's additions for sense; [?] marks a passage where the German source itself is doubtful — see the [REV: …] notes in german_clean.md. "Upper Texas" renders Bürkli's Hochtexas (the high, northern part of the state), as distinct from West Texas.

I. (No. 245, 4 September 1858)

The Socialist Expedition to Texas.

[Editorial introduction:]

Prompted by an article in the Patrie, we suggested in No. 228 that the head of the local socialists might render a public service by giving a truthful account of the expedition to Texas. In response to this admonition, Mr. Karl Bürkli has now in fact sent us a longer communication, which we present in a series of articles, since his assumption — that it would be not merely of the highest interest, but also instructive and cautionary in many respects — is fully borne out for us. We hold this account to be entirely candid, honest, and true. It affords not only an insight into socialist emigration projects, but contains hints and lessons for emigration in general. Even though the reporter, with an energetic confidence that inspires our respect and sympathy, remains faithful to his ideal, we do not in the least fear that, by publishing his communication, we make ourselves guilty of propaganda for socialist schemes. For the following account, with its inexorable facts, will — of this we are certain — lure no one into a phalanstery; rather it will deter people from emigration altogether, and illustrate in letters of fire the old maxim: Stay in your land and earn your bread honestly.

[Bürkli's report:]

"In an article taken from the Patrie it is said: 'A short experience of a few years has sufficed to show the impossibility of unlimited association, for under the most favorable external conditions the phalanstery has produced only hatred, misery, and despair, and in the process Fr. 1,800,000 have been squandered.' This is plainly exaggerated, or rather seems to have been deliberately distorted by the Patrie alone. In the first place, the invested capital is not lost, as will be seen in what follows; and from the failure of the colonization enterprise — caused by the most unfavorable external conditions — no conclusions can be drawn about the possibility or impossibility of association, for one never even got as far as establishing a phalanstery.

The plan of the enterprise was as follows: A joint-stock company forms, with sufficient capital, in order to purchase in America a tract of land the size of a French department, in a healthy and fertile region. The joint-stock company does not colonize on its own account — that is, it does not cultivate the soil itself, but functions as a kind of agency that offers land, implements, provisions, etc. for sale; that facilitates immigration as far as possible and therefore erects the necessary buildings, a lodging-house, where the immigrants can live cheaply for the time being, and some can also find work, until they have agreed with the agency on the site, the lease, and the price of the land on which they wish to settle. Whoever wishes to establish himself alone is free to do so; whoever wishes to establish himself by way of association, with friends and business- and like-minded companions, may likewise do so, at his own account and risk. The joint-stock company can assist individuals, as well as larger or smaller associations, only by means of loans, provided sufficient security exists. Since the share capital was for the most part subscribed by socialists, and the guiding idea was to prepare the most favorable possible ground for socialist ideas — where the practical experiments might gradually and naturally unfold in every possible nuance — one could assume that for the most part only those would resolve to emigrate there who strove to realize some socialist tendency. But there was never any question of erecting a phalanstery at the joint-stock company's expense, for we knew very well that with people raised in the present individualistic form of society — even with the best socialists — one cannot make finished phalansteries, any more than one could bring about a pure democracy with Russians. Yet that is no reason not to strive for an ideal, merely because it can only be realized in the course of time and through partial attempts; rather, this seems to me to be precisely the natural course.

Such was the colonization plan according to the statutes. The first condition of success therefore lay in the favorable selection of the land and in the cheap purchase of the tract on which one meant to settle. Considerant believed he had found it in Texas; he described the land as so advantageous that nothing was left to be desired. Since Considerant had been known to the socialists for 30 years as a noble man who strives only for the good and knowingly deceives no one — and in my eyes he still is what he was before — and since, as a former captain of engineers in the French army, he was credited with possessing enough practical competence not to err in the choice of the land or in those external conditions that are, above all, indispensably necessary to the success of any colonization, whether individual or joint — one believed him, and with all the more right since he himself stood surety with his fortune, his reputation, his life, and thus had the most to lose, and of all of us really did lose the most. But that Considerant let himself be completely deceived, like so many experts who make a hasty excursion through America from Europe — how could we, who built upon him, feel anything but disappointed, when we saw the land he had described to be quite otherwise, and did not find at all the land-basis on which we were to operate.

Considerant traveled about Upper Texas in May and June 1852. It was a fertile year; prairies and woods in the most luxuriant splendor. The novice, fresh from Europe, thinks himself in paradise; he does not see the hidden enemy, whom one only comes to know after living there for years and becoming familiar with the general climatic and topographical conditions of North America. He gathered information wherever he could. Everyone, from the governor down to the last farmer, praised the land and climate as the best in the Union; for all had an interest in promoting immigration, and thereby the rise of land values. And so senators and representatives of Texas promised him that, should he once make the colonization serious and really bring people, there would be no lack on the other side of a grand land concession either; Texas being superabundant in land — larger than France — but poor in population — barely half a million — and only this could lend any value to the millions of acres.

Considerant returned to Europe full of hope, describing Upper Texas — as he himself believed it — as healthy and fertile as the Mexican-Texan highlands, producing, besides all European crops, the southern fruits of the middle tropics as well. The German descriptions of Texas by V. Bracht and v. Roß, which I read carefully, agreed on all points with Considerant's description, and could not say enough in praise of Texas — calling it, after them, the "Paradise of North America," the "Italy of the United States." What wonder, then, that Considerant, and we with him, came to crave that "promised land," and that the emigration there was rushed?

Toward the end of 1854 the colonization society was constituted; preparations were made for emigration. Cantagrel, a confidant of Considerant, hurried on ahead to select a suitable site and, in case no land concession could be had, to make the necessary land purchases. Cantagrel's first letter was a veritable Job's tidings. "Here I stand," he wrote, "in the midst of Upper Texas, and must still keep asking myself — where, then, is actually the land Considerant described? He was utterly deceived. The climate is the exact opposite of what he let himself be told; in autumn and spring so inconstant as I have never experienced, and varying from the greatest heat to the greatest cold by more than 100 degrees Fahrenheit. What is to become of the cultivation of fruit, wine, vegetables, or even southern fruits, when everything begins to sprout and bloom as early as February and March, and is then destroyed in its tender shoots and blossoms by periodic ice-cold north winds that blow here and there until the end of April? Only what can be planted between the cold north winds — i.e. from April to October, such as cotton, maize, etc. — can thrive here. Even the cattle suffer terribly from the north winds, and out of doors can scarcely find enough fodder to save themselves from starvation. But even if the land were still as Considerant described it, no colonization whatever is possible here in Upper Texas at present, since all the land far and wide — almost the whole north of Texas, a tract as large as a third of France — has, by resolution of the last Texas legislature, been reserved for a Pacific railroad company yet to be formed. The hope is, through this colossal land concession, to call into being a company that will draw the line to California through Upper Texas. We can therefore buy no state land here at all, even were we to cover it with gold; it is placed under ban, no one may touch it; our colonization therefore falls through for the present." — But it was so late, we were already at sea, and Cantagrel had in his haste to buy a few farms from private parties at high prices, and to erect the necessary buildings, so as not to leave the arriving immigrants wandering about. We Zurichers came last, well preserved and in good spirits, arriving in July 1855 in the stillborn colony; since for a long time there was not enough land for 130 persons (there were never 300, as the Patrie says), there could be no question of individual establishments or of voluntary associations, but only of the "agglomeration forced together" by the most unfavorable external conditions, out of which everyone sought to escape as soon as something better presented itself. Indeed, already in the following month almost all the Swiss and many of the French — some 60 — left the colony; sorry as we were, we yet had to be glad to see them go, since in our impotence — penned in by the "banned" state land like an emigrant ship by the sea — we could not offer them what they had expected; and even though they bitterly complained of the chiefs' recklessness, we could not hold it against them, for at bottom they were, after all, in the right. Those who remained — among them only a few capable hands — saw well that this provisional state could not last long; but what to begin? Nothing else remained but — to vegetate on in the status quo, in the hope that Considerant would in the end still find a favorable terrain, either in Texas or in Spanish America, and then take up his plan afresh."

(To be continued.)

II. (Conclusion — No. 246, 5 September 1858)

The Socialist Expedition to Texas.

(Conclusion.)

"But the measure of adversities was still far from full. To self-inflicted errors, to over-hastiness in emigrating, was added a bad year; the following one, 1856, was worse still; the third, '57, beneath all criticism. Years of failed harvests such as had never been experienced in Texas, while many Texans emigrated with their slaves back eastward to the broad river region of the lower Mississippi. The summer was so dry that nothing would thrive. Vegetables — despite all labor and care — not even a handful; what was somewhat spared in shady spots was devoured by grasshoppers, ground-fleas, and ants. Whether one worked the fields or not came to the same thing; one could scarcely recover the seed sown, and yet had heavy outlays for clearing and tilling the fields. It was a drought of which one in Europe has no conception; the bright weather turned to hellish weather — in West Texas not a drop of rain fell for a year and a half, eighteen months; the harvest literally below zero, i.e. not even the seed back. — And then the winter; this Considerant had portrayed as a true blessing for the Europeans, an "invigorating season," as the Texans call it, which reawakens the energy of the immigrants; the centigrade thermometer rarely falls below zero, and the 2–3 months of winter are, for fully half [their length], interspersed [?] with fine spring days — the last winter, which I spent in West Texas, really was like that, but the first the opposite. — During it the thermometer stood for weeks at 6 to 15 degrees, indeed once even at 18 degrees C. below zero, a cold such as occurs only in the harshest winters in Switzerland. We lived in poorly boarded wooden houses without fire or light, since the icy north wind whistled incessantly through the narrow chinks, literally as if from a score of music. Most had left their winter blankets and winter clothes behind in Europe, so as not to make fools of themselves in a land lying far more to the south than the southern part of Italy, and where one fancied one could get through the winter in shirtsleeves, so to speak. Of wailing and chattering of teeth there was no lack; even the irrepressible jesting-mania of the French, and all humor, had frozen to ice. The Texans, despite their blazing hearth fires, complained as we did, and protested that such a horrible cold — indeed such a bad exceptional year altogether — "had never been seen before."

Public opinion in Texas was not, as Considerant supposed, in our favor, but rather set against us. The slaveholders saw us whites working in the fields and soon scented that socialists of this sort might be roughly the same thing as the abolitionists. We assured them that we held ourselves entirely neutral on the slavery question; but they, quite astonished, declared that neutral was not enough — in Texas one had to be, body and soul, for negro slavery; and some well-meaning Texans advised us, for form's sake at least, to acquire a few slaves. But even in Texas good advice is dear, we replied, for such a slave costs 5 to 6000 francs besides his daily upkeep, so that the labor of the whites comes cheaper; though privately we thought: that is all we socialists needed now — to have come 6000 miles across the sea, only at the last to be rebaptized as slave-keepers.

That under such unfavorable external conditions things must look unfavorable within the colony as well, every man will find understandable; and one may surmise that in such a mood many a bitter word — about me, too — was written home. Whether of these complaints more were unfounded than founded, let that be left undecided. I do not in the least imagine that, in this labyrinth of toilsome vicissitudes, I always struck the right path; but when I did strike one, I believed in good faith it was the best, and went forward. What was done behind my back, and what it was, I did not see and do not wish to see — still less to refute.

The chief of the enterprise — who ought to, and could have, given the others courage — was unfortunately himself too cast down by the weight of so many accumulated misfortunes for one to be angry with him; one could only pity him deeply. Disappointed in everything — in the land, in the climate, in public opinion — and, on account of the [ban?] [?] that lay upon the state land, finding nowhere any immediate way out, he gave himself over to despair. He did let it be seen that his basic intention was to dissolve the provisional colony and to engage no further funds there in terrain and buildings, but rather to save up all the capital as far as possible for the future purchase of the great land-basis, which one absolutely had to have elsewhere, whether inside or outside Texas. Of dissolving this provisional arrangement most of those who remained would, to be sure, hear nothing; they grew afraid of the Texan solitary life, even if only for a few years. Above all Dr. Savardan — who now fulminates so fiercely against Considerant — lulled himself in the hope that out of the "agglomeration" a quite pretty association might yet come, if the joint-stock company would provide the necessary capital for that expansion. The powerless Considerant let things take their course; a few more farms were bought — here a piece and there a piece — and land certificates, with which one might claim the state land lying in between, which would not, after all, remain under ban forever. In this way a considerable sum was tied up for years to come — by no means, however, squandered for good; only, Considerant could make no further use of it for his later great land purchase, and for him the sum was as good as shelved, to be regarded as "englouti" [swallowed up]. Another part of the colonists — myself among them — would have nothing more to do with Texas at all; we now had an experience of 8–10 months behind us, had lived through summer and winter, and knew that in this hybrid climate the disadvantages of the north and those of the south are to be met with combined. We even saw it with great displeasure that Considerant made as if to enter into negotiations with a private company which owned fine lands in West Texas, 400 miles from our quarters, and wished to sell them en bloc. The Spanish-American highlands appeared to us as the only sensible basis for our colonization plan. We sought to convince the management to go to Mexico; others wished to go to New Granada and Venezuela; I offered to explore Central America and report on it. Considerant was undecided, but we were resolved.

And so, at the beginning of 1856, I set off for Nicaragua, where the filibuster general Walker was just then preparing to bring the country under his sway. Walker — who in his time had become acquainted at Paris with the socialist ideas — received me kindly and gave me much good advice concerning the land and people, as well as a safe-conduct, that I might pass as unmolested as possible through his buccaneer bands. From the English consul, an opponent of Walker, I likewise obtained a letter of recommendation to the chiefs of the Spanish-Indian army, as well as to the governments of several Central American states. Everything then was war and turmoil in Central America. Whoever has ever seen American filibuster bands — among them a good portion of the scum of California and New York; whoever knows the Spanish-Indian population, then aflame with hatred of foreigners; whoever knows what it means to travel about Central America even in peaceful times, where roads and bridges are unknown quantities, and where the Spaniards, in 300 years, have civilized things so little that — though one meets splendid churches and fat priests — in the whole land one finds not one mill, not one sawmill, let alone an inn — let him form some notion of the agreeableness of exploring for a whole year, almost always alone, in the midst of soldiery, or rather banditry. It went meagerly indeed at times; board and lodging matched the security of person and property; and often I brought it so far as to wish back, as an Eldorado, the hard time I had spent in Texas. I found, however, more beautiful, fertile, healthy, and cheap highland in Central America than I had expected — only nowhere of the extent we should have wished for our plan. Since all these highlands are inhabited, and the soil — though dirt-cheap — belongs mostly, and often for hours around, to old families of Spanish descent, it would surely prove hard to buy together, out of pure private property, a sufficiently large tract of land. Still, Central America seemed to me by far more suitable than Texas, and I therefore sought to convince the management to direct their chief attention to Central America, or at least to Mexico or Santa Fé de Bogotá. To be sure, one would have to leave state land out of account in Central America; this the governments give away as much as one likes, but it is mostly land that the Spaniards, in 300 years, did not think even worth the trouble to appropriate; it lies mostly on the eastern slope, full of dense forests, where the moisture of the trade winds is incessantly condensed; yet everything is in fullest luxuriance, because of the heavy rain, but for that very reason just as unhealthy — on such state land any colony would soon become a peaceful graveyard. At last, after a year, I received word that Considerant had roused himself from his apathy and had bought, in the west of Texas, a large and beautiful piece of land on advantageous terms. Since he meant to take up a colonization plan there afresh, he had refused the provisional colony in East Texas any further funds — or rather, dissolved it.

I now went back to West Texas to look at the purchased land. I must confess that in all of wide Texas I have seen no lovelier, more fertile, and healthier land than this valley, 1–2 hours broad and 8 hours long, almost all of it arable soil, a good part of which can be irrigated. But although cattle-raising, cotton, maize, and wheat can thrive excellently, the rapid change of temperature (early flowering and late north winds) stands all too obstructively in the way of any finer cultivation — all fruit-, garden-, and vine-growing, let alone southern fruits — for one to be able to think of being adequately rewarded for one's labor in these branches. For the timber-poor and therefore mostly dry West Texas does not possess, in my conviction, that power of attraction which is, above all, necessary to induce the adherents of our socialist idea to emigrate there; hence the social purpose — which I have always had, and still have, before my eyes — will not come to fulfillment there, but the whole affair will end in an ordinary land speculation. Since Considerant was able to buy this valley very cheaply at a time of general money shortage — a consequence of the recent exceptional crop failures in Texas — it is more than probable that the rising value of the soil, and the parcel-by-parcel sale to American and German settlers, will yet yield the shareholders quite pretty percentages, and will in any case cover the loss incurred in the first years, which by the latest reckoning came to Fr. 120,000. Over the size of this deficit one may perhaps, in Europe, throw up one's hands; but in America this is a quite ordinary fact among immigrants. When one says over there that, of nearly 2 million francs, 120,000 fr. were at the outset "squandered" on travel costs, preliminary work, unavoidable misfortune — such as crop failures and illnesses — and admittedly also on self-inflicted blunders, the American thinks one has got off well, and asks coolly: "Where are the immigrants, whether single or joined together, who in their first years in America do not have to 'squander' 7 percent of the goods they brought with them as tuition?"

The financial standing of the colonization society is therefore by no means so distressing as had been generally feared. I shared this fear myself, and it was this that drove me, too, back from Central America to West Texas; for I regarded it as my duty, toward the Zurich stakeholders, to judge only by my own observation, and to pour them clear wine [i.e. tell them the plain truth] about the financial situation, as well as about the general character of the land — whether favorable to our social purpose or not. As to the security and profitability of the capital, I am now fully reassured; (the interest fallen due has already been paid in accordance with the statutes.) But as to the attainment of our social purpose, the conviction stands irresistibly firm in me — herein I am perhaps somewhat dazzled by the radiant beauty of the Central American highlands — that West Texas is not suited to it. Since I could not therefore, in good conscience, recommend the land bought by Considerant to my emigration-minded comrades, and since I, on the other hand, felt no inclination whatever to be active in a mere speculative venture, I resolved to return to my fatherland — with the sincere wish, however, that Considerant, who means to begin his plan there afresh, may succeed; for even though I am cured of "my illusions" about Texas, I nonetheless live still in the firm conviction that the future belongs to association; that progress tears down one barrier after another, and the new inventions make it more possible every day; that on favorable terrain, and with sufficient funds, with good people imbued with the idea — such as I came to know so many of among our colonists — agricultural and industrial associations are possible even now, and far less difficult than people commonly imagine; but that one could form an association by throwing together the first comers off the street, or people from all countries — whether imbued with the socialist idea or not, as was the case in Upper Texas — has never once occurred to me, because man, in the outer world, is in any case unable to create that which has not yet come to ripeness within him.

Karl Bürkli