THE RUGBY COLONY.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2830, 20 April 1882, Page 3

THE RUGBY COLONY.

Probably no colony enterprise in the United States ever enlisted more outside interest than the colony which Thomas Hughes undertook to found in Tennesse, known as Rugby. The experiment was a novel one. It was proposed to found a colony of Englishmen upon a tract of cheap table land. The soil was thin, but the resources of timber, water, and stone were good, and climate was fairly good. Hughes is a humanitarian in his way, and evidently had an honest purpose of benefiting a considerable number of his countrymen, and in the end developing a model colony. It is now reported that the Rugby Colony has “ collapsed from which we understand that nothing more has happened than that it is not prosperous, and never has been, on the plan proposed. If the same number of Swiss or Swedes bad been set down in that place with like advantages, it is probable that they would hare attained reasonable prosperity. The Hughes colony was made up of an unthrifty class—of gentlemen and ladies or those who aspired to be such, and who did not know how to work out their own temporal salvation. They wanted an elegant hotel, a well-stocked store and a great number of vine-covered cottages, each having a piano and a library. The moonlight walks were fine. But colonists cannot live on moonshine. The "Tabard Inn,” is closed, " and the board of aid to landownership ” is charged' with being a land-speculating company. Hughes it isjsaid, no) {longer takes an interest in'the enterprise. He saw a long time ago that his rose-colored plans would come short of success. What Hughes really wanted to do was to transfer a bit of English life to Tennessee, and to demonstrate under entirely new conditions its great superiority to American life. To just this extent he failed. And yet it is quite possible that the colony, under new conditions, may bo reasonably successful. No matter how well read and refined colonists may be, if they are not ready to accept hard work, pioneer privations, and to forego many advantages of a social kind which might be enjoyed in older communities, they will not succeed at Rugby, nor in any other theoretical Eden in America, The colonies planted by New England in the Western States, rarely, if ever, failed. The settlers wore a hardy stock, trained to industry, temperance, and economy. They worked out the industrial problem patiently; they set their guns against the blackened stumps of trees, and ploughed the clearing; lived in log-huts until they could have better dwellings, and did not pine for any “Tabard Inn.” Success was slow, but sure. It was a process of development where every man did his best, and did not groan over his hard lot. These old conditions are just as essential in colony enterprises as ever. It was a lack of these which stood in the way of the Rugby Colony. "American Exchange."