Colony Time Line

SEPT. 29, 1900

Job Harriman becomes Eugene Deb's runningmate in the first Socialist Party presidential campaign.

OCT. 1 1910

Los Angeles Times Building bombed. Over 22 people perish.Publisher Harrison Gray Otis, one of the most influential men in Los Angeles bent on keeping L.A. an open shop, blamed his usual suspects, the labor unions. It was Otis' desire to make Los Angeles the financial capital and center of power on the West Coast and he could only do this if he could successfully keep out the labor unions.

APRIL 1911

The McNamara Brothers and Ortie McManigal, labor union extremists, are arrested for the bombing. Because the city's future and the growth of labor unions is at stake, their trial became a national cause celebré. Prominent lawyer, socialist, and Los Angeles mayoral candidate Job Harriman is tasked to defend the accused. As the trial looms, Clarence Darrow is brought in to take over for the campaigning Harriman. Popular national sentiment favors the defense.

OCT. 31, 1911

Socialist candidate Harriman receives more votes than anyone else in the Los Angeles mayoral primary, 20,157; 4000 more than the incumbent George Alexander.

DEC. 1, 1911

James B. McNamara confesses to bombing. With the evidence stacked against them and a death penalty looming, Darrow counseled his clients to confess. The prosecution lobbied for and won the right to decide when the confession would be announced - this in an effort to defeat the socialists and labor union candidates at the polls. Everyone knew Harriman's mayoral seat was the price for saving the McNamaras from execution. Harriman is not a party to these negotiations.

DEC. 5, 1911

Four days later the mayoral election is held. Harriman is defeated. Harriman goes back to lawyering. In the next few years, realizing socialism will not easily win at the ballot box, Harriman regrouped and decided that if people could see the benefits of socialism in an actual working community they might find its ideas more palatable.

1913

The 'lost' silent film "From Dusk To Dawn" is produced/released by the Occidental Motion Picture Company of California. The film was possibly also known as "Labor vs. Capital." Writer-director Frank Wolfe was one of the first to join the colony and served as one of its board members. The film is considered a seminal American socialist/pro-labor form and was one of the first of its genre marketed in America to an appreciative mainstream audience (it played in Marcus Loew's theaters in the northeast, midwest and Pacific Coast.) Of equal value is the documentary footage cut into the narrative: motion picture images of Eugene Debs, Clarence Darrow (who plays himself in reference to the McNamara trial) and JOB HARRIMAN. The film, a "4 or 5 reeler" (40-50 minutes) has been 'lost' for years and numerous efforts to locate it have turned up nothing. Because of its popularity presumably many prints were struck and perhaps some have survived. Please let us know if you run across a copy of the film!!!

MAY 1, 1914

Job Harriman's dream of an experimental socialist colony comes true. The Llano del Rio Cooperative Colony celebrates its official founding day with five members, a team of horses and a cow. In exchange for an honest day's work a member received free shelter, food, education, health care, a job, a guaranteed minimum wage, free cultural activities, and more. The colony was set up as a corporation. One bought a set amount of stock to become a member, originally $1000 worth; this was reduced in the Louisiana years. The colony was located in the Antelope Valley about 75 miles north of Los Angeles.

1914-15

The `Fresno Gang' joins the colony. This included The Western Comrade publisher Ernest Wooster, Industrial School teacher and later Kid Kolony founder George Pickett, and osteopath Robert K. "Doc" Williams.

EARLY 1916

Llano del Rio Cooperative Colony is re-incorporated, this time in Nevada and the corporation becomes known as the Llano del Rio Company of Nevada.

JULY 1916

Walter Millsap joins the colony.

DEC. 1916

The colony's population has mushroomed to over 1000 people. The colony has grown too quickly. There was not enough housing, crops, or infrastructure to keep pace with the new members. The colony's voting strength outnumbered their Antelope Valley neighbors causing friction and water rights the colony once thought secure were called into question. The L.A. Times continued to publish only negative stories about the colony's endeavors. The colony began to search for another, larger site with more water and less outside opposition.

1917

125 children are enrolled in colony schools. The Llano kindergarten is one of the first and largest Montessori schools in California.

OCT. - DEC. 1917

Approximately 150 colonists charter a train and move lock, stock and barrel to Stables in western Louisiana, a played-out lumber mill town soon renamed New Llano by the colonists. The colony is contracted to buy a certain number of acres each year at $6 an acre. A skeleton colony is left behind in California in the hands of an unscrupulous board member.

1918-1924

The Llano del Rio Cooperative Colony barely survives two years of bad crops, the influx and quick exodus of 200 Texas farmers who didn't understand they'd joined a cooperative colony and then departed with almost everything that wasn't nailed down. Other members didn't like the climate and left. George Pickett hit the road and raised money and donations to keep the colony going. His success garnered him the loyal support of many members. Pickett is elected General Manager of the colony in 1920. Harriman, who was ailing from TB and traveling back and forth to L.A. to straighten out muddled colony affairs, did not see eye to eye with Pickett's more practical reforms. The colony split into two factions; Pickett's won out.

1922

The colony purchases rice farm in Elton, LA, soon known as "The Rice Ranch." It became one of the colony's more successful ventures along with the artesian well ice plant (1925), veneer plant, and grist mill.

1923

Commonwealth College established at the colony by William Zeuch and Kate Richards O'Hare, who also published her magazine "The American Vanguard" at the colony for a time.

OCT. 25, 1925

Job Harriman dies in Los Angeles of TB related complications. He was survived by his wife, Theo, who had his body and memoirs cremated, and a son, Gray. Perhaps reaching back to his seminary days, shortly before his death Harriman noted that cooperation was not easily acheived unless it was underscored with a stronger spiritual commitment. He saw greed surface among the poorest colonists at Llano while often those who were more affluent in the colony held closer to the colony's ideals. Harriman summarized these and other observations in the introduction to Ernest Wooster's book "Communities of the Past and Present." (see bibliography). This was one of the last articles by Harriman published.

1926-27

First receivership trial. Pickett absolved of misconduct of colony affairs.

1930

Pickett tries to settle remaining colony debt to the Gulf Lumber Company, the original owners. Anxious to get whatever they can for it, the company agrees to cancel all debt for $25,000. The colony never successfully raised the capital necessary.

DEC. 1930

Approximately 500 people now call Llano home. The Depression brings more desperate people each day to the colony's doorstep. Pickett favored the Good Samaritan route and allowed itinerants food and lodging in return for a day's work (and courted their support when opposition turned his way). Paying members resented these new arrivals who did not have not paid their way in.

EARLY 1930s

The Rust brothers move to the colony and begin development of their innovative cotton picking machine. In 1933 they traveled to Russia for six weeks of demonstrations. Rust cotton pickers sold well there.

1932

Colony establishes satellite colonies on 3500 acres in Gila, New Mexico (for a cattle ranch) and in Premont (or Fremont), Texas (for fruit and other produce) and elsewhere. This was, in part, a response to the results of studies conducted by George Washington Carver. Carver determined that the colony soil was too poor to support crops necessary to maintain an adequate diet. These expansions, coming at a time of great financial weakness, did more than anything else to undermine the colony's viability.

1932

Pickett, Doc Williams and other colony members, in cooperation with outside speculators, drilled three costly oil wells at the colony to no avail. Vernon Parish is about the only parish in Louisiana that doesn't produce oil.

AUG. 1933

The Federal Securities and Exchange Commission declares the colony insolvent and prohibits all sale of colony stock.

MAY 1, 1935

May Day Revolution ousts Picket as General Manager while Pickett is away in Washington, D.C.. Pickett's trip was in regard to Senate Bill 1142 which he co-drafted and persuaded Senator Morris Shepperd of Texas to introduce in 1933. The bill proposed, in response to the Depression, a federal corporation establishing a number of relief communities around the country; The Llano Colony was one of the only cooperatives offered as a role model. Pickett, backed by parish courts, is soon reinstated as General Manager at the colony.

1937

The colony goes into receivership for the second and final time.

mid 1939

The Receiver closes the books on Llano. The colony's assets (20,000 acres, numerous houses, farms, two hotels, a general store, a saw mill,and a score of industries) were valued at pennies on the dollar (about $6000) which resulted in lawsuits from the colonists up into the 1970s. At his death in the late 1950s George Pickett was among the plaintiffs. Pickett was buried was in New Llano, LA, survived by his wife, Alice, and a son, Blair.

late 1939

The United States conducts the largest field war games ever, in western Louisiana. Called the Louisiana Maneuvers, the exercises took place over most of the western half of the state. The first administrative center for the Maneuvers was located in the former colony buildings until facilities at Camp Polk (later Fort Polk) could be built. The population of the parish increased from a few thousand to 50,000 in three months. The colony missed out on this windfall by only a few months.

1962

Walter Millsap is extensively recorded by UCLA's Oral History project. Millsap was the unofficial historian of the colony. He joined during its California years and made the move to Louisiana where he shared a home for some months with Harriman (whose estranged wife would not make the trip). Upon Millsap's return to California, he kept in touch with many Llanoites and ex-Llanoites, published a cooperative newsletter, founded the United Cooperative Industries, and was active in Upton Sinclair's EPIC movement (as were quite a few ex-California colonists). He gathered a remarkable collection of correspondence, colony records, and photographs before his death in the early 1970s.

1970

7400 acres still owned by the Llano del Rio Colony stockholders.

1993

One of the last original deeds from the Louisiana colony is sold.

May 1, 1994

The Llano del Rio Cooperative Colony celebrates for the first time a reunion in Louisiana on the occasion of colony's 80th anniversary. Reunions, primarily of the California colonists, were held sporadically in Riverside, California in the 1940s and 1950s.

An extensive bibliography can be found in the Study Guide elsewhere on this Web Page. Information for this timeline was gathered from many of those sources plus archival and private sources located by the producers of American Utopia.

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