Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 2.djvu/102

86 were established by Doctor Keil in the colony at Bethel all the necessary arrangements for furnishing supplies, such as sawmill, gristmill, shoe shop, tailor shop, wagon shop, blacksmith shop, distillery, woolen mills, etc. From the general store thus produced, each one was allowed to take whatever he needed. All that was over and above this amount and was left remaining on the hands of the colony, was sold, and the cash received was placed in the common treasury and used for the purchase of any supplies that were not manufactured on the place. The communistic principle did not, however, extend to family arrangements; each family had its own home and carried on its own work. An entirely different feeling, says Mr. Miller, was fostered under such a system than that developed by the system of individual property—each having a sense that he owned all, and yet that he had no power to withhold any needed article from another. Dr. Keil's object in the communal feature, he thinks, was religious—in order that each, with all natural wants secured by the community, "might live nearer God." Doctor Keil he remembers personally as a very pointed and cogent speaker, and not fearing or hesitating to chastise, and yet he was compassionate. Mr. Miller recalls with deep feeling the doctor's admonitions to himself.

In 1863, when Mr. Miller came to Aurora, the place was still very much in the woods, though the hotel was in course of erection. There were several farms a few miles distant that were cultivated in order to produce the wheat necessary for the colony; one of these was on French Prairie, one at Barlow's, one on the Tualatin River, one on the Clackamas, and another on Pudding River. Before 1871, when Mr. Miller left, a number of houses had been built, and the old church was erected; Mr. Miller himself, who was a cabinet maker and turner by trade, turned the massive columns of the portico.