Rebels in the Wild

Rebels in the Wild: The Equality Colony and the Taming of American Capitalism tells the forgotten but still relevant story of the rise and fall of a radical experiment in socialism in the Pacific Northwest at the turn of the 20th century. Drawing on letters, diaries, memoirs, newspaper reports, and court records, this book traces not just the life of the Equality colony in Skagit County, Washington, but also the lives of the agitators, rabble rousers, and ordinary men and women who created it. They were a quarrelsome bunch who believed capitalism was ripe for ruin but could agreed on little else. At its core, this story reflects the timeless struggle to defend human dignity and the endless and essential search for a better way to organize society. The Equality colony failed, but in ways long lost in the American memory, the impulses that created it foreshadowed the birth of a social welfare state, the rejection of unconstrained capitalism, and a consensus on empowering government to promote the common good.