Burnette Haskell (June 11, 1857 – November 16, 1907) was an American radical best known for co-founding the Kaweah Co-operative Commonwealth. He was also involved in anarchist and labor causes.
Inspired by Laurence Gronlund's 1884 Co-operative Commonwealth, he organized the Cooperative land Purchase and Colonization Association of California with James Martin the next year. The group was closely connected with the anarchists, socialists, and unionists of the San Francisco International Workingmen's Association. Haskell and Martin led 53 colonists to found the Kaweah Co-operative Commonwealth in the Sierra forest (now Sequoia National Park) of Tulare County, California, in 1885. The group supported itself through timber harvesting and grew to 150 colonists. Socialist Gerald Geraldson and Gronlund supplied outside financial aid as well. The colony dissolved in January 1892 between a government land suit, colonist factionalism, and difficulties with Haskell's personality.[2] Other sources claim that the Southern Pacific Railroad colluded with politicians to seize the colony's land.[3] Eminent domain was used in 1890 to turn the colony's land into part of Sequoia National Park.[4]
Haskell married Annie Fader, a socialist and suffragist, in 1882. Their son, Astaroth, known as Roth, was born in 1886. The couple split in 1897 but remained married through Haskell's 1907 death.[5]
Fogarty, Robert S. (1980). "Haskell, Burnette". Dictionary of American Communal and Utopian History. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. p. 47. ISBN978-0-313-21347-2. OCLC251590189.
Further reading
Cross, Ira B (1935). A history of the labor movement in California. Berkeley, Calif: University of California Press. OCLC811360851.
Medan, Caroline (1958). Burnette Gregor Haskell: California radical (Thesis). OCLC21601390.
O'Connell, Jay (1999). Co-operative dreams: a history of the Kaweah Colony. Van Nuys, Calif: Raven River Press. ISBN978-0-9673370-0-5. OCLC247146536.
Reichert, William O. (1976). "Burnette G. Haskell: Grand Sachem of Anarchism's Epigoni". Partisans of Freedom: A Study in American Anarchism. Bowling Green State University Popular Press. pp. 201–209. ISBN978-0-87972-118-3.
Shaffer, Ralph Edward (1962). Radicalism in California, 1869–1929 (Thesis). OCLC4869670.