During the spring of 1874 he initiated near St. George a communistic movement known as the United Order. An experiment of similar nature had been tried by the Mormons in Missouri more than thirty years earlier. It was an attempt to combine cooperatively the efforts of the Saints, so that all might share the benefits in accordance with their needs. The scheme had been inaugurated in a few communities with encouraging success and it was now proposed to launch it on a large scale.[62] In February, St. George, Price City, and Washington were all organized on this basis. Price City, near St. George, is reported as the first working farm community in which the combined farms were managed as a unit and the farmers lived as one large family. Some of the men were assigned to irrigation, some to raising hay, corn, cane, garden stuff, or other crops according to the estimated needs of the community. Fuel was supplied seasonably by hauling wood from the scrub forests of the hills. The women were assigned as cooks, dish washers, baby tenders, clothes makers, and nurses. In Price and a few other places the settlers ate together, but in most of the communities each family had its own home. On March 5, Brigham Young visited Virgin and Rockville and organized the United Order. During March and April, nearly all the settlements in Dixie fell in line and a confederation of all the settlements, known as the St. George Stake United Order, was set up to correlate the activities of the individual settlements. During late April and early May, Brigham Young moved northward to Salt Lake City, initiating the novel movement in many of the towns along the way, including Cedar, Parowan, Beaver, Fillmore and Nephi. Upon reaching Salt Lake City, a general agency to correlate the stake activities, known as the “United Order for all the World,” was established. The movement enjoyed only a brief period of prosperity. The utopian ideal encountered difficulties when it came to the division of benefits. Wages were assigned to each person and the benefits drawn were charged against each family. It was soon alleged that some were drawing more than their wages entitled them to, whereas others were not getting all that they felt they should. In a few favored communities having access to large natural resources, such as abundant pasturage for livestock, either dairy or range, the produce was more than sufficient to pay the wages assigned and to build up a surplus capital. In most, however, where agriculture was the chief dependence and products of the farms were insufficient to pay wages, stinting was inevitable. Under such conditions, there was general dissatisfaction with the cooperative scheme and more progressive individuals sought to withdraw.