Editing Trenton, Missouri (section)

===The Utopian Socialist Ruskin College Movement===
In 1869, the [[Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad]] arrived in Trenton. In 1890 Avalon College, which had been founded in [[Avalon, Missouri]] by the [[Church of the United Brethren in Christ|United Brethren]] in 1869, moved to Trenton because of proximity to the railroad. 
[[File:Trenton-hs-1.jpg|thumb|left|Former site of Trenton High School which is on the site of Ruskin College.  The building is on the [[National Register of Historic Places]]]]
Due to financial difficulties, the college nearly closed again.{{citation needed|date=May 2017}} In 1900 George McAnelly Miller started to turn the school around.  He was soon joined by [[Walter Vrooman]] who had just returned from [[Oxford, England]] where he established [[Ruskin Colleges|Ruskin Hall]], a university called the "College for the People" based on the Utopian Socialist writings of [[John Ruskin]]. Avalon College was renamed Ruskin College after Vrooman donated {{convert|1500|acre|km2}} to it.

The college directly loaned money to the students and they could work at the school's canning, farming and novelty wood working businesses.  The college admitted women (unlike the Oxford school).<ref>[http://shs.umsystem.edu/manuscripts/invent/3803.pdf Ruskin College Material at the State Historical Society of Missouri]</ref><ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=yrcYAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA16&dq=Trenton+Ruskin+College#PPA18,M1 The Arena - Benjamin Orange Flower, Harry Houdini Collection (Library of Congress) - Google Boeken<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref>

Vrooman then proceeded to attempt to buy the major businesses in the town buying three grocery stores, a hardware store, drug store—paying for it all in cash via the Western Cooperative Association.  The [[New York Times]] on April 14, 1902, headlined its article on the development "Buying a Town Outright."  According to the cooperative arrangement, members of the coop who spent at least $300 in one of its stores would receive a dividend at the end of the year.

The Ruskin experiment collapsed in 1903 when town residents resisted the Utopian business model and Vrooman's wife divorced him saying that he had squandered $250,000 of her money.  Miller moved the college to the Chicago suburb of [[Glen Ellyn, Illinois]] in 1903 where it consolidated 12 different colleges and had an enrollment of 2,500 with 8,000 correspondence students.  Friction quickly arose there also and the main school burned after being struck by lightning.<ref>[http://gothere.com/Florida/Ruskin/ Ruskin, Florida] gothere.com.</ref>

Miller moved the college again in 1906 to [[Ruskin, Florida]] where {{convert|550|acre|km2}} of land around Trenton was swapped for {{convert|12000|acre|km2}}.  Many of the Florida campus buildings burned in 1918 and when Miller died in 1919, the college ceased to exist.<ref>[http://www.ruskinhistory.org/founding_of%20Ruskin.htm Founding of Ruskin, Florida] - ruskinhistory.org - Retrieved October 12, 2007.</ref>

In 1925, Trenton Junior College was established (which is now [[North Central Missouri College]]). Through expansion projects and support from numerous people, North Central Missouri College (NCMC) has developed into a major agricultural and nursing educational institution for the state of Missouri. Construction additions have since added to the size of the main campus. Plus directly south of Trenton, a project completed in 2011 established a satellite agricultural location known as the Barton Farm Campus. It contains three classroom buildings, a wind turbine, two acre pond and numerous test plots all on 138 acres of farm ground given to NCMC by the Barton family.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://ncmcpirates.com/landing/index|title = North Central Missouri College}}</ref>