Part 5

ty, and despite all rules tinctured their words and actions with "airs" and conceit. Similar thoughts and feelings soon arose among the men; and though not so soon exhibited they were none the less deep and strong. Suffice it to say, that at the end of three months--three months!--the leading minds in the Community were compelled to acknowledge to one another that the social life of the Community could not be bounded by a single circle. They therefore acquiesced, though reluctantly, to its division into many. But they still hoped, and many of them no doubt believed, that though social equality was a failure, community of property was not. Whether the law of mine and thine is natural or incidental in human character, it soon began to develop its sway. The industrious, the skilful and the strong saw the product of their labor enjoyed by the indolent, the unskilled and the improvident; and self-love rose against benevolence. A band of musicians thought their brassy harmony was as necessary to the common happiness as bread and meat, and declined to enter the harvest-field or the workshop. A lecturer upon natural science insisted upon talking while others worked. Mechanics, whose single day's labor brought two dollars into the common stock, insisted that they should in justice work only half as long as the agriculturist, whose day's work brought but one. Of course, for a while, these jealousies were concealed, but soon they began to be expressed. It was useless to remind all parties that the common labor of all ministered to the prosperity of the Community. Individual happiness was the law of Nature and it could not be obliterated. And before a single year had passed, this law had scattered the members of that society which had come together so earnestly and under such favorable circumstances, and driven them back into the selfish world from which they came. The writer of this sketch has since heard the history of that eventful year reviewed with honesty and earnestness by the best men and most intelligent parties of that unfortunate social experiment. They admitted the favorable circumstances which surrounded its commencement; the intelligence, devotion and earnestness which were brought to the cause by its projectors, and its final total failure. And they rested ever after in the belief that man, though disposed to philanthropy, is essentially selfish, and a community of social equality and common property is an impossibility. * * * * * The loss of two hundred thousand dollars did not dampen the ardor of Robert Owen. He paid up the debts of New Harmony, had the property surveyed and subdivided, and then deeded it to his children and immediate relatives and a few of the "staunch friends who have such a lavish and unwise faith in my wisdom"--to use his own expression. To give work to the unemployed of England now became his immediate solicitation. He was sixty years old when he inaugurated his first co-operative store, which in fact is the parent of our modern Department-Store. In this store he proposed to buy any useful article or product which any man might make or produce, figuring on cost of the raw material and sixpence an hour for labor. This labor was to be paid for in Labor Script, receivable in payment for anything the man might want to buy. Here we get the Labor Exchange. Owen proposed that the Government should set delinquent men to work, instead of sending them to prison. Any man who would work, no matter what he had done, should be made free. The Government would then pay the man in Labor-Exchange Script. Of course, if the Government guaranteed the script, it was real money; otherwise, it was wildcat money, subject to fluctuation and depreciation. Very naturally, the Government refused to guarantee this script, or to invest in the co-operative stores. To make the script valuable, it had to be issued in the form of a note, redeemable in gold at a certain time. The stores were started, and many idle men found work in building mills and starting various industries. Three years passed, and some of the script became due. It was found to be largely held by saloonkeepers who had accepted it at half-price. Efforts had been constantly made to hurt Owen's standing and depreciate the market value of this currency. The Labor Exchange that had issued the script was a corporation, and Robert Owen was not individually liable, but he stepped into the breach and paid every penny out of his own purse, saying, "No man shall ever say that he lost money by following my plans." Next he founded the co-operative village of Harmony or Queenswood. The same general plan that he had followed at New Lanark was here carried out, save that he endeavored to have the mill owned by the workers instead of by outside capital. Through his very able leadership, this new venture continued for ten years and was indeed a school and a workshop. The workers had gardens, flowers, books. There were debates, classes, and much intellectual exercise that struck sparks from heads that were once punk. John Tyndall was one of the teachers and also a worker in this mill. Let the fact stand out that Owen discovered Tyndall--a great, divinely human nautilus--and sent him sailing down the tides of Time. At eighty years of age, Owen appeared before the House of Commons and read a paper which he had spent a year in preparing, "The Abolition of Poverty and Crime." He held the Government responsible for both, and said that until the ruling class took up the reform idea and quit their policy of palliation, society would wander in the wilderness. To gain the Promised Land we must all move together in a government "of the people, by the people and for the people." He was listened to with profound respect and a vote of thanks tendered him; but his speech never reached the public printer. Robert Dale Owen became a naturalized citizen of the United States, and for several years was a member of Congress, and at the time of the death of his father was our minister to Italy, having been appointed by President Pierce. He was in England at the time of the passing of Robert Owen, and announced the fact to the family at New Harmony, Indiana, in the following letter: Newtown, Wales, November 17th, 1858. It is all over. Our dear father passed away this morning, at a quarter before seven, as quietly and gently as if he had been falling asleep. There was not the least struggle, not the contraction of a limb or a muscle, not an expression of pain on his face. His breathing stopped so gradually that, even as I held his hand, I could scarcely tell the moment when he no longer lived. His last words, distinctly pronounced about twenty minutes before his death, were: "Relief has come." JAMES OLIVER The sluggard will not plow by reason of the cold; therefore shall he beg in harvest. --_Proverbs xx: 4_ You benefit yourself only as you benefit humanity. --_James Oliver_ [Illustration: JAMES OLIVER] James Oliver was born in Roxburyshire, Scotland, August the Twenty-eighth, Eighteen Hundred Twenty-three. He died March the Second, Nineteen Hundred Eight. He was the youngest of a brood of eight--six boys and two girls. He was "the last run of shad," to use the phrase of Theodore Parker, who had a similar honor. Just why the youngest should eclipse the rest, as occasionally happens, is explained by Doctor Tilden on the hypothesis that a mother gives this last little surprise party an amount of love and tenderness not vouchsafed the rest. Let the philosophers philosophize--we deal with facts, not theories, and no one will deny that James Oliver was a very potent, human and stubborn fact. He was Scotch. His father was a shepherd on a landed estate, where the noses of the sheep grew sharp that they might feed between the stones. The family was very poor, but poverty in the Old World grows into a habit, and so the Olivers did not suffer. They huddled close for warmth in their little cottage and were grateful for parritch and shelter. In Eighteen Hundred Thirty, the oldest boy, John, filled with the spirit of unrest, tied up all of his earthly goods in a red handkerchief and came to America. He found work at a dollar a day, and wrote glowing letters home of a country where no one picked up fagots for fires, but where forests were actually in the way. He also said he ate at his employer's table, and they had meat three times a week. Of course he had meat three times a day, but he didn't want to run the risk of being placed in the Ananias Club by telling the truth. A little later, Andrew and Jane, the next in point of age, came too, and slipped at once into money-making jobs, piling up wealth at the rate of three dollars a week. When three of a brood have gone from the home nest, they pull hard on the heartstrings of the mother. Women, at the last, have more courage than men--when they have. Partnerships are very seldom equal partnerships--one takes the lead. In this case the gray mare was the better horse, and James Oliver got his initiative from his mother. "We are all going to America," the mother would say. And then the worthy shepherd-man would give a hundred and fifty reasons why it was impossible. He had become pot-bound. Fear and inertia had him by the foot. He was too old to try to do anything but care for sheep, he pleaded. And persistently, as she knitted furiously, the mother would repeat, "We are all going to America!" Little Jamie was eleven years old. He was a swart and sandy little Scot, with freckles, a full-moon face and a head of tousled hair that defied the comb. "We are all going to America," echoed Jamie--"we are going to America to make our fortunes." John, Andrew and Jane had sent back real money--they must have earned it. All the debts were cleaned up, and the things they had borrowed were returned. The mother took charge and sold all the little surplus belongings, and the day came when they locked the door of the old stone cottage and took the key to the landlord in his big house and left it. They rode away in a kind neighbor's cart, bound for the sea-coast. Everybody cried but Jamie. It was glorious to go away--such wonderful things could be seen all along the route. They took passage in a sailing-ship crowded with emigrants. It was a stormy trip. Everybody was sick. Several died, and there were burials at sea, when the plank was tilted and the body slid into the yeasty deep. Jamie got into trouble once by asking how the dead man could ever be found when it came Judgment-Day. And also the captain got after him with a rope's end because he scrambled upon the quarter-deck when the mate went aft. The disposition to take charge was even then germinating; and he asked more questions than ten men could answer. Once when the hatches were battened down, and the angry waves washed the deck, and the elder Oliver prophesied that all were soon going to Davy Jones' locker, Jamie reported that the sailors on deck were swearing, and all took courage. The storm blew over, as storms usually do, and the friendly shores of America came in sight. There were prayer-meetings on deck, and songs of thanksgiving were sung as the ship tacked slowly up the Narrows. Some of our ancestors landed at Jamestown, some at Plymouth Rock, and some at Castle Garden. If the last named had less to boast of in way of anc