A FEW POINTERS FROM THE PEN OF THE REVIEWER.
Solaris Farm is the title of a new book "with a purpose." In fact it is a book with many purposes. While the author writes intelligently and forcefully upon stirpiculture, education, invention, hygiene, sanitation, moral, physical and mental growth and culture, and injects many new, beautiful and practical thoughts into each of these subjects, his chief theme is unselfish co-operation, his chief purpose is to exhibit the benefits, moral, physical, social and financial, that will be showered upon the human family when they become wise enough to cease competing with each other, and progressive enough to begin co-operating.
The story is the logical development of the following situation:
Fern Fenwick, an heiress to a vast estate, had promised her father before his death to use a good share of the Fenwick millions in bettering the condition of the race. Her first experiment is a co-operative farm of about five thousand acres, whereon about two hundred and fifty families settle and work out the many problems which the author desires to discuss.
In all of these operations she has the able assistance of Fillmore Flagg, a farmer's son, who, having seen his father and dozens of his old neighbors crushed in spirit and broken in fortune by the resistless trend of events under the competitive system with all its waste of misdirected energy, has become disgusted with the meager results of farm work and having by great energy obtained a practical education has determined to do something for the alleviation of the miseries of a competition crushed society.
He meets Fern Fenwick and is by her employed to superintend the co-operative farm.
A very pretty little love story, which the author has told with pleasant humor, is the result of their meeting, but the weightier themes with which the book is filled are likely to more fully engross the attention of the reader.
Co-operative ventures have usually been founded upon some "ism," and were held together by its religious or other influence. In the Solaris Farm colony a very comprehensive scheme of insurance against accident, poverty, sickness and old age is the binding principle. The premium is the profit which the co-operators collectively make by producing what they want (or by buying at wholesale what they cannot produce) and selling the same to themselves individually at regular market rates. The excellence of their wares attract many purchasers from the outside and the profits resulting therefrom also tend to swell the insurance fund of the co-operators.
All kinds of business, and manufacturing are carried on by the co-operators in addition to farming. Co-operative thinking solves the knottiest problems for the colony, invention flourishes and, once started, money flows into their coffer at a fairly satisfactory rate.
Co-operation is the key-word, the essence, the very soul of Solaris Farm. All the successes achieved by the characters that people the book are the results of co-operative working, thinking and saving. Every stockholder lends a hand, and lo! the hours of labor are short and delightful; when a disagreeable task must be done, co-operative thinking invents a machine which does the work better than a man could do it; the dignity of toil is established on a sure foundation, and the statement that "muscular effort is a mental demonstration," is verified.
"Will it pay?" is sometimes called "the American question." In Solaris Farm the author has successfully undertaken to present an unselfishness that will pay—not in the fairy gold of a far-off Heaven, but in the coin of the realm, here and now. Leisure for study and recreation; books, pictures, objects of beauty and art; better health; longer life; the society of delightful people none of whom are competing for the lion's share, but all of whom are co-operating for the benefit of the community; absence of the fear of poverty; certainty of support in sickness and old age;—all these and thousands of other comforts are some of the certain wages of unselfishness.
A feature of Solaris Farm which will commend itself to every well-wisher of the race is the high estimate which the author places on humanity. Man, he says, is the flower and fruit of the planet, its highest and best product. To arrive at the highest point possible in his evolution, it is necessary for him to be well born and this necessitates happy, healthy, prosperous parents and proper environments. To follow out this idea to its logical conclusion would be to repeat the author's arguments, for he has completely filled the field. The reader is referred to the story for the facts proving that unselfish co-operation will furnish everything needful for the complete unfoldment of the now almost dormant possibilities of human nature.
The pursuit of happiness and the hope of its ultimate possession is the motor which induces all human endeavor. No act is ever done except in obedience to this law of our nature which compels us to seek pleasure. Ignorance of the nature of true pleasure has led us after many a will-o'-the-wisp, and our unlearned race has soiled its garments many times in error, commonly called "sin." "Sinful pleasures," against which our parents, the clergy, and all moral philosophers have warned us, do not exist. There is no pleasure in sin. Our race beliefs, based upon untruth and ignorance, have bequeathed us a heritage of appetites, passions and desires which are wrong, and hurtful when gratified.
Among the most hurtful of race beliefs is the fixed idea that labor is a curse. Nothing could be further from the truth. As has been aptly said: "Art is the expression of a man's joy in his work." Labor—muscular exertion, having a definite productive object—is a blessing and a joy when the worker is in love with his work. Work is a curse only under the competitive system, which by its wasteful methods extends the hours of toil beyond the limits of endurance, robs the worker of the full benefits of his labor and gives him no time for self-improvement. The experience of the stockholders of Solaris Farm shows how the ancient curse was removed by unselfish co-operation, and labor crowned with the dignity that is its due.
While Solaris Farm was not intended as a propaganda of spiritualism, that cult has been introduced with considerable dramatic effect for two apparent reasons. The first and least important of these reasons is to cater to the ever-growing taste of the reading public for the occult; but the second reason is peculiar to the book. In discussing man as the most valuable product of the planet, and the relation which the soul bears to the body, it became necessary to approach the subject from the view-point of one who is in nowise affected by the petty altercations, jealousies and strifes of the world; one who knows by experience all the hardships of life and its many temptations, but who has also progressed beyond the sphere of their influence. The most natural and obvious way of obtaining this coveted point of observation was to let the spirit of such a noble character as Fennimore Fenwick speak from the fulness of his experience, both as mortal and spirit, of the needs of the race, the curse of competition, the value of proper environmental conditions for perfect motherhood, pre-natal education and adequate training of mind and body, such as may not be secured even by the most wealthy in the present condition of society, but which would be the heritage of every individual in a co-operative community. The utterances of Fennimore Fenwick rank with the best thought on these subjects and no person can read them without having implanted in his breast a higher regard for his race, and a greater solicitude for the material and spiritual unfoldment of humanity.
For many years, orators and agitators have vied with each other in proclaiming that capital and labor were the two factors of financial success. They were and still are mistaken. Within the pages of Solaris Farm the reader is given the true formula, which may be algebraically stated thus: "Capital + Labor + Brains = Financial Success." Financial Success, however is not the complete product of these factors when selfishness, greed and wasteful competition are eliminated from the equation by the substitution of unselfish co-operation. The happy result of the experiment at Solaris Farm must convince the reader of the correctness of the formula and the value of the substitution.
In considering the broad field covered by this attractive book; its wide departure from the mission of the ordinary novel, its probable use as a text-book of advanced thought on true socialism, progressive co-operation, a new order of political economy and the ways and means of making colony life desirable, successfully coherent, self-supporting and practically delightful; the price of Solaris Farm (50 cts, in paper covers, $1.25 in cloth binding) will commend itself to the purchaser as not only reasonably moderate, but also if he be an interested reader, with business intentions, that the large end of the bargain is very much in his favor.
Solaris Farm was written by Captain Milan C. Edson, whose military title was earned during the great Civil War. He was a farmer and the son of a farmer. He enlisted as a private soldier and without influence rose to a captaincy by merit and bravery alone. He is a profound thinker, a lover of his race and has given many years to the study of social and political questions. It has been his desire to found a community where his ideas of true success might be wrought out, as an object lesson to the world, of the advantages of unselfishness. This pleasure having been denied him, he has incorporated his leading ideas in Solaris Farm, in the hope that some one more fortunate than himself may be able to receive the blessings which must inevitably flow from such a noble life.