There are two large family rooms, one on each story, around which a considerable number of sleeping-chambers are built; and the upper of these large rooms has two ranges of such dormitories, one above the other, the upper range being reached by a gallery. All the rooms are plainly furnished, there being neither any attempt at costly or elegant furnishing, nor a striving for Shaker plainness.
Above the dining-room is the printing-office, where the Circular is printed, and some job printing is done.
Opposite the dwelling, and across the road, are offices, a school-building, a lecture-room with a chemical laboratory, and a room for the use of the daguerreotypist of the community; farther on to the right is a large carpenter's shop, and to the left are barns, stables, the silk-dye house, and a small factory where the children of the community at odd hours make boxes for the spool silk produced here. There is also a large and conveniently arranged laundry.
Somewhat over a mile from the home place are the factories of the community—consisting of trap works, silk works, a forge, and machine shops. These are thoroughly fitted with labor-saving machinery, and are extensive enough to produce three hundred thousand traps, and the value of over two hundred thousand dollars' worth of silk-twist in a year. Near these workshops is a dwelling inhabited by thirty or forty of the communists, who are particularly employed in the shops.
The farm has been put in excellent order: there are extensive orchards of large and small fruits; and plantations of ornamental trees shelter the lawn about the dwelling. This lawn is in summer a favorite resort for picnic parties from a distance. As Sunday-school picnics are also brought hither, I judge that the hostility which once existed in the neighborhood to the Oneida Communists has disappeared. Indeed, at Oneida all with whom I had occasion to speak concerning the communists praised them for honesty, fair dealing, a peaceable disposition, and great business capacity.
Their system of administration is perfect and thorough. Their book-keeping—in which women are engaged as well as men, a young woman being the chief—is so systematized that they are able to know the profit or loss upon every branch of industry they pursue, as well as the cost of each part of their living.
They have twenty-one standing committees: on finance; amusements; patent-rights; location of tenant houses; arbitration; rents; baths, walks, roads, and lawns; fire; heating; sanitary; education; clothing; real estate and tenant houses; water-works and their supplies; painting; forest; water and steam power; photographs; hair-cutting; arcade; and Joppa—the last being an isolated spot on Oneida Lake, to which they go to bathe, fish, shoot, and otherwise ruralize.
Besides these, they divide the duties of administration among forty-eight departments: Circular; publication; silk manufacture; hardware; fruit-preserving; paper-box; printing; dyeing; carpentry; business office; shoe shop; library; photographs; educational; science and art; laundry; furniture; legal; subsistence; Wallingford printing; agriculture; horticulture; medical; incidentals; dentistry; real estate; musical; amusements; quarry; housekeeping; repairs; traveling; watches; clocks; tin shop; porterage; lights; livery; clothing; stationery; floral; water-works; children's; landscape; forests; heating; bedding; coal.
At first view these many committees and departments may appear cumbrous; but in practice they work well.
Every Sunday morning a meeting is held of what is called a "Business Board." This consists of the heads of all the departments, and of whoever, of the whole community, chooses to attend. At this meeting the business of the past week is discussed; and a secretary notes down briefly any action deemed advisable. At the Sunday-evening meeting the secretary's report is read to all, and thereupon discussed; and whatever receives general or unanimous approval is carried out.