Carriages, railroads, automobiles, in their time, were at first opposed by the artists of the day.
The Roadtown now looks like a Chinese wall—when it is realized it will look like a Roadtown, and Roadtown will mean comfort, contentment and prosperity, and new sentiment and new art will replace the old.
CHAPTER XII
WHO WILL BUILD THE ROADTOWNS
MY many friends have advised me to sell the Roadtown patents or form a company and sell stock. But these people have failed to realize the comprehensiveness of the Roadtown project. Indeed, should I have promoted the Roadtown as a monopoly for private gain I would have unquestionably been the meanest man on earth, for in me and my backers would have been combined all the despotism of the landlord, the railroad magnate, the factory slave driver, the wasteful middle-man, the extortionate retailer and half of the commodity trusts. The private owners of the Roadtown would be absolute master of the inhabitants in every phase of life.
I know no better way to explain to my well-meaning friends who wear dollars instead of lenses in their spectacle frames why I do not care to make a private monopoly of Roadtown, than to say that I was raised in a country town and know the sad limitations of human aspirations due to the loneliness and narrowed horizon of isolated existence, and that I have also lived in the congested districts of New York and of other large cities and know the pain and misery of the life of the city, and that for me to think of promoting Roadtown as a private graft would be exactly comparable to the idea of the discoverer of diphtheria antitoxin keeping the secret for selfish gains.
The Roadtowns will be built by the people who believe in its principles and who have money to invest at 5 per cent, or the market price of a security better than municipal bonds. The Roadtown corporations will each be chartered with a nominal capital stock which will bear no dividends. I will at first hold this stock in trust. This stock will be the voting stock of the corporation, hence, I or trustees I might name will have control of the policy of the company within the limitations of the charter. I wish this stock to be non-dividend paying so the Roadtown can never be made to pay profits to me or anyone else and to pay interest on bonds only to those who are cash investors. My object in holding or trusteeing this stock is to keep the control of the Roadtown out of the hands of those who may use such control as a means to the numerous forms of graft commonly present in corporations. I wish to stand between the bond holders and the residents of Roadtown and the grafters, and this privilege is the reward I ask for the invention of Roadtown—I want no promoters or monopoly profits, no inventors’ stock, and no fancy salary, but I do want the opportunity to see that no one else gets any such advantage over the Roadtowners.
My reason for wishing to control the voting stock of Roadtown is that I do not believe a democratic organization can be created at once in its entirety but that it will have to evolve naturally. If an oligarchic form of control was established now it would doubtless be perpetuated for generations and become corrupt as are present corporations and governments. I believe that during my life time, I, with the aid of good advisers, can evolve a purely democratic form of control and thus permanently prevent it from falling into corrupt hands. I confidently expect the coöperation of men of the highest national reputation in matters of trusteeships.
Home Rule for Roadtowners.
The Roadtown management will have to grow and develop starting perhaps with one-half mile section and adopt such rules as are necessary to the protection and comfort of the tenants. They will be consulted about whatever concerns them directly and thus gradually evolve into a plan of self-government. When I say self-government I mean as regards the things that under our present system they haven’t a word to say. They go to the polls occasionally and vote for somebody but can seldom trace any benefit from the vote. In Roadtown direct legislation, initiative, referendum and recall will enable a man to really have a say.