My strongest sympathies are with the cause in which you are laboring, and I am not wholly without hope that I shall yet find something to do in it. I am utterly alone here. I think often of what Carlyle says, "Invisible yet impenetrable walls as of enchantment divided me from all living."
Will you do me the kindness, sir, to answer the inquiry I have made of you as soon as convenient?
Yours most respectfully,
D. B. COLTON.
Letter from a Young Man.
COLCHESTER, CT., Nov. 1, 1843.
Rev. George Ripley,
SIR: My ideas of the principles of Industrial Association have been obtained by reading the New York Tribune. I am convinced that these principles are the elements out of which may be constructed that true social order which shall develop man's physical well-being, and call forth the mental and moral faculties of the soul.
My intention is to join some association of the kind now forming or already in operation. Your Community has been spoken of as one of the first and best in the country. My object in writing to you is to ascertain the peculiar nature of this organization and management, the terms of membership—the amount of capital required, or whether one without capital would be received—and whether a young man of the following description would find opportunity to work and receive a fair remuneration for his labor.
What I can do you can judge. I am twenty-five years of age, have lived eight years in New York, six years in one of the best wholesale dry goods houses there. Brought up at this place a mechanic and farmer, and am now engaged in wagon making and blacksmithing, for which I don't get a red cent beyond a good living.