“No, you are wrong. We could take our sewing machines at home and earn just as much as we do here, if the market was assured us. He could not earn single-handed what we earn for him, we three hundred girls, don’t you see? Now in this case you have been so interested in, that man has built a large number of homes right here in this city and yet he was unable to even have the use of one to die in, let alone to live in. Girls, I belong to a society that some time I would like you to visit. It would help you to solve some of the problems of life, that no one has a right in these days to shirk, for it is our industry and every other working person’s that keeps the machinery running, not only of the factories, but of the cities.”
“Then we sent money and provisions to keep that family from starving,” one of the girls remarked, “even though we did it unconsciously.”
“Yes, all who work do their share towards paying the taxes and when the society called ‘The Wealth Producing and Distributing Society’ is stronger and been in operation twenty or fifty years, we will cease to have human beings living at the mercy of so-called charitable institutions, poorhouses, or, worse still, starving to death, as they are at the present time. There is another thing, girls, that I want to tell you; whenever you are called ‘factory girls,’ as you are so often by shop girls, just keep a dignified silence. Your labor is just as necessary as theirs and if you only considered it a little, you are of as much importance also. Every intelligent person should honor his own industry and remember that he is fulfilling his mission in life, and if all did so, heartaches would cease. Any bright person would do the best he could under existing circumstances and would even raise conditions which he considered beneath his dignity to his own level, as you may learn if you join our society. Respect yourselves and address each other as you do Mr. Forbes. Learn to appreciate yourselves, your advantages, and then create new opportunities as your ability points out the way. All useful employment is honorable, and now is the time to raise labor to its proper dignity among all honorable people.”
Many of those girls not only attended the meetings, but joined the society. Even Mr. Forbes, who owned the business, saw that he could do better by becoming one of them, so he became a member and eventually moved out to the Colony.
CHAPTER V.
Nellie stood looking out of the window one morning early in the spring, and as she hummed a merry tune and was so bright and happy, she seemed to reflect the brightness in everything about her. The sunshine smiled and the very trees breathed contentment. This was her first spring in the country and the arrangements for the coming colony were bringing some funny experiences. A large number were there already and each day more were applying or inquiring about the resources before venturing, questions would come up and have to be answered until Nellie said she could fairly sing the answers, for they had told so many the same thing. She laughed aloud finally and Tom, who was reading, looked up and said, “What is it?” “Oh, I was thinking of the men who were here yesterday, and do you know, Tom, most of them had the same helpless expression as the calf you liberated last fall. Do you remember how helpless and perplexed it looked? You unwound the cord for the calf, and now you have some cords to unwind in dealing with these people, for they need their freedom as much as the calf, but don’t see how to go about it.
“Ideas and actual demonstrations are necessary to teach most of them. It seems so simple to us who have studied the situation from every standpoint, and when one of them asked you how you are going to collect the rest of the materials for building without money, he looked so wise in his own conceit and convinced that he had you in a corner, I noticed he winked at the rest. I had to leave the room, for I knew I would laugh aloud if you ever tried to show him up in his ignorance. He certainly did deserve it. Every one of them were from ten to twenty years older than you are. All had a trade or some means of earning a living, yet had to appeal to you to explain every working plan separately.”
Tom replied: “I told them that as members they would not only receive their wages at the time, but have an interest in the permanent buildings and improvements. That instead of a capitalist owning the property the different labors each produced, the society got it and kept it in trust for those who earned it.
“It was hard to make them comprehend that it was a Wealth Producing and a Wealth Distributing Society, giving to all industrious people an opportunity to secure for themselves the full value of their industry, and explained that all buildings represent permanent wealth and so did fruit trees. The trees remaining but the fruit was consumed; that when we give up the tree, we have no right to the fruit.