"We learn from statistics, that for the family of a skilled workman of the better class—a family of five persons—the average annual cost of living is $420. This includes food, shelter, raiment, fuel, laundry, light, water, medical attendance, medicine, education and recreation.
"Under the competitive system, to earn this sum required, on the part of the adults and such of the children as were able to work, the continuous toil of three hundred days, twelve hours long—counting the possible workers of the family as three, and the labor day as twelve hours long—we have in the aggregate, say eleven thousand weary hours of this nerve depressing labor. A labor often performed in the midst of the most repulsive and unsanitary conditions; to which the toilers were constantly goaded by the cruel spur of necessity. This is a picture of the living expenses and daily working life of a family of the superior class, far above the average among the workers under the competitive system.
"To illustrate what the co-operative system can do, let us transfer the account of this family, to a co-operative agricultural colony like this. On the basis of three hundred days of labor annually, we should have daily for the two adults—the children being in school—six hours of productive labor and two hours of educative labor, an aggregate of four thousand, eight hundred hours, of work for the year. This work would be separated by such generous periods of rest and recreation, and performed amidst such pleasant surroundings, that the worker could truthfully count them as so many hours spent in necessary healthful exercise.
"As a result of this labor, we could place the annual income of the family at $1,800. All available, for providing the very best of food, shelter, clothing, heat, light, laundry, hospital service, medical attendance, medicine, education and amusement. Also superior social surroundings, with increased facilities for being well born; with educative advantages, embracing a higher order of intellectual amusements, art-culture, musical training, and industrial skill.
"In addition, the family would enjoy a savings account of generous proportions, represented by the constantly increasing value of the farm, its stock, crops, buildings, store and goods, material, machinery, industrial plants, orchards, vineyards and forests.
"Still better! They would have savings in the sinking fund, providing land, and homes for their children and grand-children in a long line of future generations.
"Best of all! This family would have savings in the insurance fund, providing for an old age of ease and comfort, free from care, sweetened and brightened by leisure, travel and the refinements of study, art and music!
"In striking a balance between these two accounts, we discover a difference in favor of the co-operative system, with its magical insurance, which is wider, deeper and more startling than the difference between the illustrations of Dante's Inferno, and the descriptions of Milton's paradise!
"A careful study of this insurance question, has taught our people many valuable lessons. They have learned to consider from a new standpoint, the object and purpose of life, and the amount of work necessary to support that life.