2. The co-operation of the settlers in buying and selling.
3. The establishment at Durham, or on the settlement, of a training school in agriculture.
4. The erection in the near future of a social hall owned and paid for by settlers.
Co-operative action among the farmers and farm laborers was particularly desired and encouraged. A co-operative stock breeders' association was formed. Twenty-two acres were reserved for community use, and here it is hoped that community buildings will be erected.
When the farms were offered for sale there were from ten to fourteen applicants for each of the improved farms. Four of the unimproved farms were not applied for and these will be seeded and offered to settlers later at the opening of the next tract. Every one of the farm laborers' allotments was applied for. The settlement was made self-sustaining and productive within sixty days from the date the land was purchased.
As to the racial composition of this colony and the way in which the method of colonization would affect the incorporation of the different racial elements in the life of the settlement, the superintendent, Mr. George C. Kreutzer, made the following statement:
Five of the settlers on the colony are of German origin, two of Danish origin, two Italian, one French, and all the others are of either English, Irish, or Scotch origin.
No policy of mixing nationalities was followed. These farmers put in either a first, second, or third choice for the allotments they desired, and the board then selected the man best suited agriculturally for the particular block he was allotted.
Under our system of allotting blocks here the farmers are particularly concerned in making a success of their farms financially, rather than socially. We were never confronted with the problem of having too many of one nationality in the community, and as we have only fifty-three farms to offer for settlers, it is not large enough to involve the problem at all. Further than this, I do not think the problem will come up under this system of allotting blocks, for the reason first stated above.
It will Americanize immigrants through co-operation and social intercourse, through the various settlers' organizations necessary to their social and financial welfare. We have a Stock Breeders' Association which meets at regular times to discuss live-stock problems at intervals during the year. They are all on equal terms, each one buying the land for himself, thus breaking down class distinction. There will not be the distinction between lessees and freeholders that we find in the Middle States. Their children will go to the same school.