I have quoted this at length because, as I said before, I believe that it is the seed from which mighty forests are destined to grow. We should never have given the time and strength which we have given to this experiment, but for our certainty that all the world will some day be following in our footsteps. We are living in a coöperative home because we wish to do it—but some day you will be doing it because you have to. You get along badly enough with your servants, you admit; still you get along somehow or other. But has it ever occurred to you what your plight would be if, when you went to the “intelligence-office,” instead of getting a bad servant, you got no servant at all? When that time comes, you will be grateful to us pioneer “home-colonists.”
It is a most interesting thing to watch; it is the Industrial Republic in the making. We care nothing whatever about the intellectual opinions of the people who come to live in the colony; but I have observed that nearly every non-Socialist who has come here has been turned into a Socialist in the course of a month or two. And that is not because we argue with him, or bother him; it is simply because facts are facts. What becomes of the old shop-worn argument that it would be necessary to change human nature—when human nature is suddenly discovered to be so kindly and considerate as it is in this big home of ours? And what becomes of the ponderous platitudes about “Socialism versus Individualism” in a place where so many different kinds of individuals are developing their individualities.
I am often moved to use this experiment of ours as an illustration of what I said in the previous chapter, concerning the difference between material and intellectual production. Here in Helicon Hall we have all the dreadful machinery of paternalism which frightens our capitalist editors and college presidents whenever they contemplate Socialism; we submit ourselves to the blind rule of majorities—we allow a majority to decide what we shall pay for our rooms, and when we shall pay it; to lay out our menu, and refuse to give us pie for breakfast; to forbid our giving tips, or whistling in the halls, or dancing after a certain hour at night. And we have all the symbols of oppression—constitution and by-laws and boards of directors and managers. And yet somehow, we are freer than we ever were in the world before; because, by means of these little concessions, we have made possible a system—and so flung from our shoulders all at once the burden of care which used to wear the life out of us.
And in consequence of that, for the first time in our experience we find ourselves really free with regard to the real things of life. We have absolutely not a convention in the place. We do as we please, and we wear what we please. We are free to come and go, where we please and whenever we please. We have each our own rooms or apartments, to which we retire, and it never comes into anyone’s mind to ask what we are doing there. We may work all night and sleep all day, if we feel like it—so little do we bother with each others’ affairs that I have known people to be away for a day or two without being missed.
And on the other hand, if we feel like company, we can have it; there is always a group around our wonderful four-sided fireplace in the evening, and you can always find someone willing to play billiards or go for a walk. And as for our intellectual freedom—you should see the sparks scatter when our half-score assorted varieties of “Fabians” and “impossibilists,” “individualists” and “communist-anarchists,” all get together after dinner! There are so many typewriters in Helicon Hall that as you wander about the galleries in the morning you can fancy you hear a distant battle with rapid-firing guns; and the products of the industry vary from discussions of Yogi philosophy and modern psychic research to magazine fiction, woman’s suffrage debates, and Jungle “muck-raking.” And yet all these people share amicably in the ownership of the fireplace and the swimming-pool and the tennis-court; providing thereby a most beautiful illustration of the working out of the formula laid down by Kautsky for the society of the future: “Communism in material production, anarchism in intellectual.”
It is working out so beautifully, that the spirit of it has got hold of even our children, and they are holding meetings and deciding things. Of our nine youngsters seven are under six years of age; and last night I attended a meeting of the whole nine, at which a grave question was gravely discussed: “When a child wakes up early in the dormitory, is it proper to wake the other children, or should the child lie still?” After a long debate, Master David (aged five) remarked: “All in favour, please say Aye.” Everybody said “Aye.”
The above was written in the middle of December, 1906. On March 16, 1907, at four o’clock in the morning, Helicon Hall was burned to the ground, and forty-six adults and fifteen children were turned out homeless upon the snow. The story of our ill-fated experiment is left to stand as it was first printed.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
- Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling.
- Archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings retained as printed.