580 INDUSTRIAL INSTITUTIONS. 



There have been several disturbances and fights. ... I have been 

 assaulted and knocked down. Where you acting in your official 

 position at this time ? Yes. Was that at a meeting or outside ? 

 At our work. Was any punishment meted out to your assail 

 ant? No. 1 &quot; 



And so on continues the testimony showing dissensions, 

 violence, idleness, rebellion; joined with admissions on the 

 part of nearly all, that their beliefs in the goodness of a 

 communistic system had been dissipated. 



Of course this failure, like multitudinous such failures 

 elsewhere, will be ascribed to mistake or mismanagement. 

 Had this or that not been done everything would have gone 

 well. That human beings as now constituted cannot work 

 together efficiently and harmoniously in the proposed way, 

 is not admitted ; or, if by some admitted, then it is held that 

 the mischiefs arising from defective natures may be pre 

 vented by a sufficiently powerful authority that is, if for 

 these separate groups one great organization centrally con 

 trolled is substituted. And it is assumed that such an or 

 ganization, maintained by force, would be beneficial not for 

 a time only but permanently. Let us look at the funda 

 mental errors involved in this belief. 



842. In an early division of this work, &quot; Domestic Insti 

 tutions,&quot; the general law of species-life was pointed out and 

 emphasized the law that during immature life benefit 

 received must be great in proportion as worth is small, while 

 during mature life benefit and worth must vary together. 

 &quot; Clearly with a society, as with a species, survival depends 

 on conformity to both of these antagonist principles. Im 

 port into the family the law of the society, and let children 

 from infancy upwards have life-sustaining supplies propor 

 tioned to their life-sustaining labours, and the society disap 

 pears forthwith by death of all its young. Import into the 

 society the law of the family, and let the life-sustaining sup 

 plies be great in proportion as the life-sustaining labours are 

 small, and the society decays from increase of its least worthy 



