208 THE IERIGA 1 ION A GE. 



Greeley's colony in Colorado the noblest monument to his work 

 for his fellowmen and perhaps the only one that endures was also 

 an organized community. It was indeed "a Church without a Bishop 

 and a State without a king," but in place of bishop and king it had a 

 town meeting. It was born in a town meeting of Tribune subscribers 

 held in Cooper Institute. It was set agoing in a town meeting under 

 the open sky of Colorado, and perpetuated in a long series of town 

 meetings in Colony Hall at Greeley. The same number of settlers 

 acting individually, even if favored with the same degree of material 

 prosperity, would merely have made farms. The Greeley colonists 

 made history and made institutions. But without organization, as a 

 matter of fact, they could not have succeeded at all at that time and 

 place. It was organization alone which saved them from succumbing 

 to a hundred difficulties, just as it had enabled them in the first 

 instance to purchase their lands on the most advantageous terms and 

 to obtain and apply to their own benefit the large profits arising from 

 their improvements. It was organiza tion which enabled them to develop 

 and perfect the highest agricultural methods and to become the 

 historic leaders in founding the civilization of a great State. Without 

 organization they would have been like a million other settlers who 

 have moved from East to West, drifting from obscurity to obscurity, 

 and exerting no influence upon their time. As it is, you cannot write 

 the history of our Western Empire and leave them out. 



In making the labor colonies of Holland and Germany the 

 governments of those countries have worked with the poorest 

 possible materials, both as to people and soil. Outcasts from the 

 streets, and lands which no- one else would take as a gift, were the 

 component parts of the Dutch colonies. So in Germany estates which 

 had reduced their owners to hopeless bankruptcy, and the dead and 

 wounded from the industrial strife of great cities, were chosen for 

 these momentous social experiments. Yet nothing but success 

 resulted and simply because these new communities were thoroughly 

 organized. Their plans had been made by thoughtful men; their 

 labor forces were directed by superior intelligence, enriched by 

 experience. The result was that the humble settlers passed from 

 beggary to tenantry, from tenantry to proprietorship, and that the 

 vast capital used in the enterprise was preserved, compensated, and 

 finally repaid. Without the saving grace of organization nothing but 

 financial loss and human misery could have resulted. 



In this brief paper I cannot deal with methods, but only with a 

 few luminous results which point the moral. 



A COMMON FUND. 



"There should be a common or community fund." 

 The Mormons had it from their tithing system, under which the 

 banker and the merchant paid ten per cent, of their profits, the 



