RALAHINE AND ITS TEACHINGS 471 



Here we have an indication of what will happen when 

 labour is organized as we now organize our armies, and 

 when all the ardour and enthusiasm now devoted to the 

 destruction of life and property is excited in the interest 

 of labour exerted for the preservation, well-being, and 

 happiness of all. 



2. It is said that working men will not submit to the 

 orders of their equals even when chosen by themselves to 

 be foremen of the work, and that quarrels will result, and 

 the community be soon broken up. That this has some- 

 times happened is no doubt true, but that it will always 

 happen or need happen is disproved by the example now 

 before us. The Irish are perhaps rather more quarrel- 

 some and more quick to take offence than many other 

 races ; yet with a few common-sense rules as to the 

 management and the overpowering influence of self- 

 interest, we find them at Ralahine living and working 

 together for three years in the most perfect harmony. 

 Of course there was the power of expulsion of any indi- 

 vidual who could not or would not live at peace with the 

 rest ; but that power can be exerted by any community, 

 and the dread of expulsion will probably be a sufficient 

 deterrent in most other places, as it was at Ralahine. 



3. One of the most serious allegations (if it were true) 

 against socialism or any complete system of co-operative 

 society is, that there would be no incentive to invention 

 or improvement, and that civilization, instead of ad- 

 vancing, would either stand still or retrograde and ulti- 

 mately fall back to barbarism. But all history shows 

 that this supposed objection is utterly unfounded, and 

 that the joy of the inventor, like that of the artist, arises 

 first from the exercise of his special talent, next from the 

 interest and admiration it excites in his fellows, and last 

 of all and least of all, from any hope of exceptional money 

 reward. The lives of such men as Kepler, Galileo, Palissy, 

 Watt, Herschel, Faraday, and a hundred others, show the 

 truth of this ; and at Ralahine it was found that the most 

 ignorant of the labourers were sometimes able to make 

 suggestions of value to the community. Quite recently, 

 Mr. Preece, in a lecture before the Liverpool Engineering 



