xxv RALAHINE AND ITS TEACHINGS 473 



would certainly be deemed by most persons to require 

 considerable business talent, in addition to agricultural 

 knowledge, to manage successfully a farm of over six 

 hundred acres, employing eighty people and subject to 

 an exorbitant rent, so as to be in a much better position 

 at the end of three years than at the beginning. And 

 yet this was done wholly by a committee of common Irish 

 ploughmen and labourers. It may be said that they had 

 an organizer in Mr. Craig, and no doubt much of the 

 social success was due to him ; but he was not a farmer, 

 and though he no doubt was largely responsible for the 

 good health and general harmony of the little community, 

 the farm, as a business concern, was wholly managed by 

 the farm labourers themselves. Here again the imag- 

 inary objections of the critics are fully answered by 

 facts. 



5. Perhaps one of the commonest, and at the same 

 time wildest and least grounded of these allegations is, 

 that any kind of socialism is slavery is a despotism so 

 rigid and so cruel that people will not long submit to it ; 

 and that the system will necessarily break down and men 

 will gladly return again to the old, wise, perfect and 

 wholly-beneficial-to-everybody system of competition, 

 starvation, and slums ! 



There is not a particle of evidence adduced for these 

 statements, and experience is wholly against them. 

 Whenever there have been associations for the common 

 good, of people in a similar grade of education and of 

 social advancement, they have usually succeeded. The 

 Shakers and some other communistic societies have suc- 

 ceeded marvellously. Owen's mills at New Lanark were 

 a perfect success as long as he was allowed to carry on 

 the experiment ; and the case of Ralahine is particularly 

 striking. There we had the direct comparison of co- 

 operation against individualism under exactly the same 

 external conditions and surroundings, and we have the 

 opinion expressed both by the members who experienced 

 its benefits, and the surrounding population which looked 

 on with a wondering surprise. And what was their 

 unanimous judgment ? Did they say that the New 



