more easily and spontaneously play into each other's hands than either in very large or very small communities.
At the West, I should think all the upspringing towns and villages would go into it, if from nothing else than the scarcity and unskilfulness and insubordination of their servants. Western women, too, are so young, so energetic, so fearless of obstacles, so eager after new ideas, and so friendly and social among themselves, that co-operative housekeeping would seem to be the only appropriate expression of their good-fellowship and public spirit
And as for the South, with her old labour system broken up, with the house-servants trained under it accustomed to do only one thing, and unwilling to attempt the variety that we exact from the Irish, with a terrible impoverishment that everywhere forces her delicate daughters into the coarsest tasks, and with rich fields going back into forest because there is neither capital nor organization wherewith to cultivate them,—surely, if there is a corner of the globe to which co-operation at this time seems especially appropriate, it is there. It cannot be a greater contrast to the old plan than the one the Southerners are struggling to learn now, and it might prove far better than either. Cease then, young gentlemen, this crowding into the towns, glad to be there as conductors, clerks, policemen, anything. With your diminished means and your single right arm, of course, you cannot farm your great estates. But let even half of them lie fallow, if need be,—they will not run away,—and meantime band yourselves in companies of twelve or more together. Throw your capital, implements, horses, cattle, and part of your land, into a common stock, and start co-operative plantations. Try to induce the freedmen, or, if they will not, the freedwomen, to make common cause with you in tilling the fields. Pay them wages, but also sell or advance them a share of the stock, and make them feel that in working for you they are in fact working for themselves. Build the cottages for your wives and sisters all near together, so that they can help each other, and make the most of what service from the negro women they
