THE COÖPERATIVE HOME
In all that I have outlined concerning the Industrial Republic, I have
tried to indicate my belief that it will be the creation of no man’s
will, but a product of evolution—the result of many forces which are now
at work in our society. These forces we can study and analyse; and in
picturing their final product, we are not simply indulging in fantastic
speculation, but are making scientific deductions. I believe that we
have now in our present world the half-developed embryo of everything
which I have pictured in the future; the Revolution, which comes
suddenly, and in the midst of strain and agony, is precisely the
parallel of a child-birth. In our present “trusts,” for instance, we
have perfect examples of the centralising and systematising of
production and distribution; absolutely the only thing needed to fit
them into the world I have pictured is a change of ownership. Again, in
the labour unions, we see the building up of the machinery of industrial
self-government. And similarly, in our churches and clubs, our
benevolent and artistic and scientific associations, we have the germs
of all the coöperative activities of the future. In our public
educational system, we have a complete and perfect piece of practical
Socialism, ready to fit into the structure of our Industrial Republic.
In our Post Office we have still another, while in the army and navy we
have examples of industrial paternalism which need only the breath of a
new ideal to make them indispensable for all time. We saw after the San
Francisco earthquake the real use of standing armies; and for such
purposes they will continue to exist, long after war shall have become a
nightmare memory.
It has occurred to me that in concluding my argument, it might be well
to tell of another such seed of the future, in the planting of which I
myself have had the pleasure of assisting. I refer to the Helicon Home
Colony, at Englewood, New Jersey, where I have been living while writing
this book.
Our industries are organised at present under the competitive system;
and I do not believe that any coöperative method of production can drive
human beings to the same pitch of effort as they are driven by the lash
of wage-slavery. So I consider that any form of coöperation in
production is doomed to failure, under present conditions; and I should
prefer to watch from the outside any attempt to found “colonies” of the
Brook Farm and Ruskin type. The case is quite otherwise, however, when
it comes to coöperation in _distribution_, in the expenditure of one’s
income. We are familiar with hundreds of forms of that sort of
association—coöperative stores, benevolent fraternities, social clubs
and churches. The practicability of any such enterprise depends upon two
questions: First, are there a sufficient number of people who want the
same thing, and second, can they get it more effectively in combination
than otherwise.
The idea of coöperation in domestic industry has been well worked out in
theory—notably in Mrs. Gilman’s book “The Home.” The first attempt to
realise it in practice, so far as I know, is the Helicon Home Colony.
The plan was broached in an article which I published in _The
Independent_, in June of 1906. In the course of the article, I outlined
the situation as follows:
Here am I on my little farm, living as my ancestors lived—like a cave
man or a feudal baron. I have my little castle and my retainers and
dependants to attend me, and we practise a hundred different trades: the
trade of serving meals, and the trade of cleaning dishes, the trade of
washing and ironing clothes, of killing and dressing meat, of churning
butter, of baking bread, of grinding meal, of raising chickens, of
cutting wood, of preserving fruit, of heating a house, of decorating
rooms, of training children, and of writing books! And all these crowded
into one establishment, in close proximity, and all jarring and clashing
with each other! And all carried on in the most primitive and barbarous
fashion, upon a small scale, and by unskilled hand labour. It takes a
hundred cooks to prepare a hundred meals badly, while twenty cooks could
prepare one meal for a hundred families, and do it perfectly. It costs a
hundred thousand dollars to build and equip a hundred kitchens; it would
cost only five thousand dollars to build one kitchen! But, of course, if
you have large-scale cooking at present, you can only have it under
capitalist auspices; and so it is associated in your minds with
uncleanness, and bad service, and high prices. It takes a hundred churns
and a hundred aching backs to make a thousand pounds of butter; it would
take only one machine and a man to tend it to make the same thousand
pounds, and the cost of making it would be cut ninety-five per cent. But
of course you cannot have large-scale butter-making except it is done
for profit—and that means adulteration and poisoning! It takes a hundred
ignorant nursemaids to take care of the children of a hundred families,
and develop every kind of ugliness and badness in them; it would take
only twenty or thirty trained nurses and kindergarten teachers to take
care of them coöperatively, and bring them up according to the teachings
of science.
One could show this same thing in a thousand different forms, if it were
necessary; but it has all been reasoned out in Charlotte Perkins
Gilman’s book, “The Home,” and anyone to whom the idea is new may read
it there. The purpose of this paper is not to persuade anyone, but to
move to action those already persuaded. There must be, in and near New
York, thousands of men and women of liberal sympathies, who understand
this situation clearly, and are handicapped by its miseries in their own
lives—authors, artists and musicians, editors and teachers and
professional men, who abhor boarding houses and apartment hotels and yet
shrink from managing servants, who have lonely and peevish children like
my own, and are no fonder of eating poisons or of wasting their time and
strength than I am. There must be a few who, like myself, have realised
that it is a question of dragging through life a constantly increasing
burden of care, or making an intelligent effort and solving the problem
once for all. To such I offer my coöperation. I am not a business man,
but circumstances have forced me to take up this problem, and I am not
accustomed to failing in what I undertake. I have said that “Socialism
is not an experiment in government, but an act of will”; and I say the
same of this plan. Having gotten the figures from experts and found out
exactly what we can do, the one thing remaining is to go ahead and do
it.
I suppose that the average professional man invests ten thousand dollars
in a home (or else pays rent equal to interest upon that sum); and that
he pays two thousand dollars a year living expenses for his family. Let
a hundred such families combine to found a coöperative home, and there
would be a million dollars for building and equipment, and two hundred
thousand dollars a year for running expenses; I believe that for half
the outlay five hundred people could live and enjoy comforts at present
possible only to millionaires. I have, however, no intention of asking
anyone to risk his money upon such a guess. I write this to find out if
there are people disposed to consider the project; and if there are
enough, I will have the plan figured upon by architects, contractors,
stewards, and other qualified experts, and have prepared a definite
business proposition, and a plan of organisation for a stock company.
The following embodies my own conception of what such a “home colony”
should be. It would be located within an hour of New York, and would
have one hundred families, and three or four hundred acres of land,
healthfully located, near some body of water, and as unspoiled by the
hand of man as possible. It should have an abundant water supply and a
filtering plant; an electric light and power plant, and a large garden
and farm, raising its own stock, meat, poultry, fruit and vegetables,
and canning the last for winter use. It should be administered by a
board of directors, democratically elected. For the management of its
various departments salaried experts should be employed; machinery
should be installed wherever it could be made to pay, and the best
modern methods should be applied in every industry. All its purchases
should be in bulk and tested for quality; and, so far as the preparation
and serving of food is concerned, the processes should be kept as
aseptic as a surgical operation.
We are accustomed to having our buildings for public purposes endowed by
persons with a great deal of money and few ideals; and so we consume
much space and material and accomplish little, exactly typifying our
civilisation. The buildings of this home colony should be of frame at
the outset, of simple and expressive design, each structure exactly
adapted to its specific purpose. The buildings should be conveniently
grouped—those for the children in one place, those for cooking and
eating in another, those for reading, for music and social intercourse,
for recreation and exercise, in still other places. The greater part of
the land would of course be given up to farm and woodland, and to the
individual dwellings of the families. The ground available for this
latter purpose should be divided into lots, priced according to size and
location, and eased to stockholders for long terms. Each would erect his
own home, according to his own taste—a home, of course, of a kind
hitherto unknown, with no provision for the cooking of food, or the
training of children, or other trades and professions. It would be a
place where the family met, to rest and play and sleep. It might be
large or small, anything that the owner chose to make it—my own would be
a four- or five-room cottage, of rustic design, and it would cost from
six to eight hundred dollars. Besides these there should be apartment
buildings, owned by the colony, and dormitories with rooms for single
men and women.
As to the public buildings, there should be a large and beautiful dining
hall, and a modern, scientifically constructed kitchen. There should be
separate tables for each family, or for congenial groups of people. The
service should be unexceptionable, the food simple, but perfect in
quality and preparation; there should be a vegetarian service for those
who prefer this cheaper mode of life, and the charge for board should be
based upon the cost of the service. As to what the cost would be, with a
colony raising nearly all its own food upon the premises, I can only
submit three experiences of my own: First, it cost me for my family of
three to board in New York City, in one room and in the cheapest way, a
thousand dollars a year. Second, it cost us, living in a three-room
cottage in the country, doing our own work and buying our food from a
farmer at wholesale prices, seven hundred dollars a year. Third, it cost
us, living upon a sixty-acre farm, which represented a total investment
of four thousand dollars, doing no work ourselves but the managing,
paying a man and woman five hundred and forty dollars a year, having a
horse and carriage, and feeding five persons instead of three, a total
of less than six hundred dollars a year. Lest this should be
unbelievable, I put it in another form—the total expenses of the farm,
including labour, were less than twelve hundred dollars, the income was
six hundred dollars, and the net loss, or the cost to us of a year’s
living, was less than six hundred. And these figures, it should be
explained, included not merely board, but also household supplies and
repairs of all sorts, items which would appear in other places in the
community’s accounts. I will probably be laughed at, but I believe that,
granting the land, horses and machinery, buildings, equipment and
capital, the members of such a colony as I describe could be provided
with perfect service and an abundance of food of the best quality at a
total cost of one hundred dollars a year per person.
So much for the coöperative preparation of food. And now for the caring
for children. There should be two separate establishments, one for
infants, who like to sleep, and one for children, who like to run and
shout. Both should be scientifically constructed and ventilated and kept
as clean as an up-to-date hospital; the food should be prepared under
the general direction of a physician. No building for children should be
over two stories high, and the upper windows should be beyond the reach
of children; no matches or exposed fire should be permitted, and there
should be a night watchman, fire extinguishers, and an automatic
sprinkling apparatus. These establishments should be under the
supervision of a board of women directors; and the actual work of caring
for the children, washing, dressing and feeding them, playing with them
and teaching them, should be done by trained nurses and kindergarten
teachers who live in the colony as the friends and social equals, of its
members. In other words, it is my idea that the caring for children
should be recognised as a profession, and that servants should have
nothing to do with it; it is my idea that it should be done in a place
built for the purpose, with floors for babies to crawl where there is no
dirt for them to eat, with playgrounds for children where there are no
stoves and no boiling water, no staircases and wells, no cats and dogs,
no workbaskets, lamps, pianos, sewing machines, jam closets, inkstands,
and authors’ writing tables. Instead, there should be sleeping rooms and
bedrooms, and sun parlours for nursing mothers; a separate building for
the sick; kindergarten rooms and indoor playgrounds for bad weather, and
a big all-outdoors romping ground, with sunny places and shady places,
swings, rocking horses, sand piles, and all other accessories of a
children’s heaven. Of course, any mother should come and play with or
care for her own children just as much as she pleased, or take them
home, as she chose; though I think that no one would care to assist this
plan who did not believe that children should be cared for in accordance
with the principles of science, and preserved from the corrupting
influence of grandmothers and aunts. Of course, any mother who believed
that her work in the world was caring for children, and who wished to
care for her own and others, according to the methods of the
commonwealth, would be free to do so, and to earn her living by doing
it.
I have already explained that I should not regard this as an experiment
in Socialism; but I do think that those who undertook it would have to
be in sympathy with the spirit of Socialism, which is the spirit of
brotherhood and democracy. Whenever I have mentioned this plan to
friends they have always said: “The great difficulty would be to get
together a community of congenial people.” It does not seem to me that
this would be a difficulty at all. Every member of the community would
have his own home, to which he would invite his personal friends as he
chose; and the other members of the community he would meet in the same
way that he meets acquaintances in business and politics, in theatres,
restaurants, and clubs. I myself am the most unsociable of human beings
when I am busy, and have no idea of giving up my hermit’s tastes. In a
colony of a hundred families there ought to be persons of every kind of
inclination, and it would not be in the least necessary for anyone to
associate with those who were not congenial.
Of course there are people in the world whom we should not want near us
at all; but such people, I think, would not care to join our colony.
Vulgar and snobbish people get along very well in the world as it is,
and do not find it a task to give orders to servants. Those who would be
interested in such a plan would be men and women who wished to practise
“plain living and high thinking”; and they would naturally wish to get
as far as possible from every suggestion of ostentation and
conventionality. They would establish the shirt-waist and the short
skirt as _en règle_, and would, I trust, allow me in without a dress
suit. They would be all hard-working people themselves, and they would
not look down upon honest labour. This spirit, if wisely and earnestly
cultivated, would solve the “servant problem” for the colony, and solve
the health problem for its members as well. I know business and
professional men who, when they need exercise, have to go down into the
basement and lift weights and pull at rubber straps; and they envy me my
farm, where I can hoe the garden, or pitch hay, or pick fruit, and not
merely benefit my body, but also put money in my purse. In this
community every member would be credited for the time he worked; and it
ought to become the custom for the men to help with the harvests, and
the women with the preserving of fruit, and the children with the berry
picking and the weeding of the gardens. I have no doubt that there are
thousands of young men and women in New York City, students of art and
music and the professions, who would be glad of a chance to earn their
way in a community where class feeling did not make labour degrading. I
appreciate the difficulties in the way of such a project; the chances at
present are against a coal-heaver’s being a socially possible person,
and I am not insisting that the day labourers should share in the
privileges of the community. But I do think that this should certainly
be the case with those whom we select to care for and teach our
children, and also, if possible, with those whom we permit to prepare
and serve our food; if I am not willing to shake a man’s hand or sit
next to him in a reading-room, I do not see why I should be willing to
eat what he has cooked. I personally know a young man who is studying
art, and who earns his living by washing dishes in a downtown
restaurant, because it takes only two or three hours a day of his time.
In Memorial Hall at Harvard University, in the sanitarium at Battle
Creek, and in many other places I might name, those who wait upon the
tables are college students; and anyone who knows the difference which
there is in the atmosphere of such a dining hall knows what I should
wish to attain.
The above article brought me replies from four or five hundred persons;
and committees were named, which met all through the summer to work out
the details of the plan. In October of the same year the purchase of
Helicon Hall was made, and the “Colony” began its career. Six months
after the publication of my first article, I contributed to _The
Independent_ an account of how the experiment was succeeding; I quote
from it the following paragraphs:
We made many mistakes; I shall tell about some of them in due course,
for the benefit of future pioneers. But there is one thing to be said
here at the start: we made no mistake in believing in democratic
institutions. It was a point about which the critics of our plan were
all agreed, that it could not possibly work, because people could never
decide what they wanted. That dreadful bugaboo called “human nature”
would wreck us in the end. I, for my part, believed that people in
America were used to the methods of majority government, and I believed
that if we should apply those same methods in a coöperative home, a
group of intelligent and sincere people could manage to solve all their
problems. From the beginning our policy was publicity and democracy; and
from the beginning it brought us through. At the committee meetings
everyone had his say. And little by little you would see a majority
opinion taking shape on the question at issue, until, finally, when all
had been heard, the matter was put to a vote. There was no case where
the minority did not give way with all courtesy. And now that the colony
really exists we sit round the fireside and talk out our questions, and
as a rule we do not even have to take a vote—an informal discussion is
enough to make clear to everyone what is fair and right.
I am a believer in the materialistic conception of history; I am
accustomed to interpret the characters of men from this position—to say
that competition has made them selfish and deceitful, and that
coöperation will make them beautiful and sincere. I think that I can see
it working out in this colony. We have founded it upon justice and
truth; socially we stand upon terms of equality, and economically we pay
for exactly what we get. These are the principles we have built upon,
and all take them for granted, and no other idea ever enters their
thought.
[Illustration:
_Photograph by Jessie Tarbox Beals, N. Y._
HELICON HALL
]
“But will this last?” you ask. I do not see how it can fail to last, and
to grow—admitting, of course, that my analysis of the cause is correct.
We did not start out with any enthusiasms and religious ecstasies; we
had simply cold common sense; we employed lawyers and business men to
put us on a sound basis. Our only real peril was at the beginning,
before the colony spirit was well developed in our members, and some of
us were tired and overworked; and even then there were no
misunderstandings that a little discussion could not clear up. Now
things are beginning to run smoothly, and we are realising some of the
benefits.
We are as yet in our infancy, of course; there is no one of the
departments in which we do not intend to make numerous improvements; but
we have got over the roughest parts of the road, and we can begin to
look about us a little. We are living in what I think is the most
beautiful suburban town near New York. We have nine and a half acres of
land, sloping down from the western brow of the Palisades, and
commanding a view of thirty miles, and we have only half a mile to walk
to come out upon the Hudson, where there is scenery which tourists would
travel many miles to look at, if they only knew about it. The hall
itself has nearly six thousand square feet of floor space on the ground
floor alone, devoted to rooms for social purposes; there is a central
court filled with palms and rubber trees, which have grown to the very
top of the three-story building. We have a large pipe-organ, a swimming
pool and bowling alley, a theatre, and a billiard room. We have
thirty-five bedrooms, ranged in galleries about the court, so that we
can look out of our windows in the morning and see the sun rise, and
then look out of our door and see the tropics. We have the finest
heating system in the world—we pump fresh air in from outside, heat it
in a three-thousand-foot steam coil, and then distribute it to all the
rooms, with the result that we feel as well all the time as other people
feel when they take a trip to Arizona or the Adirondacks. In such a
place as this we have a comfortable bedroom or study, where we can go
and be by ourselves and never be disturbed, for $3 a week. And
downstairs we have a huge fireplace, where, if we happen to feel in a
sociable humour, we can sit and talk with our friends. And also, we have
a dining-room, where a group of cultivated people meet three times a day
to partake of wholesome and pleasant-tasting food, prepared by other
members of our big family, whose cleanliness and honesty are matters of
common knowledge to us. This last-named privilege costs us $5 a week, or
$4 if we only eat two meals; and we do not have to add to this price any
care or worry, because the price includes the salary of a superintendent
and a manager, who work sixteen hours a day each to straighten out all
the kinks and keep the machine running.
Finally, this magical building contains a dormitory and a children’s
dining-room and play-room, where ten happy and healthy children receive
their lessons in practical coöperation at a cost of four dollars a week
for each child. It was over these “institutionalised infants” of ours
that the critics of our plan were most incensed. Several dear ladies who
had read my books and conceived a liking for me, sat down and wrote me
tearful letters to point out the wickedness of “separating the mother
from her children.” As a matter of fact, we have five mothers in the
colony, and the work of caring for the children is divided among four of
them. (The fifth is studying medicine in New York.) By the simple
process of combining the care of the ten children we accomplish the
following results: First, the labour and trouble of caring for each
child is reduced about two-thirds; second, the child has playmates, and
is happy all day long; third, we can afford to keep the child in a more
hygienic place than the average nursery—we have a pump driving fresh air
into his play-room all day; and, fourth, we can dispense with the
services of nurse maids, and go away, leaving the child in the care of a
friend.
Of course we cannot have everything that we should like in the
“children’s department.” We have to wait for more colonists for that.
With only ten children we have to dispense with a resident physician; we
cannot even afford a kindergarten. And, of course, we have not the
scientifically constructed dormitory of which we dream; we have only a
converted theatre, and instead of the uniform cots and the dustproof
walls and all the rest, we have to make apologies to visitors. However,
our children are all enjoying it meantime; and our five mothers are
holding meetings and learning to coöperate.
The other big problem which we promised to tackle is the servant
problem. All the world is waiting to hear about this, so we are told;
even the aristocracy of Englewood is waiting; the ladies come in and
tell us their troubles and ask if we will feed them in cases of
emergency. They were even going to invite me to lecture them about
it—until one of them recollected that I was a Socialist “of a
particularly dangerous type.”
We have been only a few months at it; and we have still a great deal
left to accomplish. But we think that we have got far enough to claim to
have proven our thesis—that by means of coöperation, with the saving
which it implies, the introduction of system and of labour-saving
machinery, household labour can be lifted to the rank of a profession,
and people found to do it who can be admitted to the colony as members.
Those who wish to make fun of the idea have assumed this to mean that we
insist upon college diplomas from our cooks and chambermaids. It does
not mean that at all; as a matter of fact, we prefer to employ people
who have always earned their living by doing the work they do for us. It
means simply that we look for people who are cleanly and courteous and
honest; and that then, when they come into the colony, we treat them,
simply and as a matter of course, exactly as we treat everyone else. So
far as I know, there is no one here who has experienced the least
difficulty or unpleasantness in consequence.
There remains to explain the financial organisation of the colony. The
property is owned by the Home Colony Company, a separate corporation,
which was formed to raise the necessary capital. The company puts the
building in thorough repair and equips it for use as a residence, and
the colony rents it upon a three-year lease, assuming responsibility for
the interest on the mortgages, the insurance, taxes, and other charges,
and paying eight per cent. dividends upon the company stock. The
ownership of stock is thus entirely optional. One may live in the colony
without contributing any capital.
The Helicon Home Colony is a membership corporation. It is governed by a
board of directors, elected every six months by secret ballot. The only
conditions to residence in the colony are “congeniality” and freedom
from contagious disease; one may reside in the colony indefinitely
without becoming a member, but only members have the right to vote. The
conditions of membership are one month’s residence, election by a
four-fifths vote, and the payment of an initiation fee of $25. The
constitution of the colony provides for initiative, referendum and
recall of members of the board of directors; also for a complete
statement of the financial affairs of the colony, to be rendered every
three months.
I have quoted this at length because, as I said before, I believe that
it is the seed from which mighty forests are destined to grow. We should
never have given the time and strength which we have given to this
experiment, but for our certainty that all the world will some day be
following in our footsteps. We are living in a coöperative home because
we wish to do it—but some day you will be doing it because you _have_
to. You get along badly enough with your servants, you admit; still you
get along somehow or other. But has it ever occurred to you what your
plight would be if, when you went to the “intelligence-office,” instead
of getting a bad servant, you got no servant at all? When that time
comes, you will be grateful to us pioneer “home-colonists.”
It is a most interesting thing to watch; it is the Industrial Republic
in the making. We care nothing whatever about the intellectual opinions
of the people who come to live in the colony; but I have observed that
nearly every non-Socialist who has come here has been turned into a
Socialist in the course of a month or two. And that is not because we
argue with him, or bother him; it is simply because facts are facts.
What becomes of the old shop-worn argument that it would be necessary to
change human nature—when human nature is suddenly discovered to be so
kindly and considerate as it is in this big home of ours? And what
becomes of the ponderous platitudes about “Socialism versus
Individualism” in a place where so many different kinds of individuals
are developing their individualities.
I am often moved to use this experiment of ours as an illustration of
what I said in the previous chapter, concerning the difference between
material and intellectual production. Here in Helicon Hall we have all
the dreadful machinery of paternalism which frightens our capitalist
editors and college presidents whenever they contemplate Socialism; we
submit ourselves to the blind rule of majorities—we allow a majority to
decide what we shall pay for our rooms, and when we shall pay it; to lay
out our _menu_, and refuse to give us pie for breakfast; to forbid our
giving tips, or whistling in the halls, or dancing after a certain hour
at night. And we have all the symbols of oppression—constitution and
by-laws and boards of directors and managers. And yet somehow, we are
freer than we ever were in the world before; because, by means of these
little concessions, we have made possible a _system_—and so flung from
our shoulders all at once the burden of care which used to wear the life
out of us.
And in consequence of that, for the first time in our experience we find
ourselves really free with regard to the real things of life. We have
absolutely not a convention in the place. We do as we please, and we
wear what we please. We are free to come and go, where we please and
whenever we please. We have each our own rooms or apartments, to which
we retire, and it never comes into anyone’s mind to ask what we are
doing there. We may work all night and sleep all day, if we feel like
it—so little do we bother with each others’ affairs that I have known
people to be away for a day or two without being missed.
And on the other hand, if we feel like company, we can have it; there is
always a group around our wonderful four-sided fireplace in the evening,
and you can always find someone willing to play billiards or go for a
walk. And as for our intellectual freedom—you should see the sparks
scatter when our half-score assorted varieties of “Fabians” and
“impossibilists,” “individualists” and “communist-anarchists,” all get
together after dinner! There are so many typewriters in Helicon Hall
that as you wander about the galleries in the morning you can fancy you
hear a distant battle with rapid-firing guns; and the products of the
industry vary from discussions of Yogi philosophy and modern psychic
research to magazine fiction, woman’s suffrage debates, and Jungle
“muck-raking.” And yet all these people share amicably in the ownership
of the fireplace and the swimming-pool and the tennis-court; providing
thereby a most beautiful illustration of the working out of the formula
laid down by Kautsky for the society of the future: “Communism in
material production, anarchism in intellectual.”
It is working out so beautifully, that the spirit of it has got hold of
even our children, and they are holding meetings and deciding things. Of
our nine youngsters seven are under six years of age; and last night I
attended a meeting of the whole nine, at which a grave question was
gravely discussed: “When a child wakes up early in the dormitory, is it
proper to wake the other children, or should the child lie still?” After
a long debate, Master David (aged five) remarked: “All in favour, please
say Aye.” Everybody said “Aye.”
The above was written in the middle of December, 1906. On March 16,
1907, at four o’clock in the morning, Helicon Hall was burned to the
ground, and forty-six adults and fifteen children were turned out
homeless upon the snow. The story of our ill-fated experiment is left to
stand as it was first printed.
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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling.
2. Archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings retained as printed.
3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.