Freeland

T >> Theodor Hertzka >> Freeland

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The third incident--But this really concerns only me personally, and
belongs to this narrative merely so far as it relates to the mode of life
and the social conditions of Eden Vale. It will therefore be best if I next
tell how we lived, what our habits were, and how we worked in the new home,
before the arrival of the main body of our brethren.

CHAPTER VII

The colonists in Eden Vale looked upon me--the Society's plenipotentiary,
who had organised our expedition to the Kenia and procured the necessary
means--as their president in the full sense of the word: I might have
commanded and I should have been obeyed. But, on the other hand, I acted
not only in harmony with my own inclination, but also according to the
evident intention of the committee, when I assumed merely the position of
president of an association of men who had power to manage their own
affairs. Whenever it was possible, I consulted my colleagues previous to
making any arrangements, and acted in accordance with the will of the
majority; and only in the most urgent cases, or when orders had to be given
to persons who were absent, did I act independently. The distribution of
the work to different groups was made by arrangement between all the
members concerned, and the superintendents of the several branches of work
were elected by their special colleagues. Though in all essential matters
the views and proposals of myself and of those more particularly in my
confidence were always carried out (so that if in what I have written I
had, for brevity's sake, said 'I arranged,' 'I designed,' it would have
been essentially correct), yet this was due entirely to the fact that my
confidants were the intellectual leaders of the colony, and the others
voluntarily subordinated themselves to them. Moreover, we all knew that the
present was only a provisional arrangement. In the meanwhile, no one worked
for himself; all that we produced belonged not to the producer, not even to
the whole of the producers, but to the undertaking upon the common property
of which we were, in return, all living. In a word, the Free Society which
we wished to found was not yet founded--it was in process of forming; and
for the time we were, in reference to it, nothing more than persons
employed according to the old custom, and differed from ordinary
wage-earners simply in the fact that it was left to ourselves to decide
what we should keep for our own maintenance and what we should set apart as
the employer's share of the gains. If any evil-intentioned colleague had
compelled me to do so, I not only had the right, but was resolved, to
assume the attitude of the 'plenipotentiary.' That I was able to avoid
doing this contributed no little to heighten the mutual pleasure we all
experienced, and very materially facilitated the transition to the ultimate
form of our organisation; but this did not alter the fact that our life and
work, both on the journey and at the Kenia, were carried on under the
social forms of the old system.

During this period the hours of work, whether of overseer or simple
workman, white or negro, at Eden Vale were alike for all--from 5 A.M. to 10
A.M. and from 4 P.M. to 6 P.M.; only in the harvest-time were one or two
hours added. All work ceased on Sundays.

The order of the day was as follows: We rose about 4 A.M. and took a bath
in Eden Lake, where several bathing houses had been constructed. The
washing and repairing of clothes was attended to--under the superintendence
of a member who was an expert in such matters--by a band of Swahili, to
whom this work was allotted as their sole duty. We wore every day the
clothes which had been cleansed on the previous day, and which were brought
to the owner in the course of the day to be ready for him in the morning.
After the toilet came the breakfast, the preparation of which, as well as
of all the other meals, was also the special duty of a particular band of
Swahili. In initiating them into the mysteries of French cookery my sister
was of great service. This first breakfast consisted, according to
individual taste, of tea, chocolate, coffee--black or _au lait_--milk, or
some kind of soup; to these might be added, according to choice, butter,
cheese, honey, eggs, cold meat, with some kind of bread or cake. After this
first breakfast came work until 8, followed by a second breakfast,
consisting of some kind of substantial hot food--omelets, fish, or roast
meat--with bread, also cheese and fruits; the drinks were either the
delicious spring-water of our hills, or the very refreshing and agreeable
banana-wine made by the natives. Fifteen or twenty minutes were usually
spent over this breakfast, and work followed until 10 A.M. Then came the
long midday rest, when most of us, particularly in the hotter months, took
a second bath in the lake, followed by private recreation, reading,
conversation, or games. As a rule, the heat in this part of the day was
great; in the hot season the thermometer frequently measured 95 deg. Fahr. in
the shade. It is true that the heat out of doors was prevented from
becoming unendurable by cool breezes, which, in fine weather, blew
regularly between 11 A.M. and 5 P.M. from the Kenia, and these breezes were
the stronger the hotter the day; but it was most agreeable and most
conducive to health to spend the midday hours under cover. At 1 P.M. the
principal meal was taken, consisting of soup, a course of meat or fish with
vegetables, sweet pastry, and fruit of many kinds, with banana-wine or,
when our brewery had been set to work, beer. The meal over, some would
sleep for half an hour, and the rest of the time would be filled up with
conversation, reading, and games. When the fiercest heat was over, the two
hours of afternoon work would be gone through. After this a few indulged in
a third and hasty bath. At 7 P.M. a meal similar to the first breakfast was
taken, out of doors if it did not rain, and in large companies. It should
be stated that, with reference to the meals and to all other means of
refreshment, everyone could choose what and how much he pleased. It was
only in the matter of alcoholic drinks that there was any restriction, and
that for easily understood reasons. Later, when everyone acted for himself,
even in this matter there was perfect liberty; but so long as we were under
the then existing obligations to the Society it was necessary to observe
restrictions for the sake of the negroes.

The evenings were generally devoted to music. We had some very skilful
musicians, an excellent orchestra of wind and string instruments numbering
forty-five performers, and a fine choir; and these performed whenever the
weather permitted. The air would grow cool two or three hours after sunset;
on some nights the thermometer would measure over 70 deg. Fahr., but it
occasionally sank to less than 60 deg. Fahr., so that the night-rest was always
refreshing.

Sundays were given up to recreation and instruction: excursions into the
adjoining woods, hunting expeditions, concerts, public lectures, addresses,
&c.

The block-houses in which we dwelt were intended to serve each family as a
future--though merely provisional--home. Each stood in a garden of 1,200
square yards; and with its six rooms--living-room, kitchen, and four
bedrooms--covered 150 square yards. At this time each such house was
occupied by four of us; to the two women and Sakemba--the latter had been
visited by her parents and their family, and had induced them to put up
their grass hat in Eden Vale--a separate house was of course allotted.

This last arrangement, however, did not please my sister at all. During the
journey she had yielded to the necessity of being separated from me, the
darling ward given into her charge by our sainted mother. Arrived at Eden
Vale, she expected to resume her old rights of guardianship and domestic
superintendence; but she found herself prevented from carrying out her
wishes by her duty towards a second, who in the meantime had become a
favourite with her--namely, Miss Fox. She could not possibly leave this
young woman alone among so many men; but as little could she bring us both
into the same house, though in her eyes we were mere children. What would
her friends in Paris have said to that? I spent all my leisure time in the
women's house, whither I was unconsciously more and more strongly
attracted, not less by the young American's conversation--which was a
piquant mixture of animated controversy and unaffected chatter--than by her
harp-playing and her clear alto voice. But this did not satisfy sister
Clara, who at last hit upon the plan of marrying us. Our common
'foolishness'--that is, our social ideas--made us, she thought, mutually
suitable; and though, in her opinion, we should make a pair entirely
lacking in sound domestic common sense, _she_ was there to think and act
for both of us.

Having once conceived this purpose, she, as a prudent and discreet person
who rightly foresaw that in this matter she could not expect implicit
obedience from either Miss Fox or myself, placed us under close
observation. Though she was peculiarly lacking in personal experience in
matters of love, yet, by means merely of that delicate sensibility peculiar
to woman, she made the startling discovery that we were already over head
and ears in love with each other. At first she was so astonished at this
discovery that she would not believe her own eyes. But the thing was too
clear to make mistake possible. We two lovers had ourselves not the
remotest suspicion of our condition; but to anyone who knew Miss Fox so
well as several months of unbroken companionship with the open-hearted and
ingenuous young American had enabled my sister to do, there could be no
difficulty in understanding what was the matter when a young woman, who had
hitherto lived only for her ideals, freedom and justice, whose idol had
been humanity, but who had shown no interest in any individual man apart
from the ideas to which he devoted himself, was thrown into confusion as
often as she heard the footsteps of a certain man, and in her confidential
intercourse with my sister, instead of talking of the grandeur of our
principles, preferred to talk of the excellences of him who in Eden Vale
was the leading exponent of those principles. As to my own feelings, sister
Clara knew too well that hitherto woman had interested me merely on account
of her position in human society not to feel as if scales had fallen from
her eyes when one day, after long and devotedly watching Miss Fox as she
was busying herself about something, I broke out with the words, 'Is not
every movement of that girl music?'

So my sister took us each aside and told us we must marry. But she met with
a check from both of us. On hearing of the proposal, Miss Ellen, though she
became alternately crimson and pale, at once exclaimed that she would
rather die than marry me. 'Would not those arrogant men who deny us women
any sense of the ideal, any capacity for real effort, and look upon us as
the slaves of our egoistic impulses--would they not triumphantly assert
that my pretended enthusiasm for our social undertaking was merely passion
for a man; that it was not for the sake of an idea, but for the sake of a
man, that I had run off to Equatorial Africa? No--I don't love your
brother--I shall never love, still less marry!' This heroic apostrophe was,
however, followed by a flood of tears, which, when sister Clara wished to
interpret them in my favour, were declared to be signs of emotion at the
offensive suspicion. I received the proposal in a similar way. When Clara
hinted to me that I was in love with Miss Fox, I laughed at her heartily,
and declared that what she took to be symptoms of my passion were merely
signs of psychological interest in a woman who was capable of a genuine
enthusiasm for abstract ideas.

But a motherly sister who has once conceived the purpose of getting her
brother--and her female friend as well--married, is not so easily driven
from the field: at least, not when she has such good and manifold grounds
to adhere to her intention. As she could not gain her end in a direct way,
she tried a circuitous one--not a new one, but one often tried: she made us
both jealous. She told each of us in confidence that she had given up her
'stupid plan,' as the other party was no longer free. As she slily added to
me that she had devised her project merely to be able to come into my house
with my young wife and to resume her motherly care over me, and as this was
evidently the truth, I also gave credence to the invention that Ellen had
left a betrothed lover in America, who was about to appear in Eden Vale.
'Only think, Ellen never made this confession until I approached her with
my plan of getting her married! It is very lucky that you, my boy, care
nothing for the sly little creature; it would have been a pretty business
if you had set your heart upon Ellen!'

I declared myself perfectly satisfied with this turn of affairs; but at the
same time I felt as if a knife had pierced my heart. Suddenly my love stood
clear and distinct before my mind's eye--a glowing boundless passion, such
as he only can feel whose heart has remained six-and-twenty years
untouched. It seemed to me an unalterable certainty that, though I might
still live and struggle, I could never more enjoy life and life's battles!
But was my fate so certain and inevitable? Was it not possible to drive
from the field this lover who had exposed his betrothed to all the dangers
of an adventurous journey, to all the temptations of her unprotected
condition, and who was now about to appear and snatch the bliss from my
Eden? Was it at all conceivable that Ellen--this Ellen--such as I had known
her for months, would love such a wretched fellow? Away to her, to learn
the truth at any price!

I rushed over to the neighbouring house. There in the meantime my sister
had been telling a similar tale to Ellen. She had, she said to Ellen,
conceived the idea of making us man and wife; and therefore, in the hope
that my wooing would overcome her (Ellen's) resistance, she had also told
me of her plan; and when I hesitated she had urged it more strongly, until
at last I had confessed that, unknown to her, I had become betrothed in
Europe. The bride would reach Eden Vale with the next party that
arrived.... Clara had got so far when my appearance interrupted the story.

Deadly pale, Ellen turned towards me. She tried to speak, but her voice
failed her. My half-sad, half-angry inquiry after the American betrothed
first gave her speech. In a moment she found the key to the situation--that
I loved her, and that my sister had deceived us both. What followed can be
easily imagined. Thus it came to pass that Ellen was my betrothed when Dr.
Strahl arrived at Eden Vale; and this is the third incident which I was
about to narrate above.

Whether the joy with which I for the first time pressed to my heart the
woman of my love was greater than that with which I welcomed the friend of
my soul, the idol of my intellect, to the earthly paradise to which he had
shown us the way--this I cannot venture to decide.

When, in the eyes of my revered friend, as he looked upon our new home and
the strongly pulsing joyous life that already filled it, I saw tears of
joy, and in those tears a sure guarantee of immediate success, I was not
seized with such an extravagant delight--almost more than the breast which
felt it for the first time could bear--as I felt a few days before when my
beloved revealed to me the secret of her heart. But when my hair shall have
grown white and my back shall be bent with years, and the recollection of
those lover's kisses may no longer drive my blood so feverishly through my
veins as to-day, yet the thought of the hour in which, hand in hand with my
friend, I experienced the proud pure joy of having accomplished the first
and most difficult step towards the redemption of our suffering
disinherited brethren out of the tortures of many thousands of years of
bondage--the thought of that hour will never lose its bliss-inspiring power
as long as I am among the living.

Long, long stood the master on the heights above Eden Vale, eagerly taking
in every detail of the charming picture. Then, turning to us standing
around him he asked if we had given a name to the country that stretched
out before us on all sides, and which was to be our home. When I said that
we had not, and added that to him, who had given words to the idea that had
led us hither, also belonged the office of finding a word for the country
in which that idea was to be realised, he cried out: 'Freedom will find its
birthplace in this country; FREELAND we will name it.'

_BOOK II_

CHAPTER VIII

We now resume the thread of our narrative where Ney's journal left off.

With the President there had arrived in Eden Vale three members of the
executive committee; five others followed a few days after with the first
waggon-caravan from Mombasa; so that, including Ney, Johnston, and Demestre
(the last of whom had been co-opted at the suggestion of the two former),
twelve were now in Freeland. As hie committee at that time consisted of
fifteen members, there still remained three at a distance, of whom one was
in London, another at Trieste, and the third at Mombasa, at which places
they were for the present to act as the committee's authorised agents in
the foreign affairs of the Society. Their duty was to receive fresh
members, to collect and provisionally to have charge of the funds, and to
superintend the emigrations to Eden Vale.

Their instructions respecting applications for membership were to receive
every applicant who was not a relapsed criminal, and who could read and
write. The former condition needs no justification. We had an unqualified
confidence in the ennobling influence of our social reforms, because those
reforms removed the motive that impelled to most vices; we were perfectly
satisfied that Freeland would produce no criminals, and would even, if it
were not beyond the bounds of possibility, wean from vice those who had
been previously made criminals by misery and ignorance; but we wished, in
the beginning, to avoid being swamped by bad elements, and, in view of the
excusable attempts of certain States to rid themselves in some way or
another of their relapsed criminals, we were compelled to exercise caution.

It may seem a greater hardship that the perfectly illiterate were excluded.
But this was a necessary requirement of our programme. We wished to
transfer the right of the absolute free self-control of the individual to
the domain of labour from that of the relation of servitude which had
existed for thousands of years. We wished to transform the worker who had
been dependent upon his employer for his bread into the independent
producer acting at his own risk in free association with free colleagues.
It follows, as a matter of course, that in this our work we could use only
such workers as were raised above at least the lowest stage of brutality
and ignorance. That we thus excluded the most miserable of the miserable,
is true; but, apart from the fact that generally the ignorant man lacks a
clear consciousness of his misfortune and degradation, and his sufferings
are therefore, as a rule, rather of a physical than of a moral nature, we
could not allow ourselves to be so led astray by pity as to endanger the
success of our work. The ignorant man _must_ be under authority; and as it
was not our purpose to educate our members gradually to become free
producers, but to introduce them immediately to a system of free
production, we were compelled to protect ourselves against ignorance as
well as against crime.

Should it, on the other hand, be contended that ability to read and write
is of itself by no means a sufficient evidence of the possession of that
degree of culture and intelligence which must be presupposed in men who are
to exercise control over their own work, the answer is that for such a
purpose a very high degree of intelligence is certainly requisite, yet not
in all, but only in a relatively not large number of the workers, who thus
organise themselves, whilst the majority need not possess more than that
moderate amount of mental capacity and mental training which is enough to
enable them to look after their own interests. When a hundred or a thousand
workers unite to work for their common profit and at their common risk, it
is not every one of them that can or need have the abilities requisite to
organise and superintend this common production--it is merely necessary
that a very few possess this higher degree of intelligence; whilst it is
enough for the majority that they are able rightly to judge what ought to
be and is the result of the production in common, and what characteristics
those must possess in whose hands the guardianship of the common interest
is placed. But just here is the knowledge of letters absolutely
indispensable, for it is the printed word alone which makes man and his
judgment independent of the accidental influences of immediate surroundings
and first opens his mind to instruction. It will later on be seen in how
large a measure the most comprehensive publicity of all the proceedings
connected with this productive activity--a publicity possible only through
writing and print--contributed to the success of our work.

Of course these two conditions which applicants for membership had to
satisfy had from the beginning been insisted upon by the committee, and the
second condition at first very strictly so. It had been found, however,
that the intellectual level of most of the applicants was surprisingly
high. In the main, from among the class of manual labourers it was only the
_elite_, who in any numbers interested themselves in our undertaking; and
as, when the membership had gone beyond 20,000, a slight leaven of
ignorance could not be very dangerous, the committee contented itself with
requiring that the application should be made in the applicant's own
handwriting.

The number of applicants--women and children are always reckoned
in--continued to increase, particularly after the publication of the first
report of the settlement of the colony at the Kenia. When the
committee--with the exception of the delegates left behind--embarked at
Trieste, the rate of increase of members had reached 1,200 weekly; three
months later it had risen to 1,800 weekly. The European agents had to
register the new members--as had previously been done with the old
members--carefully, according to sex, age, and calling, and at every
opportunity to despatch the lists to Freeland; they had also to organise
and superintend the transport to Mombasa, which in all cases was
gratuitous; and they were authorised to pay all necessary expenses, in case
of need even to buy new ships, subject to subsequent examination and
approval of the accounts. It was also the duty of the agents to advise and
help the members when they were preparing for the journey; and they had
authority to give material assistance to needy comrades. The members'
contributions showed a tendency to increase similar to that of the number
of members. It was evident that the interest in and the understanding of
the character of our undertaking grew not merely among the working classes,
but also among the wealthy; the weekly addition to the funds increased from
20,000L at the end of September to 30,000L at the end of December. These
funds, after payment of the expenses incurred by the agents, were under the
control of the committee, whose executive organ, however, in this respect
also, for the payment of debts incurred outside of Freeland, were the
delegates who had been left behind.

On the 20th of October the committee held its first sitting in Eden Vale,
for the purpose of drawing up such rules as were required to regulate the
constitution of the free associations that were henceforth to be
responsible for all production in Freeland. Hitherto the sittings of the
committee had been so far public that every member of the Society had
access to them, and this was to continue to be the case; but a provisional
regulation was now adopted by which the audience might take part in the
proceedings, though simply as consultative members. This regulation was to
be in force until the press could perform its news-spreading and
controlling functions. At the same time it was found that, whilst the
committee had long been unanimous in holding that the Society's
programme--that is, the organisation of production upon the basis of
absolute individual independence on the one hand, and the securing to every
worker the full and undiminished produce of his work on the other
hand--should be carried out as soon as the committee had reached the new
home, a part of the members of the Society still wished to continue the
provisional organisation for at least a few months. In favour of this it
was alleged that the executive knew best what were the needs as well as the
capabilities of the gradually assembling community; the colonists should be
allowed time to become accustomed to their new conditions and to acquire
confidence in themselves; the committee had hitherto exhibited so much
discretion in all their measures, that it was their duty to keep for some
time longer the absolute direction of affairs in their own hands. It was
particularly the members who had just arrived in Eden Vale who exhibited
this dread of immediate and absolute independence. They thought they should
not be able at once to act wisely for themselves; it would be cruel to
pitch them as it were head-over-heels into the water, forcing upon them the
alternative of swimming or sinking, when they themselves did not know
whether they could swim or not. Ney, as the director of the works at the
Kenia, was especially importuned by these faint hearted ones to manage
their affairs for them, and not to force upon them an independence for
which they did not yet feel themselves qualified.