THE HABIT OF DOING MORE THAN PAID FOR 561an ideal that they believed would give them greater happiness in
life and fewer of the worries-through a system which provided each
person with work at the sort of labor they preferred.
Their idea was to pay no wages to anyone. Each person did the
work they liked best, or that for which they might be best equipped,
and the products of their combined labors became the property of
all. They had their own dairy, their own brick-making plant, their
own cattle, poultry, etc. They had their own schools and a printing
plant through which they published a paper.
A Swedish gentleman from Minnesota joined the colony, and at
his own request he was placed at work in the printing plant. Very soon
he complained that he did not like the work, so he was put to work on
the farm, operating a tractor. Two days of this was all he could stand, so
he again applied for a transfer, and was assigned to the dairy. But he
could not get along with the cows, so he was once more changed, to
the laundry, where he lasted only one day.
One by one he tried every job available, but liked none of them.
It had begun to look as if he did not fit in with the co-operative idea
of living, and he was about to withdraw, when someone happened
to think of one job he had not yet tried-in the brick plant. So he was
given a wheelbarrow and put to work wheeling bricks from the kilns
and stacking them in piles in the brickyard. A week's time went by and
no complaint was registered by him. When asked if he liked his job he
replied, "This is just the job I like:'
Imagine anyone preferring a job wheeling bricks! However, that
job suited this man's nature. He worked alone, at a task that called
for no thought and placed upon him no responsibility, which was just
what he wanted.
He remained at the job until all the bricks had been wheeled
out and stacked, then he withdrew from the colony because there
was no more brick work to be done. "The nice quiet job is finished,
so I think I'll be going back to Minnesota," and back to Minnesota
he went.