170 THE UTOPIAN COMMUNISTfar better than in New York. A few miles from Troy, he ad
dressed an assembly of German picnickers and presided at a public
ceremony where several children were baptized according to the
principles and ritual of the workers' fraternity without a minister
or the formalities of the church. In solemn words, Weitling gave
the babies their names and admonished his hearers to accept full
"moral responsibility" for the support of the parents as well as the
children, in case of accident or misfortune. He was disappointed
because he was unable to visit the Shaker colony near by. He suc
ceeded in interesting a little nucleus of Germans in Poughkeepsie
in his propaganda, but the German colony of Albany proved to
be very apathetic, with its interest divided among Turnvereine,
singing societies, and lodges.
Weitling moved westward across the state, stopping, among
other places, in Rochester and Buffalo. In Rochester he learned
of an American shoemakers' co-operative with a capital of $7,000
which had failed, and he decided that the cause of the failure was
that "every one wants to rule." In Buffalo he addressed a meeting
of workers, and then went on to visit Niagara Falls with his friend
Josef Stiger. He found the view of the falls from the Canadian side
particularly rewarding and fell asleep on the bank of the river.
He ended his account of his visit to America's greatest natural
wonder by contrasting this bucolic idyl with the lot of the workers
in New York. He could not understand why anyone should care
to live in the big congested cities.
Six miles from Buffalo lay the villages of Ebenezer, the first of
a number of experiments in communal living which Weitling
visited during his journeys across the country. He referred to his
stop at Ebenezer as "the most interesting" experience of his life.
He was delighted with the four villages that constituted the
colony, stretching out over a distance of eight and a half miles.
The houses were spotlessly clean and the vegetable gardens neat
and well-ordered. A thousand people lived from the products of
8,000 acres, bought originally for $20 an acre and in the 1850's
worth more than a million for the whole. Weitling visited the