vi PREFACE
and a severe critic of all institutionalized religion, insisted on
morality, ethics, and religion as a basis for social reform. The
repudiation of this aspect of his "system" by the Marxians is not
without significance for the present-day theory and practice of
communism.
In the United States, Weitling tried once more to give prac
tical application to the theories he had formulated and pro
claimed in Europe. He deserves to be remembered, in spite of
his failures and the unsound character of some of his proposals,
because of the important place which he occupied in the early
history of the American labor movement and its agitation for
social security, social insurance, and co-operatives. His disastrous
experiences with the colony at Communia, Iowa, constitute an
interesting chapter in the history of the immigrant Utopias
which were so numerous in the America of a hundred years ago.
Finally defeated and disillusioned, he turned his eager, restless
mind from social reform to the problems of astronomy, lin
guistics, and inventions.
Weitling's career might be summarily dismissed as simply an
other failure in a long line of failures by completely impractical
and somewhat unbalanced dreamers. Yet this poor, self-educated,
philosophical tailor had such a passion for social justice, such a
fervent hope that public policy might be judged by the stand
ards of ethics, such a craving and reverence for science and
progress, and such a desire to make life more humane, that I be
lieve he deserves to be rescued from among the forgotten men
who, in every age, try to renew men's hopes for a better age than
the one of which they are a part. If faith in the ultimate per
fectibility of mankind should turn out to be only an illusion, it
is at least a comforting illusion, and it has been a major force in
the history of the human enterprise, for in all ages, men have
had to walk part of their way by faith.
In acknowledging the help received in the preparation of this
biography, I must express my thanks first of all to Terijon Weit
ling of Staten Island, New York, who so graciously made all the