ON TOUR FOR THE CAUSE 185of the "company." At certain seasons of the year, laborers were
hired outside the community for $6 to $10 a month, and board
and lodging. The colony bought its supplies in Hannibal and St.
Louis, and its members drove to the city markets, camping in the
streets and sleeping in their wagons. Alongside its noisy revivals,
public confessionals, and numerous fast days, the colony sup
ported a singing society, but dancing had been prohibited after
several attempts to legalize it had ended in tumult and disorder.
Every man received his glass of whisky each morning, and work
ers in the fields a more generous allotment. The sexes were segre
gated carefully, even in church, and a nightwatch saw to it that
the younger members did not violate this regulation.
Returning to Pittsburgh, Weitling went by steamer, stage, and
railroad to Baltimore, covering the distance in twenty-four hours.
After many months in the field, he was eager to return to his head
quarters in New York. He was completely satisfied with his work,
and confident that he now had sufficient members to justify the
formal launching of the Arbeiterbund.
When Weitling reached Baltimore, however, the city in which
he had experienced one of his most notable triumphs the previous
year, he found that his movement was falling apart into warring
factions, and that the co-operative groceries, bakeries, and tailor
shops which he had helped to organize were in virtual bankruptcy
because of wasteful business methods and exorbitant salaries for
the managers. In an effort to restore harmony, he addressed a
meeting of his erstwhile followers but had little success, enrolling
only eleven new members. Discouraged by this experience, he
moved on to Philadelphia, where he learned to his dismay that the
tailors' association had been liquidated, and that a co-operative
grocery in New York had failed, with a loss of $2,500.
Weitling launched a bitter personal attack on those who had
opposed centralizing the movement by giving him control, and
who had insisted on the autonomy of local groups. He exposed
abuses in the administration of the sick-benefit funds of local
groups and showed how in Philadelphia members had falsely re-