218 THE UTOPIAN COMMUNISTlead pencil. It revealed the cost of operating Die Republik der Arbeiter, the New York Arbeiter Halle, and the colony. A balance
in the treasury of $1,905.18 in May, 1854, had shrunk to $274.63
by December, 1857, although total receipts for the period had
amounted to nearly $6,000. Assets of the Arbeiterbund in July,
1855, consisted of the thousands that had been hopelessly sunk in
the colony, $1,100 in cash, and an inventory for the printing
establishment estimated at $1,800. Few local organizations any
longer paid dues into the central treasury. Some, like the Gemeinde
in Cincinnati, not only had stopped payments but had circulated
round-robin letters urging other groups to do likewise, and as a
result, many local groups clamored for the return of their invest
ments.
Weitling's wages had been $7.00 a week, plus the carefully re
corded expenditures for rent, food, and medicine. From July,
1851, to July, 1855, the founder of the Bund had accepted $478.65
to pay for travel on colony and Bund business, and wages for 204
weeks at $7.00 a week, totaling $1,906.65. In addition, he had
charged his simple living expenses at the New York headquarters,
$30 to pay the doctor during his long illness, and a few gifts in
the form of goods, amounting in all to $565.40. He insisted that the
organization still owed him $512.72. He paid his own dues to the
end of 1855. The last issue of his paper appeared on July 21 of the
same year. There is nothing in Weitling's manner of living, either
before or after 1855, to indicate that he profited financially to
the slightest degree from his activities on behalf of the working-
man.
As the end of the Bund drew near, Weitling reviewed his five
years of activity. Blamed for the disintegration of the Bund and
victimized by scurrilous attacks which pictured him as a common
swindler, he could only reiterate that he had never profited in
any personal way from the movement and restate his conviction
that too much local autonomy and too little centralization were
the main causes of failure. He believed he had dealt too leniently
with the colonists in Iowa and that he should have forced them