260 THE UTOPIAN COMMUNIST
and ambition" that unfortunately characterized the human family.
Now he had the opportunity, albeit under rather unfavorable
conditions, to try out his own theories.
Weitling was disillusioned almost from the moment he arrived
in Communia. He had no room to work in and had to carry on his
heavy chores and his complicated bookkeeping in a space shared
with three others. He found the dam on the Volga still uncom
pleted and presently admitted that the purchase of the sawmill
had turned out to be "the worst speculation that could have been
made with our funds." He discovered that the colony was paying
its members wages at three times the prevailing rate in the neigh
borhood, and he learned to his great dismay that the preceding
management had leased a farm near the flour mill to a member of
the colony on a private, seven-year lease without adequate security
and that the main farm was being worked on half-shares by six
other colonists. All he could do under the circumstances was to
block further leases and try to revise existing contracts and stop
further private earnings at the expense of the community. "Every
where," he wrote unhappily, "I discover a desire to protect the
individual," but none to look after the interests of those who had
invested their funds so generously in Communia.
Despite his commitment to the principle of a single, all-powerful
leadership, the minutes of the colony show that he had endless
meetings with his fellow colonists to discuss and settle almost
every conceivable problem and that he was unusually patient in
trying to lead his co-workers to a meeting of the minds. The
records report, for example, an action by majority vote to provide
additional picks and wheelbarrows for the workmen on the dam;
the assignment of the men to their tasks; the allotment of five tons
of hay for a prospective renter of the sawmill; and a furious
altercation between the storekeeper, the builder of the mill, and
the miller over a charge that the storekeeper had delivered whisky
in a vinegar barrel which had not been rinsed properly. It turned
out that the hay had been stored so late in the barns that the live
stock of neighboring farmers had begun to eat it; that the castings
barré
(Barré)
#1