CHAPTER XVICLOSING YEARS
T
HE closing years of Weitling's life were for the most part
years of frustration and defeat. His efforts to weld the
working masses into a great labor movement for the
realization of his pretentious program of social reconstruction
along new lines of communal partnership had ended in failure and
disaster. The theories which he had expounded so eloquently in
workers' halls and in printer's ink have had little effect upon the
world to this day, although their author rooted them firmly in the
principles of religion and social justice. Weitling believed that
some day they would be remembered and revived.
Disillusioned and disappointed with the world and with many
of his co-workers, blind to his own shortcomings, and defeated
here and abroad in all his attempts to impress the existing economic
classes, he had turned to exploring the mathematics of the heavenly
bodies and to the need for a universal language, only to experience
frustration again in these new areas of investigation. He could see
no reason for his failures except the lack of financial resources to
bring his ideas properly to the attention of the world. Like most
men, he did not realize how much of his disappointment could be
traced to his own shortcomings and to the inadequate knowledge
and training with which he attacked fields of investigation that
required the most rigorous mental discipline and long years of
preparation.
Harassed by financial worries, using hard-earned money that
might better have been spent for other things to promote his ex-