42 THE UTOPIAN COMMUNIST
ity-Labor-Order." With members of such caliber and ambition,
Weitling expected to encounter little difficulty in launching co
operative dining halls on the model of the institution he had started
for the tailors of Paris.
Organizations of this general pattern were founded in Geneva,
Vevey, Lausanne, and Morsee. In Vevey a German workers' club
raised 300 francs for a co-operative tavern and in Morsee, fifty
members collected 200 Swiss francs to rent a house and garden
where about 200 workers took their meals.^18 With his mania for
figures, Weitling demonstrated to his own satisfaction that the
undertaking in Geneva would yield a profit of no less than 14,400
francs a year, and he immediately made plans for spending a tidy
surplus on a library, a new hall, social insurance, and the founding
of colonies. He concluded that profits would come primarily from
the sale of wine and from serving breakfast and supper, thus ena
bling the club to provide a noonday meal at exact cost; and he
maintained that if each member would help the association to make
a profit of only twenty cents a day, in two years it would be possi
ble to pay each member a dividend of sixty-five francs for travel
and to have enough left to pension forty aged and disabled col
leagues. Indeed, it would only be a matter of a few years until the
resources would be adequate to finance a colony in America!^19
Weitling was surprised when he encountered the opposition of
innkeepers who defended their system of "free enterprise" against
such co-operative undertakings.
As a matter of fact, though the police in some of the German
cities were alarmed by the "triumph of the new spirit of co
operation,"^20 these co-operative ventures were anything but a
conspicuous success. Launched with great enthusiasm and sacri
fice, they ended for the most part in debt and failure. In some cases,
the membership was permitted to buy too much on credit, was too
slow in payment, or defaulted altogether. In Geneva, where Weit-
(^18) Die junge Generation, June and August, 1842.
(^19) See Der Hülferuf der deutschen Jugend, September and October, 1841.
(^20) See Zlocisti, Moses Hess, 119.