WEITLING'S "SYSTEM" 63
expected to devote at least a third of their time to teaching others
their special skills. Thus, in a society dedicated to equality, in
ventors, on whose "eagerness for progress" men must count to
ensure maximum benefits for the masses were the only group for
whom Weitling proposed special privileges.
Of greater importance than this intricate and confusing ad
ministrative and governmental structure were some of the general
regulations which the author laid down for his new communist
society. It was his desire that each family have its own dwelling
place and garden, though kitchens, storehouses, and orchards
would be common property. Theoretically, women were to have
equal rights in voting and holding office, but they were to be
assigned to the easier tasks and organized into female companies.
No woman, however, was to be eligible to election to the supreme
Trio until existing differences between male and female had dis
appeared. Weitling believed that divorces should be made easy
and marriage freed from existing artificial economic and social
limitations. "Love is the kernel," he wrote, "marriage the shell,"
and "the money system is the worm which eats its way into the
kernel." His sentimental review of woman's suffering under pre
vailing inequalities ended with the prophecy that some day "the
golden dawn of the morning of emancipation [will] break, to kiss
the hot, bitter tears of slavery out of the weeping eyes" of women.
Children, after they reached the age of six, were expected to leave
home and attend schools designed to train them for living in a
communist society.
Weitling's state guaranteed the right of every traveler to go
wherever he pleased, and equal guest privileges wherever he
stopped, provided he did not stay too long. In that event, the local
authorities could put him to work. In the matter of dress, the
materials for clothing were selected by the administration. The
cut of the clothes, however, could be determined much lower
down in the hierarchy to satisfy local tastes, provided not too
much labor was required to keep up with changing fashions.
Since crime was regarded as a social disease fed by the false