A Cityless and Countryless World
An Outline of Practical Co-Operative Individualism
Henry Olerich
[A condensed and edited version of the book
originally published by Gilmore & Olerich, Holstein, Iowa, 1893 /
CHAPTER 2 - Midith s Arrival. His opinion of our Earth]
I believe that nearly all of you are searching for truth regardless
of consequences; and whenever one has arrived at such a stage of
intellectual development, he is at least willing to give truth a fair
hearing, whether it is for the time being pleasant or unpleasant.
The land and the water, the hills and the valleys, light and
darkness, heat and cold, growth and decay, hunger and thirst, pleasure
and pain, all seemed to be familiar to me. Water sought its level. The
green grass covered the earth and was kissed by the dewdrop and the
rain; the lofty trees were dressed in verdant foliage and spread their
boughs toward heaven; the gentle breeze raised the little ripples on
the bosom of the lake, and sported with the green foliage …
I notice in [the] current literature and political economy that not a
few of [our] foremost and well-meaning economists and sociologists
have endeavored to dream out, instead of working out, a suitable and
higher order of things for the people on earth.
As I have said before, everything I met on earth appeared perfectly
natural and familiar to me except the scientific, social and
industrial spheres. It seemed so strange to me when I first arrived on
earth that about half of your population desire to live in
comparatively filthy, crowded, smoky, unhealthy cities and towns,
while the other half want to live a lonely, toil some, country life,
deprived of nearly all the blessings and enjoyments of a healthy
society; and it seemed still more strange to me that you believed that
you could not get along without the cities and without the country.
The evils and needlessness of both cities and country appeared so
plain to me, and yet you are, at the present age, unable to see the
bad effects of them.
It appeared so strange to me that each small family desired to live
in a small home, located so disorderly that they were almost
completely cut off from any convenient intercommunication. How the
agriculturist, or farmer, fenced his little patch of land, which he
worked single-handed so cruelly and toilsomely with a draught animal
ox, horse, etc., which require almost as much food and care as they
can earn. How poorly the majority of the little homes were furnished.
What domestic slaves wives and children are when the human hand must
do the work of machinery.
It seemed strange to me why only so few can distinguish between
productive, unproductive and destructive labor. Why millions upon
millions of men, women and children are toiling early and late and are
producing nothing. Why the poor laborer could not see that the rich
parasite appropriates a large portion of the products of his labor.
Why thousands upon thousands of frugal, industrious carpenters have
been building houses all their lives and have no house of their own to
live in. Why a large number of shoemakers have been making shoes and
have no decent shoe to put on. Why a multitude of farmers have toiled
year after year and are now even farther from owning the land they
work than they were when they began their toil years ago.
I could not see how people could believe that land is wealth, and
that capital should be entitled to part of the products. Why people
were satisfied with such poor walks, muddy, dusty streets and roads,
slow, irregular trains, clumsy vehicles drawn by weary animals, such
barren gardens, so few flowers, and yet so many forced idlers. Why you
had so many places of business, where goods are spoiling, and so few
customers who have the means to buy what they should have. Why there
are, in certain localities, so many commodities decaying, and so much
food wasted by some, while so many others are almost starving. Why
people should be willing to pay profit.
"The longer I live on earth and the more I get around, the more
strange and perverted [our] social and industrial system appears to
me. It seems so queer to me to see every one go to the post office,
instead of having the post office brought to everyone; to have every
one run to the depot, instead of having a depot in every house.
It seemed so strange why people could not see that the money you use
gold, silver, etc. cost so much comparatively unproductive labor to
get the material out of which you make the money; that in [our]
monetary system there exists no proportionate relations between the
amount of negotiable wealth on hand and the amount of money in
circulation; there may be an abundance of money and a scarcity of
commodities, or there may be an abundance of commodities and a
scarcity of money; that the persons who really make and earn the
commodities receive very little of the money, while the schemer who
actually makes and earns very little of the commodities receives, as a
rule, an abundance of the money.
It seemed so very, very strange, so passing strange to me, why people
could not see the evil effects of owning vacant land by deed, or paper
title; why people ate willing to pay rent or buy land; why individuals
that are unable to govern themselves should attempt to govern others;
why, after such a complete failure, you still believe in a government
by physical force; why the vast majority believe that a home or family
cannot exist successfully without a boss; why people believe in
compulsory taxation; why a queen or president, as such, should be more
honored than a miner or a washerwoman.
It seems remarkably strange to me why the imaginary being called the
State should in any way interfere with love affairs; why a man or a
woman is willing to give himself or herself away for life to some one
else; why each does not desire to own herself or himself only; why a
woman should be dependent on a man financially; why women should not
enjoy equal privileges with man in all respects; why you have so many
unwelcome children and unwilling mothers; why the work of rearing
offspring is almost exclusively thrust off onto mothers; why mothers
are not compensated for nursing offspring the same as they should be
for other productive labor.
It seems so strange to me why parents are forcing their children to
school when they do not desire to go; why a child, which is full of
life and energy, should be compelled to sit silently and quietly for
six hours a day in a school-room when activity is the only thing that
develops body and mind; why a child should be burdened by all school
work, and an adult by all physical work; why a child should not
receive compensation immediately for all the productive labor it
performs; why you cannot educate in a pleasant school of activity and
play; why you do not have suitable play-grounds and parks near every
home; why you value fashion so highly and life and health so little;
why you wear such uncomfortable and injurious costumes; why it does
not seem so repugnant to feast on a carcass than on a corpse; why you
always hold up to view what you believe to be good and say nothing
about pointing out and discouraging the bad; why you honor and respect
the laborer who produces the wealth of the world so little, and the
idle, wasteful aristocrat so much; why you can not voluntarily
co-operate under individualism; how you can believe that your God
wants you to build and erect magnificent churches, and steeples
towering toward heaven, when, not unfrequently in the very shadow of
them, poverty and want wreck the constitution of his highest
creatures. Such are a few of the many things here that seemed and
still seem very strange and very cruel to me.
I found that Mr. Spencer's philosophical works were well adapted to
give the necessary information essential for a higher social and
industrial life.
CONTENTS
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