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 5 - Wealth]
[I] believe that genuine wealth consists:
1. Of organized-self a sound body and a healthy, vigorous mind.
2. Of material wealth food, clothing, shelter, luxuries and the
instruments of their production and distribution tools, machinery,
factories, railroads, etc. And
3. Of mental wealth thought, love, kindness, the so-called morality
and freedom.
We claim that all Wealth comes, either directly or indirectly, from
the earth, or out of it by the application of labor, and that only
which is produced by labor is wealth, and belongs exclusively to the
producer. To illustrate, the material composing our body was once
inorganic matter. The plant organized it. We eat, digest and
assimilate the plant out of which our tissues are built. The crude
material out of which our clothes are made is produced by the earth.
The cotton plant that grows on the earth produced the cotton. The
sheep, on whose back the wool grows, lives on the grass, etc., which
is produced by the earth. Our books, houses, shoes, hats, and our
physical organs, which perform their wonderfully complex functions,
all come, either directly or indirectly, out of the earth, air and
ocean in a crude form. Then they are shaped by the hand of labor into
the proper form and become wealth.
By labor we manufacture clothes, write books, raise, gather and lay
up food, build houses, construct railroads, improve land, acquire and
maintain a sound body and a healthy, cultivated mind. The storehouse
of thought, kindness, love and freedom is also filled by labor and
exertion. All these mental acquisitions are therefore constituent
parts of genuine wealth, wealth of the most precious kind, for
material wealth is easily acquired when we are rich in faultless
organized-self and in mental wealth.
The air we breathe is not wealth, because it is not produced by
labor. The wild apple and plum on the tree are not wealth, because no
human labor has been expended in the production of them. But the
picked apple of the same tree, in the hand of the consumer, or in his
cellar is wealth; he picked or stored it away for future use, which
required labor. Sunshine and rain, native grass and water in its
native bed or channel, are not wealth. Land in its natural state is
not wealth, because it was not produced by labor. There was land
before there was human labor. But all improvement made on land by
labor is wealth and belongs exclusively to the person who made the
improvement.
All wealth, then, organized-self, material and mental, comes
ultimately out of the inorganic earth (air and water), and requires
labor and effort to produce them, and is wealth only so far as they
required labor in their production.
Uncleanliness, irregularity, licentiousness, jealousy, etc., [are]
other causes of ill- health; and lastly, perhaps, all had inherited a
more or less feeble and diseased constitution, consequent from the
constant violations of the so-called natural laws by our numerous
successive ancestors.
"Under … monopolistic, social and industrial system, our
world [is] poor in material wealth -- food, clothing, shelter and
luxuries. Thousands upon thousands of industrious people in every
county [are] forced idlers, and consequently poor or paupers. They
[are] hungry, ragged, cold and unclean. Want and the fear of want
force them to work so hard and so long daily that cleanliness and
intellectual culture become a burden to them. They [are] merely
industrial slaves, earning the material wealth for the rich who spend
their lives largely in wasteful idleness.
There can be very little true love, kindness and prosperity as long
as one family, sect, party, organization and nation endeavors to build
itself up by tearing down others. Antagonism involves an expenditure
of energy. As a rule your banker's child is forbidden to play and
associate with the hod-carrier's. The Catholic disapproves of, and
often despises the Protestant, and the Protestant the Catholic. The
Christian, the Pagan and vice versa. The Republican and Democrat
condemn each other. Instead of love, kindness, and harmony, there is
almost universal hatred and antagonism.
By a continual and positive reward of the right, and by a continual
and positive punishment of the wrong, we [can] learn to grope our way
from the old antagonistic system to a … system of voluntary
co-operative individualism.
[I] call nothing wealth which is not produced by labor. With us our
communities average productive labor is the basis of wealth. Our
wealth is a compound, composed of three elements, namely,
organized-self, material wealth, and mental wealth. Wealth as
considered by your masses is an element composed of material wealth
only dollars, houses, books, land, railroads, bonds, etc.
You call a person rich when he has many dollars, no matter what his
other attainments and surroundings may be. [S]o-called rich men may be
the dupes of ignorance, cruelty, slavery and superstition; they may
work themselves and their families to premature graves; they may
scheme the bread out of the mouths of the still more ignorant and
poverty-stricken ones; they may be surrounded by hovels and extreme
ignorance and poverty; they may, every night, be in danger of being
robbed and murdered by their cold, hungry neighbors who may be forced
idlers, and still you call them rich, only because they claim to own a
few dollars. [I] believe that all men are poor who are not the owners
of a healthy body, a sound mind, and an abundance of material
subsistence, which can be obtained only in a world where all are
comparatively rich in this kind of wealth.
No man can earn a million dollars. According to [my] idea of wealth,
the most avaricious person is the best, for he equally works to the
highest interest and good of himself and his fellow-man. No man, in
our opinion, can be rich in a poor, ignorant world.
CONTENTS
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