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 8 - Interior of the "Big House" continued]
A woman in our world is as free and independent to go any and all
places as a man is. She earns as much with her day s labor as a man
does, and is therefore not financially dependent on any man, as you
will readily see by an explanation of our monetary system some future
time.
We have no profit, as you will see when we get to our mercantile
system. Profit results from monopoly, and we have no monopoly and
hence no profit. The profit system is one of the greatest evils of our
industrial world. Some of our economists condemn our competitive
system. But competition is as natural, necessary and beneficial to the
welfare and progress of mankind as the unobstructed natural law of
supply and demand is essential for an economic regulation of
production and consumption. By profit a person may be able to live an
idle life; may have others produce his food, clothing, shelter and
luxuries for him. By competition, a person must always work. Monopoly,
from which all profit, etc., accrues, and not competition, is that
great enemy of the human race.
[O]our profit system does not only enable certain persons to live
from the labor of others, but it also tends to make them dishonest and
cruel.
[A]s man slowly but gradually reaches a higher state of intellectual
culture, he makes his habits, customs and fashions conform more and
more with the laws of life and health. Because his esthetic faculties
continually unfold more and more in the direction of greater well-
being, the pursuit of happiness becomes a continually increasing
incentive.
All you need to live, labor, and co-operate are good, fair,
intelligent, industrious, orderly men, women and children, who foster
no revenge, prejudice and jealousy, who know and are willing to do
their respective parts from the promptings of inward sentiments. All
you need in addition to what you already have is a little more
intelligence for the masses a little more experience which teaches
them that right acts only can bring happiness. Additional
intelligence, as a whole, strengthens virtuous traits and weakens
vicious ones.
[W]e can build one large family residence better than a multitude of
small ones. [We] can build your residences and other buildings certain
distances apart, and around a rectangular tract of land which we call
a community, with much less labor than huddle them together in crowded
cities and towns or isolate them in the country. [We] can build and
operate railroads and motor lines, and have them pass through
big-houses as well as having them pass through a lonely country. [We]
can run pumps, electric lights, elevators, churns, laundries and all
other machinery by electric power. [We] know how to construct, furnish
and maintain grand, clean kitchens, dining halls, restaurants, stores,
halls, barber shops, nurseries, parlors and private apartments. [We]
can derive far more happiness by voluntary co-operation, by being
kind, cleanly, orderly, not jealous and free, than [we] can by
single-handed effort, by being cruel, filthy, disorderly, jealous and
in slavery and superstition. No doubt the same evolutionary forces
that have brought the human being above the manlike ape in the past
will slowly elevate him to a still higher and nobler plane in the
future. I believe that thousands of the foremost intellectual men and
women of the United States, and other countries of [the] world, would
now be ready to live a [cooperative individualist] life, or one nearly
like it, if they were not prevented by the less intelligent ones.
Intelligence is the motive power which determines our course of
action.
We have learned that we can reap the greatest amount of happiness
ourselves by not infringing upon the equal rights of others. With but
one invader in the world, the world is not as good as with no invader
in it.
CONTENTS
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