The greenhouse business was an outgo from first to last. It was a business in prospective. It took two persons from other and more productive labor, and quantities of fuel were consumed through the long winter days and nights with a very meagre return. It had its bright side--it was attractive--and if persevered in would have paid in the end. The garden was still more of an outgo than the greenhouse. The soil was very poor, and the manure for high culture was not forthcoming, for it was all needed on the farm. The large number of visitors did at times return more than the cash outlay, but in reckoning the incomes of the Association this must be left out, or set down as uncertain. Some boarders were almost always on the place; either interested parties, or members' friends, but this income also was slight, as the table was meagre and the price in proportion. What, then, was there beside these occupations to support and increase the organization? Three things: Income from new members who came with property; income from regular investors, who took stock in the Association, and income from the school. There was a prospective income from persons who were expected to come and try the new mode of life. There were those who had been promised an opportunity to join us. They were selected from a mass of applicants, and one object in the selection was to secure persons of good standing and means. Such persons represented a desirable class. But now the "Phalanstery" was burned that hope was destroyed, for all the available rooms were occupied with those living on the domain; and if there was to be no progress in material things, who would wish to invest in stock that had not paid a cent and in which there was but a slight chance of profitable return--nay, more, which stood ten chances to one of being entirely lost? Of course no one unless he had money to give away. The persuasive eloquence of the gifted leaders could not secure investors for the reasons I have given, and for other reasons of which I shall speak. The "Associationists" were not united. The centre of the movement was at New York, and from there great stories of the advancement of the North American Phalanx at Red Bank, New Jersey, went forth. It was Greeley's pet. It was the favorite at the centre and mostly with the _doctrinaires_. It was an excellent domain, with water power, splendid fruit-growing land, sufficiently near New York market for an undoubted sale of all its products. Greeley admired the talent and the social life at Brook Farm, but he thought that the leaders engaged at the North American Phalanx had a more practical turn, and their soil was wonderfully better fitted for farming, which always seems to be the hobby of reformers. It was near to him; he could visit it often, and he invested money in it.