"It is very advisable that the friends of the cause should not start small Associations. If they are commenced with inadequate means, and without men who know how to organize them, they may result in failures, which will cast reproach upon the principles. The American people are so impelled to realize in practice any idea which strikes them as true and advantageous, that it will of course be useless to preach moderation in organizing Associations; still I would urgently recommend to individuals, for their own interest, to avoid small and fragmental undertakings, and unite with the largest one in their section of the country. "Four gentlemen from Rochester and its vicinity will be engaged this winter in propagating the principles of Association by lectures etc., in western New York. At Rochester they have commenced the publication of tracts upon Association, which we trust will be extensively circulated. That city is becoming an important center of propagation, and will, we believe, exercise a very great influence, as it is situated in a flourishing region of country, inhabited by a very intelligent population. "It must be deeply gratifying to the friends of Association to see the unexampled rapidity with which our principles are spreading throughout this vast country. Would it not seem that this very general response to, and acceptance of, an entirely new and radically reforming doctrine by intelligent and practical men, prove that there is something in it harmonizing perfectly with the ideas of truth, justice, economy and order, and those higher sentiments implanted in the soul of man, which, although so smothered at present, are awakened when the correspondences in doctrine or practice are presented to them clearly and understandingly? "The name of Fourier is now heard from the Atlantic to the Mississippi; from the remotest parts of Wisconsin and Louisiana responsive echoes reach us, heralding the spread of the great principles of universal Association; and this important work has been accomplished in a few years, and mainly within two years, since Horace Greeley, Esq., the editor of the _Tribune_, with unprecedented courage and liberality, opened the columns of his widely-circulated journal to a fair exposition of this subject. What will the next ten years bring forth?" Mr. John Greig of Rochester, a participator in this socialistic excitement and in the experiments that went with it, contributed the following sketch of its beginnings to Macdonald's collection of manuscripts: