"Our property was not considered common stock; we only recognized a common cause. Our agreement gave capital to labor for less than half of the world's present interest, and gave to labor its full reward, according to merit, that is, skill, strength, and time; establishing 'Do as you would be done by' first; and attending to the questions of brotherhood afterward, such as home for life, respect, comfort, and all needful or desirable things to the old, the infant, the disabled, etc. This was the extent of our Communism. Our company stock was divided into twenty-five dollar shares. About one-third of the members owned none at all at first, although their rights were considered equal; and that point, be it said to the glory of the domain, was never mooted and scarcely mentioned. "We commenced our new life at Clarkson in March, April and May, 1844; building our temporary, and enlarging our established, houses, and beginning to marshal our forces of toil. In April we 'numbered Israel,' and found we were four hundred and twenty souls, as happy and joyous a family as ever thronged to an Independence dinner. If, in our fiscal affairs we were not Communists, in our moral and social feelings we were a house not divided against itself. "In relation to education, natural intelligence, and morality, I candidly think we were a little above the average of common citizens at large in the State, and no more. Trades and occupations were multiform. Our doctor and minister were academical scholars merely. We had one ripe merchant (a great rogue, too), some first-rate mechanics of all the substantial trades, and a noble lot of common farmers.