be the case with those whom we select to care for and teach our children, and also, if possible, with those whom we permit to prepare and serve our food; if I am not willing to shake a man’s hand or sit next to him in a reading-room, I do not see why I should be willing to eat what he has cooked. I personally know a young man who is studying art, and who earns his living by washing dishes in a downtown restaurant, because it takes only two or three hours a day of his time. In Memorial Hall at Harvard University, in the sanitarium at Battle Creek, and in many other places I might name, those who wait upon the tables are college students; and anyone who knows the difference which there is in the atmosphere of such a dining hall knows what I should wish to attain. The above article brought me replies from four or five hundred persons; and committees were named, which met all through the summer to work out the details of the plan. In October of the same year the purchase of Helicon Hall was made, and the “Colony” began its career. Six months after the publication of my first article, I contributed to _The Independent_ an account of how the experiment was succeeding; I quote from it the following paragraphs: We made many mistakes; I shall tell about some of them in due course, for the benefit of future pioneers. But there is one thing to be said here at the start: we made no mistake in believing in democratic institutions. It was a point about which the critics of our plan were all agreed, that it could not possibly work, because people could never decide what they wanted. That dreadful bugaboo called “human nature” would wreck us in the end. I, for my part, believed that people in America were used to the methods of majority government, and I believed that if we should apply those same methods in a coöperative home, a group of intelligent and sincere people could manage to solve all their problems. From the beginning our policy was publicity and democracy; and from the beginning it brought us through. At the committee meetings everyone had his say. And little by little you would see a majority opinion taking shape on the question at issue, until, finally, when all had been heard, the matter was put to a vote. There was no case where the minority did not give way with all courtesy. And now that the colony really exists we sit round the fireside and talk out our questions, and as a rule we do not even have to take a vote—an informal discussion is enough to make clear to everyone what is fair and right.