I have quoted this at length because, as I said before, I believe that it is the seed from which mighty forests are destined to grow. We should never have given the time and strength which we have given to this experiment, but for our certainty that all the world will some day be following in our footsteps. We are living in a coöperative home because we wish to do it—but some day you will be doing it because you _have_ to. You get along badly enough with your servants, you admit; still you get along somehow or other. But has it ever occurred to you what your plight would be if, when you went to the “intelligence-office,” instead of getting a bad servant, you got no servant at all? When that time comes, you will be grateful to us pioneer “home-colonists.” It is a most interesting thing to watch; it is the Industrial Republic in the making. We care nothing whatever about the intellectual opinions of the people who come to live in the colony; but I have observed that nearly every non-Socialist who has come here has been turned into a Socialist in the course of a month or two. And that is not because we argue with him, or bother him; it is simply because facts are facts. What becomes of the old shop-worn argument that it would be necessary to change human nature—when human nature is suddenly discovered to be so kindly and considerate as it is in this big home of ours? And what becomes of the ponderous platitudes about “Socialism versus Individualism” in a place where so many different kinds of individuals are developing their individualities. I am often moved to use this experiment of ours as an illustration of what I said in the previous chapter, concerning the difference between material and intellectual production. Here in Helicon Hall we have all the dreadful machinery of paternalism which frightens our capitalist editors and college presidents whenever they contemplate Socialism; we submit ourselves to the blind rule of majorities—we allow a majority to decide what we shall pay for our rooms, and when we shall pay it; to lay out our _menu_, and refuse to give us pie for breakfast; to forbid our giving tips, or whistling in the halls, or dancing after a certain hour at night. And we have all the symbols of oppression—constitution and by-laws and boards of directors and managers. And yet somehow, we are freer than we ever were in the world before; because, by means of these little concessions, we have made possible a _system_—and so flung from our shoulders all at once the burden of care which used to wear the life out of us.