Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 9.djvu/765

Rh a world of its own; 2. The coördination and coöperation of such atoms or cells with each other, in a collective body or organism, according to their precise form and place. The want of either of these factors, the distinct individual units, or the scientific grouping and marshaling of units in a collective unity, deprives a body of its place in the organic world. The same factors must enter into every social organization which is entitled to the name. We have in this country an example of a true organization in our federative political system, composed of townships, counties, States, and nation, with its motto, "Out of many, one." I have drawn thence the designation Federative for the organized Homestead.

It is essential that relations of precise equity shall prevail between the proprietors of a Collective Home. The right of individual property in each domicile should be fortified by separate title and right of sale, subject only to chartered restrictions. In a well constructed and organized Federative Homestead such domiciles would always be salable at full cost value. A precise account, based on accurate standards of measurement, must be kept with each individual or family, including both general and special supplies and services. Instruction in the schools of the Palace would be classed among services to be specially accounted for. Our present common-school system (the best of our institutions) is a violation of social organic law, on the side of communism, to balance its violation in the opposite direction by incoherent industry and incoherent homes. The only scientific justification, if it may be so called, of the present system, is the rule that two wrongs make a right. The relation of highly-organized societies to children will, without doubt, be parental, through the recognition of new equities and the extension of mutual affection and service. But the further consideration of this subject does not belong here.

There are two extremes of reaction against existing society: one, Communism, its destructive fusion; the other, Individual Sovereignty, its destructive analysis. Each tends to social dissolution, because it rejects one of the organic factors. Between these extremes—occupying the domain of organization—are two possible social orders, one constructive, attractive in all its forces, cooperative, in harmony with modern thought, and with the development of science and the arts. The People's Palace is the natural form of household belonging to this order. The other is an inverted organization, compulsory, actuated by destructive rivalries, characterized by speculation and fraud, and feudal in its tendencies and results. To this latter order, the middle-age civilization of Europe and America, which still holds us, belong the isolated house and all in our present methods which insulate instead of associating the industries, and reconciling the interests of mankind. The single but sufficient means of resisting the communistic dissolution of our present society is to substitute