Smyrna times., 1871-09-20
Tied Fagots.

We notice that several hundred ex-soldiers
and sailors of Massachusetts have organized
themselves into an association for forming a
colony in the Far West They expect at once
to take their families with them they repre-
sent all trades, and state their purpose to be
the erection of real New England town. with
the advantl ges of more liberal soil and climate.
Similar org Inlzatlons,' we are told " will
doubtless follow Doubtless, any man of
sense would say; but they do not. There is
the rub. Why is it that, with government
and education which almost force the American
into cooperative modes Of business and life
he perSiStently ressts them and flies off at a
tangent from his fellow men to push himself
up or down, as luck may chance. The sim
plicty and practicability of such a scheme as
the above would suggest itself to any ordinary
man but our emigrant to the West goes out
alone. is his own doctor, pOwman, carpenter,
and tailor and instead of doing the one work
he is fitted for devOtes his own middle age and
his wife's to servile drudgery in order to
leave his ague- e-pnched children large tracts of
half-ceaned land He would have been
lOnger-.ived, richer man if he had carried
neighbors, helpers, civilization with him. Our
German friends have an old saw about the
brothers with linked hands who go singing up
the hill, while the man alone falls into the
postsherds below and they comprehend it's
maid or Hans the cobbler. The Protestant
German belongs to a beneficiary society or
some Bund or other which enables him to lay
hold on his fellow men, and claim and give
help 1t is high time that Americans, partic-
ularly those of the poorer classes, understood
the virtue and strength of co-operation-of the
tied bunch of fagots One of the most notice
able instances of its value we remember was in
the history of an iron-mll owned, in a town OF
fOunderieS, by one or two intelligent capitalists
who believed true benevOlence lay in teaching
men to help themselves Their employees
were of the usual class of mill hands in the
town-ignOrant Welsh, English, and a few ma
tves-living D the gross habits of poverty vel
receiving from S4 to $40 per day-higher wa
ges than ordinary brain labor commanded a.
that time outside Of the large cities They
proposed that their lab )rers should form them
selves into a society, build out of their owl
earnings a school, reading room, bath h-houses
bake. shop, and laundry. The result has beel
that the workmen in this establishment, as
rule, now occupy comfortable houses of thei
own have pushed their children forward int
a higher class than their own are, in fact
citizens, and not brutes; while the mass O
hands in the other mills are drunken and pro
higate Doors they were ten years ago
although two or three men have risen abOv
their fellows by sheer innate force into posi-
tions OF af1uence and comparative enlighteI
ment.
Let our young men, or middle-aged men, @
women if it must be, go out of the cities t
push their fortunes, and go together The
will soon find out that, If two heads are bette
than one, so are two purses, and that hand
and heads work best when they work in con
pany and are willing to help each other.-N
Y. Tribune.