New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1871-09-01
TIED FIGOTS.

We notice that several hundred ex-sOldiers
and sailors Of Massachusetts have organized
themselves into an association for forming o
colony in the Far West. They expect at
once to take their families with them; they
represent all trades, and state their purpose
to be The erection of real New-England
town, with tho advantages of more liberal soil
and climate "Similar organizations" we are
told, twill doubtless follow" Doubtless, any
man of sense would say; but they do not
There is the rub. Why is it that, with govern
ment and education which almost force the
American into cooperative modes of bust
ness and life, he persistently resists them and
flies off at tangent from his fell
low men to push himself up or down,
as luck may chance. The simplicity and
practicability of such scheme as tho above
would suggest itself to any ordinary man; but
our emigrant to the West goes out alone, is
his own doctor, plowman, carpenter, and tailor;
and instead of doing the one work he is fitted
for devotes his own middle age and his wife's
to O servile drudgery in order to leave his
ague-pindhed children large tracts of half
cleared land. He would have been longer
lived, richer man if he had carried neighbOrs,
friends have an old saw about the brothers
with linked hands who go singing up the bill,
while the man alone falls into the potshcrds
below; and they comprehend it's meaning
thoroughly down to the Dutch nursemaid or
Hans the cobbler. Tho Protestant German be-
longs to beneficiary society or some Bind or
other which enables him to lay hold on his fellow
man, and claim and give help. 1t is high time
that Americans, particularly those OF the
poorer classes, understood the virtue and
strength of cO6peration-of the tied bunch OF
fagots. One of the most noticeable instances
of its value we remember was in the history
of an iron-mill owned, in town of fOunderies,
by one or two intelligent capitalists, who
believed true benevOence lay In teaching men
to help themselves. Their employees were of
the usual class Of mill-hands in the town
ignorant Welsh, English, and few natives
living in the gross habits of poverty, yet
receiving from 81 to $40 per day-higher wages
than ordinary brain labor commanded at that
time outside of the large cities. They proposed
that their laborers should form themselves
into society, build out of their
own earnings q school, reading room, bath
houses, bake-shop and laundry. The result
has been that the workmen in this es-
Establishment, as a rule, now occupy comfort
able houses of their own; have pushed their
children forward into a higher class than
their own ; are, in fact, citizens, and not brutes
while the mass of hands in the other mills are
drunken and profgate Doors as they were ten
years ago, although two or three men have
risen above their fellows by sheer innate force
into positions of af1uence and comparative
enlightenment.
Let our young men, or middle-aged men, or
women if it must be, go out of the cities to
push their fortunes and 60 together. They
will soon find out that, if two heads are bet
ter than one, 80 are two purses, and that
hands and heads work best when they work
in company and are willing to help each other.