THE NEEDLES AND THE JOCKS.

There was however, another thing that was lurking in the background of our thinking and that was a basic pattern for cooperative organization. Until the time we joined Llano Colony, all that we knew about organization was some fragmentary notions about labor unions and cooperative stores, but in 1918 at Llano a few of us did something that was of far more importance than any of us realized at the time, and it began with ALICE CONSTANCE AUSTIN who came to Llano from Santa Barbara, and because she had heard Job Harriman make a speech in Los Angeles, and realized vaguely that Job was trying to do something important, in this business of taking a lot of people and weaving them into a different pattern for economic procedure.

Mr. Harriman was finding plenty of difficulties, and some 600 people were living around wondering why they had got into such an escape as this cooperative colony. Every one of the 800 people had very definite ideas about almost everything, and the result was general confusion. There were endless arguments about policy and practice from planting beans to laying out cities, and into this chaotic state of affairs came Constance Austin, the middle aged daughter of a formerly wealthy Santa Barbara family who had built a pretentious adobe house in Mission Canyon, near the old Mission in Santa Barbara. She was primarily interested in city planning, and she had some ideas that interested Mr. Harriman, but they were too far advanced to be compromised by many others there, and our problems were many and varied. Desert sun is hot and even a good umbrella was more desirable than a model house next week or next year. Most of us lived in tents, and while we wanted good houses very badly, the immediate problem was to find wire enough to tie the down the tent and keep the strong winds from blowing it away. The problem of planning for model houses was always postponed for the more immediate problem of making one rabbit feed 800 people, or getting fire wood enough to keep people from freezing to death.

Constance Austin came directly from a spacious Santa Barbara mansion among millionaires' neighbors, and was assigned to one half of a six by ten foot tent where she was supposed to wait until something could be done about model housing. To use up time, she read books, and one of these books was THE NEW KNOWLEDGE, by Duncan. The author was explaining about atoms and electrons, and those of us who were struggling to tie down our tents and discover if octopus buds might be edible, were not too much interested in the early beginnings of nuclear physics, and Miss Austin was somewhat lenient with her strange book which did not seem to help with any of the immediate dilemmas. She found something however, that interested her, and in time she succeeded in getting the attention of Mr. Harriman long enough to introduce the book to him, but then we had to move 800 people or at least part of them to Louisiana, and so the book went back on the shelf, and it was not until we were settled in a reasonable facsimile of a house, that Constance Austin brought out her well read, book on atoms and electrons, and now there were three of us who had a vague notion that here was something important. We read and discussed that book, and then we decided to perform some of the experiments that were suggested.

It was Millsap who came up with a magnet out of an old Ford (Model T Flywheel) with which we magnetized six sewing needles. Then we stick the needles through some small pieces of cork. Then we floated the needles with their life preservers on them in a dish of water and watched what happened. Sure enough, just as the book said, when the like poles were all up the needles repelled each other, and separated as far from each other as they could. Then when we brought one end of the old Ford magnet over them, providing it was the opposite polarity to that of the the upper ends of the floating needles, they all arranged themselves in a nice orderly circle around that stronger magnet, but they separated themselves equidistant from each other, and this was one of the early illustrations to show how the POSITIVE NUCLEUS of the atom held together IN BALANCE, the negative ELECTRONS which without the NUCLEUS repelled each other. We talked about Mr. Einstein and wondered what he had that was interesting a few scientists. We could not see ahead to Hiroshima at that time, but we vaguely

realized that Constance Austin's city plan was arranged strikingly similar to the pattern formed by those needles. There was a nucleus in the center and the dwellings were arranged around it like the repeling needles in the dish pan, held together by the more positive Ford magnet.

Well, we threw out the water and hung up the dish pan, and Millsap put the needles in a pill bottle, and they are there yet. We all were alert to read about anything we could find on Atoms and Electrons. Mr Harriman was struggling with an organization of people. They seemed to repel each other like the needles. Robert's rules of Order, and the clumsy procedure of making motions and arguing over points of order, did not seem to be very helpful in establishing some kind of order, and the arguments and lewits went on, and the ever present problem of finding something that would serve as food took the attention of everybody, and WORLD WAR I took all the young men, and we little realized what was ahead for the few of us who played with those needles and discussed Duncan's NEW KNOWLEDGE.

In time the war was over, and labor unions were striking all over the country, and President Wilson called a LABOR CONFERENCE in Washington D. C. where various labor leaders and politicians and so-called representatives were to sit down and "arbitrate" their differences. Also it happened that Walter Millsap and Constance Austin sat through that Labor Conference and watched the whole proceedings. Also it was at this conference that Millsap picked up a pamphlet entitled THE NATION AS AN ORGANISM, written by one Murray Schick, and there were loads of pamphlets lying around but for some strange reason, Millsap picked up this particular one, and it was immediately interesting. Here was a man who suggested a pattern for the organization of the national government that was strikingly similar to the proposed city plan of Alice Constance Austin, and the pattern formed by the floating needles which we had seen. Maybe Mr. Schick had something. Mr. Harriman was a long way off and struggling with problems that were to overwhelm him eventually and a great many things were to happen before Walter Millsap developed that concept of needles and old Ford magnets, and Murray Schick's pamphlet, and the Austin City plan and Einstein's concept of atomic structure, and began to vaguely see that here was a definite PATTERN, and that definite pattern revealed itself everywhere in nature. Moreover it WAS NOT THE PATTERN of early Llano colony, and the Yolo Rochdale Jo, and the Labor conference in Washington D. C. It was basically different.

Harriman was studying psychology, and psychoanalysis, but there was no more chances for cozy discussions of those great facts. We had left Llano to other people and we were individualists. Constance Austin was in New York trying to interest Capitalists in her model city plan, and it was a nice picture, but it was a different pattern and did not look like any map of a subdivision that they had ever seen, and they did not want to be bothered by old ladies. Harriman was struggling with Tuberculosis, and trying to write and get his ideas on paper, and avoid arousing the wrath of his wife who was entirely unsympathetic with such notions, and who burned up his foolish scribblings. Millsap was repairing phonographes for the Broadway Department store in Los Angeles and contemplating the wasteful scramble that was all around him, and comparing it with that pamphlet of Murray Schick's, that city map of Constance Austin's, and those needles with their life preservers around them arranging themselves in a nice orderly pattern in a dish pan of water.

Eventually, it dawned on the consciousness of Millsap that here was a definite and basic pattern, and it might be the pattern by which human beings might arrange themselves for the very serious business of MAKING A LIVING, as well as the pattern for arranging the PLACES WHERE THEY WERE TO LIVE, and the idea was very intriguing.

Cooperative buying clubs were interesting but they did not seem to get anywhere. People had to have something to BUY WITH, and the Rochdale store did not provide that. The Raisin Growers association was a nice idea, but the said raisin growers seemed to repel each other like those needles in the dish pan. Eventually the CONCEPT of United COOPERATIVE INDUSTRIES began to come fairly clear in the mind of Walter Millsap.

and he decided that to clear up this concept was a more important job than merely fixing some phonographs so he could eat at Peterman's restaurant, and pay $2.50 a week for a room in the old Mint Hotel near First and Broadway, Los Angeles.

If he could fix phonographs, for the Broadway, he could fix them directly for the owners of the said phonographs, and he did not need the Boardway to intervene. He might have a little time to find some people who would interest themselves in this pattern for cooperative activity, that was growing in his mind, but he couldn't find any/and he could meet people by being a hired man for a time and also clear up a lot of details about Common Law Trusts and Corporations, and tools and lathes, and farming and gardening and land and accounting and psychology all of which seemed to be part of the picture, and it was a complicated and confused picture at that time. However it seemed that there was something important there, and it seemed that in time it might be worked out, and now after many vicissitudes that same picture is MUCH CLEARER.

We are ready to arrange the personnel and the property of United Cooperative Industries as near to that pattern as circumstances will allow, and build both personnel and property according to that pattern from here on, and the first thing is to establish the NUCLEUS.

We got some education ourselves, whether anybody else got any or not. Our trusty projectors took us to countries all over the world, and it took us into laboratories where strange experiments were being performed, and that recalled our needles with their life-preservers on struggling in a dish pan. We became acquainted with our old friend Einstein. We saw atoms, or at least we saw the animated diagrams which scientists like Mr. Einstein use to try and explain these things to the lay public. We saw medical films and we saw living cells through a microscope right on our own screen, and each of those living cells had its NUCLEUS which controlled the cell and made it LIVE. We saw the star clusters on our screen. Then at a little Jewish church we ran a film called DEGANYA and there, believe it or not, was a reproduction of Llano Colony developed to show the thing which we hoped for but saw only in our minds. There it was, right on that screen, and there is IS, today, in Palestine, a pattern for all the world to study. We saw Indians on our screen, and we became interested in the NATIVE AMERICANS. In time we found out that these NATIVE AMERICANS for centuries had lived according to that OTHER WAY that we talked about, and the could not comprehend nor accept the WRONG WAY that their visitors from Europe insisted on imposing upon them. The whole concept began to grow rapidly, and we began to see the necessity for the MENTAL ATTITUDE and MOTIVES that Job Harriman struggled to point out to us back in 1948, and we also began to see that the pattern of physical arrangement that was suggested by the needles in the dish pan was a basically necessary arrangement throughout all nature, and in our various gropings and trials and errors, we had lost sight of this basically necessary thing. At least we only saw it vaguely, and we did not point it out to others.

Now we are ready to arrange both the personnel, and the property of United Cooperative Industries as near to that pattern as circumstances will allow, and then increase both personnel and property. Again we must find people, but we know much more about what to look for, and we know much more about how to present our proposals to them. We know it is possible to abandon THE WRONG WAY, and we know it is possible to live according to THE OTHER WAY. We see thousands of people who are struggling with THE WRONG WAY, and we think we can bring them a message of hope. Some of them can definitely abandon the WRONG WAY and actually establish themselves in a new pattern and help each other to get a LIVING and a PLACE TO LIVE according to the methods of THE OTHER WAY.