Part 52 (1/2)

Amount of raw silk manufactured, 4,664 lbs.

Iron cast at the foundry, 227,000 do.

Lumber manufactured at saw-mill, 305,000 feet.

Product of milk from the dairy, 31,143 gallons.

” ” hay on the domain, 300 tons.

” ” potatoes, 800 bushels.

” ” strawberries, 740 do.

” ” apples, 1,450 do.

” ” grapes, 9,631 lbs.

Stock on the farm, 93 cattle and 25 horses. Amount of teaming done, valued at $6,260.

In addition to these, many branches of industry necessary for the convenience of the family are pursued, such as shoemaking, tailoring, dentistry, etc. The cash business of the Community during the year, as represented by its receipts and disburs.e.m.e.nts, was about $575,000.

Amount paid for hired labor $34,000. Family expenses (exclusive of domestic labor by the members, teaching, and work in the printing office), $41,533.43.

The amount of labor performed by the Community members during the year, was found to be approximately as follows:

Number. Amount of labor per day.

Able-bodied men. 80 7 hours ” women. 84 6 ” 40 min.

Invalid and aged men 6 3 ” 40 ”

Boys 4 3 ” 40 ”

Invalid and aged women 9 1 ” 20 ”

Girls 2 1 ” 20 ”

This is exclusive of care of children, school-teaching, printing and editing the _Circular_, and much head-work in all departments.

Taking 304 days for the working year, we have, as a product of the above figures, a total of 35,568 days' work at ten hours each.

Supposing this labor to be paid at the rate of $1.50 per day, the aggregate sum for the year would be $53,352.00. By comparing this with the amount of family expenses, $41,533.43, we find, at the given rate of wages, a surplus of profit amounting to $11,818.57, or 33 cents profit for each person per day. This represents the saving which ordinary unskilled labor would make by means of the mere economy of a.s.sociation. Were it possible for a skillful mechanic to live in co-operation with others, so that his wife and elder children could spend some time at productive labor, and his family could secure the economies of combined households, their wages at present rates would be more than double the cost of living. Labor in the Community being princ.i.p.ally of the higher cla.s.s, is proportionately rewarded, and in fact earns much more than $1.50 per day.

The entire financial history of the Community in brief is the following: It commenced business at its present location in 1848, but did not adopt the practice of taking annual inventories till 1857. Of the period between these dates we can give but a general account. The Community in the course of that period had five or six branches with common interests, scattered in several States. The ”Property Register,” kept from the beginning, shows that the amount of property brought in by the members of all the Communities, up to January 1, 1857, was $107,706.45. The amount held at Oneida at that date, as stated in the first regular inventory, was only $41,740. The branch Communities at Putney, Wallingford and elsewhere, at the same time had property valued at $25,532.22. So that the total a.s.sets of the a.s.sociated Communities were $67,272.22, or $40,434.23 less than the amount brought in by the members. In other words between the years 1848 and 1857, the a.s.sociated Communities sunk (in round numbers) $40,000. Various causes may be a.s.signed for this, such as inexperience, lack of established business, persecutions and extortions, the burning of the Community store, the sinking of the sloop Rebecca Ford in the Hudson River, the maintenance of an expensive printing family at Brooklyn, the publication of a free paper, etc.

In the course of several years previous to 1857, the Community abandoned the policy of working in scattered detachments, and concentrated its forces at Oneida and Wallingford. From the first of January 1857, when its capital was $41,740, to the present time, the progress of its money-matters is recorded in the following statistics, drawn from its annual inventories:

In 1857, net earnings, $5,470.11 ” 1858, ” ” 1,763.60 ” 1859, ” ” 10,278.38 ” 1860, ” ” 15,611.03 ” 1861, ” ” 5,877.89 ” 1862, ” ” 9,859.78 ” 1863, ” ” 44.755.30 ” 1864, ” ” 61,382.62 ” 1865, ” ” 12,382.81 ” 1866, ” ” 13,198.74

Total net earnings in ten years, $180,580.26; being a yearly average income of $18,058.02, above all expenses. The succeeding inventories show the following result:

Net earnings in 1867, $21,416.02.

Net earnings in 1868, $55,100.83.

being an average for the last two years of over $38,000 per annum.