The whole machinery of the colony responded instantly to the grip of the master\'s hand. It was the one thing needed to insure successful progress.
When the Brotherhood realized that the young poet-athlete was not merely a love-sick dreamer and theorist, but a man of quick decisions, of firm and inflexible will, and the power to execute his will, they fell in line, caught the step, and order emerged from chaos.
When a crisis called for decision he made it with lightning rapidity and stuck to it. The situation demanded a dictatorship for the moment, and he did not hesitate to assume it. He saw before him sure success. If fools and cranks interfered with his plans he would crush and push them aside. The consciousness of power and its daily exercise developed his faculties to their highest tension. His mind began to arrange every detail of the vast and complicated system of the new social scheme. Men became the mere tools with which he would work out the [225]revolution in human society. Every scrap of knowledge he had ever gained flashed through his excited imagination and fell into its place in the creation of the new order.
He put the machine-shops to work constructing the big gold dredge on which he had experimented one summer.
He had a pet scheme of farming which had come into his mind from watching his father\'s gardener the year before raise the most delicious cantaloups he had ever tasted. He discovered the secret of their marvellous sweetness and leaped to an instantaneous conclusion. He had the opportunity to test this inspiration now on a scale as vast as his dreams.
He called the superintendents and overseers of the farm together, and asked their plans for the crop on the five hundred acres of fertile lands under cultivation. They gave him their schedule for a variety of crops.
"Won\'t this soil grow cantaloups?" he asked.
They all reported that it would.
"Then I suggest that the entire acreage be planted in these vines."
To a man they declared the plan absurd.
"But suppose," he persisted, "that we raise and send to the East the most delicious melon they have ever tasted, and suppose we get three [226]dollars a crate, we will make three hundred dollars an acre and our first crop will be worth one hundred and fifty thousand dollars."
They laughed at him.
"Do you know," smilingly inquired the superintendent, "how much it will cost to plant and harvest such a crop?"
"I should say twenty-five dollars an acre," he replied.
"Double it," he cried.
"Very well, fifty dollars an acre," Norman agreed. "In round numbers it will cost us twenty-five thousand dollars. That leaves a profit of more than a hundred thousand, doesn\'t it?"
Again the superintendent laughed.
"And would you risk this enormous sum on one experiment? Suppose your melons would not be sweet?"
"There is no such possibility," the young enthusiast declared. "Their sweetness depends solely on two things—the quality of the seed and the quantity of rain which falls on them while they are growing. We are wasting a supreme opportunity. No rain falls in Ventura during the summer. We get our water to the roots by irrigation, not by rainfall. Get the right seed and your melons must be perfect. This is a [227]scientific fact I have seen demonstrated. Try it on a vast scale and success is sure."
They voted unanimously against the proposition. Norman insisted. The superintendent resigned and appealed to the executive council. Wolf and Catherine, Tom and Barbara advised against placing so much capital in a single enterprise.
"I\'ve got to make you rich and successful in spite of yourselves," Norman finally declared. "For the present I control these funds and I\'m going to plant this crop. So that settles it. I\'m sorry we can\'t agree."
His instantaneous decision fairly took Wolf\'s breath.
Barbara laughed and congratulated him.
"At least you have the courage of your convictions. I can\'t help admiring it."
As further opposition was useless, the order was put into execution. The superintendent finally caught the young man\'s spirit, withdrew his resignation, and undertook the work with enthusiasm.
At the end of the summer the success of the colony was astounding. The wildest prediction of the young leader fell below the facts. The crop of cantaloups averaged one hundred and five crates to the acre, and brought three dollars [228]and a half a crate. The net profit on the melons reached the enormous total of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
The men who raised the crop and added this wealth to the treasury of the colony were not slow in demanding an immediate readjustment of the scale of wages.
Two hundred and fifty men had done all the work of planting, cultivating, harvesting this crop and added ten times as much to the year\'s income as the combined labour of all the other members of the colony.
Brick-masons were receiving two dollars a day and farm-hands one dollar. The miners who were digging for gold in the mountain ranges and on the beaches were receiving five dollars a day and had added as yet not a single dollar to the wealth of the community. They had discovered gold in three new districts and thousands of dollars had been wasted in vain efforts to make it pay. The farmers protested bitterly against such waste, and demanded the equalization of wages.
Their spokesman astonished Norman by the vehemence and audacity of their demands:
"If Socialism means justice," he shouted, "now is the time to prove it! Labour creates all value. We have created one hundred and fifty thousand dollars\' worth of wealth for the colony [229]and we have received a mere pittance. If we created this wealth——"
"Wait a minute, comrades," Norman interrupted, with irritation. "Why should you continue to repeat that foolish assertion? You didn\'t create this wealth."
"Then I\'d like to know who did?" shouted the orator. "We turned the soil, placed the fertilizers, planted every seed, cultivated every vine, pulled every melon, packed and placed them on the steamer. If we didn\'t make the wealth, who did?"
"I did," the young leader declared. "I conceived the possibility............