Gravity, solid gravity, was one of the basic elements of
his nature. When, however, he lighted his enthusiastic lamp, and his
warm heart gushed forth in song or story--I think I hear him singing
now, "A man's a man for a' that!"--he carried his audience with him.
The "Omniarch," as Mr. Ryckman was called, was a man of family, his
short, sprightly, nervous little wife acting as hostess and attending
to the lady visitors.
Many visitors asked the question of him, "Mr. Ryckman, do the Brook
Farmers hold all their property in common?"
With a bland smile he would say to them: "Certainly not; the idea of a
Community, as it is generally understood, is a society that owns or
holds all the property or capital of its members as its own, in its own
corporate right--that no one can remove, but everyone can use portions
of at will, or in turn. If the ideas of the first projectors were not
all definite on this point, we now stand boldly as champions of
individual property. It is one of our watchwords. For what is property?
It is but the extension of the individual; wings to fly with; hands to
work with; dried labor; labor's product laid away for future use, to
bless oneself with. It is the bottom and foundation of material
society, for none exists without it, and the greater the amount,
distributed fairly and justly, the greater the power and strength of
the society that holds it.
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