c gatherings took up most of the day's
work. Convening meetings and arguing thereat was found much more
interesting than toiling in the hot sun; so practically little work was
done.

A Frenchman had a little farm close by and was making a small fortune
from it for himself, whilst thirty-five Australians next to him could
not make a living for each other! So much for the advantages of
Socialistic co-operation!

Soon the "New Australians" had to get busy to prevent starvation. One of
the many authoritative writers said:--

A brief but brilliant span of existence may be attained by a
Socialistic State living on the capital of its predecessors, but it
soon runs through the capital and goes out like a spent squib and
leaves a nasty smell.

(New South Wales also found this out ten years later.)

Instead of the "New Australians" getting busy and making the profits
that awaited the exploitation of the wonderful timber on their area,
they looked for easy work and fancied they found it in the cultivation
of ramie fibre.

The fibre failed; money was being exhausted; the leaders were faced with
two propositions. They had either to set the people at productive labor,
such as timber-getting, or raise money somehow, somewhere. They followed
the latter as being the easier task. So they sold to an outside
capitalist the exclusive right for three years of cutting timber on the
area. They sold it for an absurdly small consideration, to find later
that they were also prevented cutting wood for their own uses!

Although Lane had started a new colony, he made but two innovations. He
ruled that as woman's only sphere was in the home, he would abolish the
woman's vote. His other innovation for an ideal Socialist community was
the employment of cheap native labor. He thus revived the "wicked
capitalistic idea of cheap--nigger labor."

It was also found that the inclusion of the native element had a serious
effect upon the morality of the Socialists. There was a remarkable
increase of half-caste children without the formality of marriage with
the Paraguayians.

Communism was still advocated, yet to the communistic dining table each
man brought his private bottle of treacle, which he stowed away between
meals under his pillow or in some other secret hiding place. Children
grew up godless and ignorant and--Lane disappeared!

The original population was reduced to 22 men, 17 women and 51 children.

It was decided to abando