We received on Wednesday a letter from Mr. Ripley. He puts the price of board at three dollars, being less than the usual price by one dollar. Can you inform us whether this one dollar is to be considered by us as the compensation for our labor? If not, what is the rate of compensation? And will the difference of age between us (my brother being eighteen and I twenty) make a difference in this rate? If so, what? The charge for washing is five dollars and fifty cents per quarter. I presume this will not be varied, will it? Will you also inform us whether we are to carry with us such furniture as we need or not? Also, the best mode of conveyance out of Boston. If you are unable to reply personally, will you please drop an answer to the care of George Curtis, Esq., cashier, Bank of Commerce, New York?
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effort at co-operation, but it ought to have been manifest to its supporters from the first day that the association was too limited in membership, ant included too few of the various interdependent vocations of life to justify the slightest hope of success.
Although every member of the association was to receive pay for his work, and give pay for what he got, it ought to have been apparent that neither the farm, with its short hours of unskilled labor, nor the school with its limited attendants, could possibly earn enough to sustain the enterprise and keep it out of bankruptcy.
It is worthy of note, however, that notwithstanding its insufficiency of capital and its paucity of production, the association sustained itself and perhaps gained a little on its initial strength for about five years.
The simplicity of life and the insufficiency of the charges at Brook Farm are well indicated by a letter from George W. Curtis and his brother Burrill, belonging to a well-to-do New York family, written in a beautiful hand to Dana in March, 1842.
It runs as follows:
Harper and Brothers, New York and London, 1907.
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