Sara A. Underwood

“ The English Communists, the first considerable body in England who ever professed Materialism, and the only party, perhaps, that never possessed it, made their first practical settlement in Hampshire, at a time when society was hard and cold, taxation heavy, the people ignorant, and workingmen homeless. Robert Owen—the first to bring a breath of courage upon those evil days with which the present generation opened—and his disciples sect up a propagandism, and subscribed money to create that situation in which it should be impossible for men to be depraved or poor. ”

“ In this last-mentioned lecture I urged that a state of society be instituted in which youth and maiden should be better educated than they now are, so that both may better understand themselves and what is requisite to their happiness in their intended partners in marriage; in which they should be educated for marriage, and have more direct moral education than they now have; in which they should be taught that the one enduring, wisely and virtuously formed marriage would produce the greatest amount of happiness that could arise from any union of man and woman ”

“ But presently, as they found how strongly she had fortified herself with pertinent illustrations and arguments, how earnestly and convincingly she spoke, and began to reflect for themselves upon how much truth there was in what she said, they began to desire that others might hear this young apostle of reform, and so become also awakened to the welfare of themselves, and, through themselves, of the human race. ”