The Three Sirens by Irving Wallace Read Free Book Online Page B

had been trained for leadership, and had survived all tests. It was a modification of Plato’s idea, as you know. Wright saw that his own system would not work on this lonely isle—where and how to set up a school to train universal-minded men in leadership?—and he conceded to the Polynesian idea of a hereditary chief.
    As to labor and property, each Polynesian kin group of relatives, while individually building and possessing its own home and furnishings, worked as a unit to grow or pick food and store it in a common family pool. Wright preferred a more stringent system, and one more communal. The Chief, he felt, should control all real property, and dole it out according to the size of each family. As a family expanded in size, so might the property. If a family contracted, so would the property. Furthermore, Wright felt, each adult male on The Three Sirens should labor four hours a day, at what best suited him, be it agriculture or fishing or carpentry or any other occupations found necessary. The products of these labors would go into a large community storehouse. Weekly, each family would take out of the storehouse a minimum amount of food and other supplies. This minimum amount would be equal for all. However, the more productive laborers of the village would exceed their minimum supplies with bonus amounts of what they preferred. In short, absolute equality, no poverty, yet a certain degree of incentive. Tefaunni readily gave in to this reform, and it was introduced in 1799.
    According to my jottings taken from Courtney’s explanation, similar compromises were effected all down the line—the best of the Polynesian system here, the best of Wright’s visionary ideas there, and sometimes two ideas were blended. Compromises were reached on education, religion, recreation, and other important matters. Wright would permit no two systems, pertaining to one subject, to exist side by side. He felt that this might invite conflict. Always, it had to be the Polynesian practice for all, or his own practice.
    There was much bargaining, of course. To control population against future famine, the Polynesians practiced infanticide. If a woman had more than one child in three years, the other children were drowned at birth. Wright found this abhorrent and got Tefaunni to make the practice tabu. On the other hand, in return Wright had to make certain concessions. He had hoped to impose halters and skirts on women, trousers only on men, but was forced to forego modesty for the more sensible Polynesian short grass skirt, without any undergarment, and bare breasts, for women, and the penis-wrappers or pubic bags, and nothing else, for the men. Only on special occasions did the women wear tapa skirts and the men wear loincloths. Courtney spoke with amusement of passages in Wright’s old journal when he recorded the embarrassment of his wife and daughters on their first appearance in the village compound, with their breasts uncovered and their twelve-inch grass skirts lifted high by the wind.
    There were numerous other compromises. The Polynesians defecated wherever they might be in the brush. Wright opposed this as unsanitary, and sought to introduce communal toilet huts, two on either side of the village. The Polynesians considered this innovation as elaborate foolishness, but humored Wright by permitting it. In turn, Tefaunni demanded that his system of punishment for crime prevail. Wright had desired to introduce banishment to a restricted ravine for all crimes. The Polynesians would not have it. For the crime of murder, they sentenced the lawbreaker to menial slavery. This meant the criminal had to become a servant in the home of the victim’s family for the difference of years between the victim’s age at the time of death and seventy years. Wright had some misgivings about the harshness of the punishment, yet saw the justice of it also, and submitted. I might add that, according to Courtney, this punishment is still being