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DUKE UNIVERSITY 
 
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 The Glenn Negley Collection 
 of Utopian Literature 
 
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 http://www.archive.org/details/greatawakeningstOOmerr 
 
The Great Awakening 
 
 ^be Store ot tbc ^vventis^eecono Century 
 
 BY 
 
 ALBERT ADAMS MERRILL 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 George Book Publishing Co. 
 
 1899 
 
Copyright, 1S99 
 
 By a. a. MERRILL 
 
 AU rights reserved 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 C. J. PETERS & SON 
 
 TyJ>ozra^hers 
 
 iplimpton ^rtB3 
 
 H. M. PLIMPTON i. CO., PRINTERS i BINDERS, 
 NORWOOD, MASS., U.S.A. 
 

 XLo /IBb /Bbotber, 
 
 WHO WAS PERHAPS THE 
 
 ONLY ONE WHO ENCOURAGED ME 
 
 To Undertake the Study of the Great Social Questions 
 Which Now Confront Us, 
 
 THE SOLUTION OF WHICH 
 
 IS NECESSARY 
 
 TO THE HAPPINESS OF HUMANITY. 
 
 I 
 
 AFFECTIONATELY 
 
 DEDICATE THIS BOOK. 
 
"Thought is the creator and vivifier of all human affairs. 
 Actions, facts, and external manifestations of every kind, often 
 triumph for a while; but it is the progress of ideas which 
 ultimately determines the progress of the world. Unless 
 these are changed, every other change is superficial, and 
 every improvement is precarious." 
 
 « * * Hi * * :•< 
 
 "But when it was once clearly understood that gold and 
 silver are not wealth, but are merely the representatives of 
 wealth; when men began to see that wealth itself solely 
 consists of the value which skill and labor can add to the raw 
 material, and that money is of no possible use to a nation 
 except to measure and circulate their riches; when these 
 great truths were recognized, all the old notions respecting 
 the balance of trade, and the supreme importance of the 
 precious metals, at once fell to the ground." 
 
 Henry Thomas Buckle. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. I Find Myself in the Twenty-second Cen- 
 tury 9 
 
 II. Wherein I Learn of the Birth of the Money 
 
 Republic 19 
 
 III. My Friend Entertains Me with a Novel Finan- 
 cial System, and Contrasts It with the 
 Barbarous One in Force in My Time . . 29 
 
 IV. We Enjoy a Bicycle Ride 39 
 
 V. Which Treats of the Oft-predicted Revolu- 
 tion Which Finally Occurred in the Year 
 
 2021 51 
 
 VI. A Parable Is Always Interesting, and This One 
 
 Is Instructive 71 
 
 VII. Some New Inventions 93 
 
 VIII. In Which the Head of the Money Bureau, 
 Mrs. Bronson, Gives Me Much Informa- 
 tion 105 
 
 IX. Which Tells of My First Ride in a Flying 
 
 Machine 118 
 
 X. In Which the Economical Errors of My Day 
 
 Are Explained to Me 130 
 
 XI. I Am Interested in the Sale of Commodities . 156 
 XII. Nineteenth-century Theories in Practice . . 169 
 7 
 
Contents 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 XIII. Contains a Description of the Modern College 
 
 Game 189 
 
 XIV. A Thousand Mile Trip in a Flying Machine . 199 
 XV. I Learn to Fly 222 
 
 XVI. The Mysteries of Finance Unravelled . . . 243 
 XVII. Contains a Discussion on Repudiation, Which 
 
 May Repay the Reader of It .... 255 
 XVIII. Contains Much Rapid Transit and Some Eco- 
 nomics 268 
 
 XIX. In Which I Am Introduced to Many More 
 
 Marvellous Inventions 284 
 
 XX. The Last Stand of the Eighteenth Regular 
 
 Infantry of the American Empire . . . 300 
 
 XXI. Contains a Little Matter Touching Trusts . .316 
 
 XXII. In Which the Relation Between the Increase 
 
 of Population and Industry is Treated 
 
 from the Malthusian Standpoint . . . 330 
 
 XXIII. In Which the Narrative Closes 340 
 
The Great Awakening 
 
 The 
 Story of the Twenty-second Century 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 I FIND MYSELF IN THE TWENTY-SECOND 
 CENTURY. 
 
 In the following pages I have endeavored 
 to relate as accurately as possible my experi- 
 ences with Professor Harding, who was bom 
 in Boston in the year 2153, was highly edu- 
 cated and thoroughly grounded in the econom- 
 ics and history of the time. 
 
 You must know that I had lived in the 
 nineteenth century — the year of my death 
 being 1901 — but that, owing to some strange 
 mistake, the reincarnation of my soul had 
 been neglected, and when I appeared again 
 on earth, my body was already mature and 
 full-growTi. Thus a soul, an intelligence used 
 to nineteenth century conditions, found itself 
 confronted with the civilization of the twenty- 
 
lO The Great Awakening 
 
 second century. In ordinary reincarnations 
 the soul enters the body of a babe, and early 
 training destroys most of its knowledge of the 
 past while preparing it for the new life ; but 
 while I knew nothing of my surroundings — 
 the great space of time following my death 
 being a perfect blank — my knowledge was 
 wholly confined to the conditions of my former 
 existence. Thus I would have been unable 
 to fit myself to my new life, had it not been 
 for my friend the professor, who kindly took 
 me in hand, educated me, and put me on my 
 feet, as it were, so that now, as teacher of 
 mediaeval history, I am able to be a useful 
 member of society. 
 
 On the morning of June 3, 2199, I was 
 awakened by the playing of a phonograph, and 
 on opening my eyes, found myself in a large 
 and beautifully appointed chamber. As you 
 may imagine, my astonishment was great, for 
 as I recalled my thoughts I remembered dis- 
 tinctly going to sleep in a small, dark room 
 very different from this, and I remembered 
 the pain I had suffered the day before. Yes, 
 I was sick, very sick. I remembered the doc- 
 tor, the nurse, the anxious faces of my par- 
 ents. But now all was different. What was 
 the meaning of this change .'' Where was I ? 
 
The End of a Long Sleep 1 1 
 
 Had 1 been carried to some other house, to 
 some hospital ? Was I still sick ? I did not 
 suffer ; on the contrary I felt in the best of 
 health ; and then, as the dismal thoughts of 
 the weeks of suffering I had undergone came 
 back to me, I concluded I must be dreaming. 
 Well, thought I, if by dreaming I can still the 
 pain which tortured me, let me but dream 
 forever ! 
 
 I lay quietly on my back, and began to look 
 around the room. At my left was a large 
 window looking out upon a park filled with 
 beautiful large maples, their branches moving 
 softly with the gentle breeze ; across the room 
 a large fireplace met my gaze, with a mantel 
 surmounting, on which there was a clock and 
 some vases, and I distinctly heard the clock 
 ticking. A most marvellous dream, thought 
 I. As my eyes wandered about, now stopping 
 to admire some pictures, now examining curi- 
 ously some article of furniture wholly new to 
 me, a little door above the dial of the clock 
 opened, a miniature head was pushed out, and 
 a soft, delightful voice said pleasantly, " It is 
 now ten o'clock." 
 
 " Merciful heavens ! " thought I, "what is 
 the matter with me } Am I crazy ? " And I 
 jumped up in bed, and began to pinch myself, 
 
12 The Great Awakening 
 
 but all to no purpose. The little clock kept 
 on ticking, the pictures never stirred, and the 
 fireplace was still at the foot of the bed, while 
 outside the trees were waving their branches 
 to and fro. I was bewildered, and while gaz- 
 ing out of the window, trying to collect my 
 thoughts, a man in some sort of a machine 
 flew by through the air. 
 
 That was enough. With one jump I was 
 at the window, and there what a sight met 
 my eyes ! Before me was a beautiful park 
 filled with trees and lovely flower beds, to the 
 left stretched a boulevard lined on either side 
 with large, handsome residences, its centre 
 marked with broad, smooth walks edged with 
 flowers, and on this boulevard many carriages 
 were passing, but there were no horses ; and 
 above, in the air, men and women could be 
 seen riding on odd, kite-like machines. My 
 astonishment was complete. I left the win- 
 dow, and for several minutes I paced up and 
 down wholly absorbed in the question which 
 now completely occupied my mind. What 
 had happened, and where was I ? 
 
 How long a time I passed in this condition 
 I do not know, but as I reached one end of 
 the room, my attention was called to a calen- 
 dar which was on a desk. I took it up and 
 
The End of a Long Sleep 13 
 
 examined it. I read, "June 3, 215 New Era, 
 A.D. 2199" What could it mean — 215 
 New Era, a.d. 2199? Had I died and been 
 bom again ? Was it really the year 2 1 99 ? 
 I had not much time to soliloquize, for the 
 door opened suddenly, and two gentlemen 
 entered. These gentlemen were Professor 
 Harding and Dr. Coburn. 
 
 They greeted me pleasantly, asking after 
 my health, and sat down to converse. Not 
 knowing at that time the true state of affairs, 
 their conversation was puzzling to me, and I 
 will not now repeat it as it probably would 
 be uninteresting to you, and also as a full 
 statement of my case is giv^en in the Howard 
 Medical Journal, vol. xxviii, p. 173; but it 
 will suffice to say that the experiment of Dr. 
 Coburn on my body previous to my reincarna- 
 tion was very successful. All those who are 
 acquainted with the case will remember that 
 the body which I at present occupy formerly 
 belonged to a certain Richard Pangloss, who 
 went insane. The operation which was per- 
 formed on his brain was the means of the 
 transmigration of his soul and the reincar- 
 nation of my own. The operating surgeon. 
 Dr. Coburn, did not at the time realize what 
 had happened, thinking simply that Pangloss 
 
14 The Great Awakening 
 
 had become sane again ; and indeed, I have 
 had great difficulty in convincing people of 
 the truth. It is a most astonishing thing, I 
 will admit, yet my knowledge of the nine- 
 teenth century is so full and complete that 
 this is in itself proof of my statement, and it 
 is the only proof I can give. 
 
 For some days after my first meeting with 
 the doctor I was kept in the chamber in 
 which I had been awakened, and served by 
 the doctor and the professor ; and during this 
 time explanations were made by both sides, 
 until my friends were prone to believe my 
 statement, that is, that I was born in 1874 
 and died in 190 1. It was, however, deemed 
 advisable that this fact should not be gen- 
 erally known, and the professor, who lived 
 alone, undertook to care for me until such 
 time as I could obtain some self-supporting 
 work. It was given out that Pangloss had 
 survived the operation, but that his mind was 
 a total blank, and that Professor Harding had 
 undertaken to educate him ; and it was in this 
 manner that I became known to the public. 
 
 My first few weeks at the professor's home 
 in Boston were mainly spent indoors, while 
 he enlightened me as to the present condition 
 of affairs, present manners and customs ; he 
 
The End of a Long Sleep 15 
 
 also instructed me in the modern English lan- 
 guage, which I found differed greatly from 
 the old EngHsh I spoke, being simplified 
 and changed in many of its idioms and con- 
 jugations ; and I learned from him of the 
 growth of the movement towards a universal 
 language, which I believe is used wholly now, 
 and which growth was started by a body of 
 Americans in my own time. Being an Amer- 
 ican, I was proud of this fact. 
 
 The professor's house was not large, but was 
 very well built and handsomely furnished. It 
 did not differ greatly from many of the houses 
 of the well-to-do people of my time, the only 
 difference noticeable being the very extensive 
 use of electricity. The house was lighted 
 from top to bottom by large globes set in the 
 wall and ceiling and handsomely decorated, 
 and, upon turning a button, these globes gave 
 off a brilliant and steady white light. Another 
 feature not in existence in my time was the 
 telephone system between the rooms, which 
 astonished me ; for in the nineteenth century 
 one had to hold the receiver to the ear and 
 talk close to the transmitter, while with the 
 present system the conversation is so loud 
 and distinct that neither receiver nor trans- 
 mitter is required, the sound being audible in 
 
1 6 The Great Awakening 
 
 any part of the room. This surely is a great 
 advance. The use of electricity in the kitchen 
 also surprised me. Cooking, washing, drying, 
 and ironing were all accomplished by this 
 agent, and the saving in time and temper, 
 the lack of dust and noise, were very evident. 
 The library, in which the professor and I 
 had most of our discussions — and we had 
 many long and warm debates, which was to 
 be expected between two men, one of the 
 nineteenth and the other of the twenty-second 
 century — was a roomy and well-lighted apart- 
 ment. This room particularly pleased me. 
 There was on one side a fireplace of grand 
 proportions, with a beautiful mantel above, on 
 which were some exquisite pieces done in 
 marble. The walls were a dark red, and the 
 woodwork was finished in white. Bookshelves 
 occupied the sides of the room, and here the 
 professor had a part of his library. There 
 were here about nine thousand volumes. In 
 the centre stood a table with an electric read- 
 ing lamp on it — a lamp which gave almost no 
 heat, and threw all its light downwards, away 
 from the reader's eyes ; while below, on a shelf, 
 stood a neat little ash-tray, cigar and pipe 
 holder, with all the other paraphernalia which 
 delight and comfort the smoker. 
 
The End of a Long Sleep 1 7 
 
 ^ The dining room, which opened from the 
 library, was also large and airy, and the walls 
 of this room were covered with embossed 
 leather to within three feet of the floor, the 
 rest of the space being filled with fine oak 
 paneling; the ceiling was crossed by heavy 
 oak beams beautifully carved, which cut it 
 into square spaces, in each of which there was 
 a glass tube molded in the shape of a rosette, 
 through which a current of electricity played, 
 turning night into day. The sideboard was 
 massive, with but little embellishment, and in 
 this it matched the general tone of the room, 
 which reminded me rather of ancient than 
 modern architecture; and behind the glass 
 doors there rested many a piece of delicate, 
 dainty china. The professor, I saw at once, 
 was a man of taste. 
 
 Now it is at the professor's solicitation that 
 I undertake to tell my experiences with him. 
 He wishes his fellow-citizens of the twenty- 
 second century to know how their system of 
 government appears to one fresh from the 
 nineteenth century. It is for you, therefore, 
 that I write these words. My trip through 
 your country, the many interesting sights I 
 saw, the pleasurable experiences I had, and 
 the new sensations I received upon travelling 
 
1 8 The Great Awakening 
 
 through the air — a thing I had long dreamed 
 of doing — may be interesting to you as being 
 written by one to whom they are extremely 
 novel ; and at the risk of writing much which 
 I know will appear to my readers as a matter 
 of course, I have deemed it best (and Profes- 
 sor Harding supports me in this decision) to 
 tell everything just as it happened in its reg- 
 ular order. 
 
 One thing only I beg of you, gentle reader, 
 and that is, that you will remember that this 
 little book is written in the hope that from it 
 we may be able to learn something, even if 
 it is but little, which will help increase our 
 scanty stock of knowledge. It may be that 
 the people of the twenty-second century have 
 nothing to learn from such an uncivilized 
 fellow as I am, yet I cannot but think that 
 the contrast between the nineteenth and the 
 twenty-second century methods of thought is 
 instructive to all, and this is my excuse for 
 writing ; therefore, on with my story — the 
 story of the twenty-second century. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 WHEREIN I LEARN OF THE BIRTH OF THE 
 MONEY REPUBLIC, 
 
 Seated one evening in the library after 
 dinner, I broached the subject of change of 
 opinion regarding economical questions, in 
 order to draw out the professor and gain for 
 myself a more thorough knowledge of pres- 
 ent views. 
 
 " Your system seems so well to have solved 
 the problem which confronted humanity," I 
 said, " that I cannot understand it. Now, in 
 my time we considered the social system so 
 complex that we generally laughed at the man 
 who said he could remedy it by changing 
 one factor. I had often heard it stated that 
 although many men had thought deeply on 
 the subject of economics, they could not 
 come to any conclusion which fitted and ex- 
 plained all the facts." 
 
 " Yes } " said the professor. " Well, you 
 know that all students of economics in your 
 
20 The Great Awakening 
 
 time were not deep thinkers. In my hbrary 
 I have the economic books of your century, 
 and they lead me to beheve that the depth to 
 which your professors went in this subject 
 was dependent on the poHtics of the capital 
 which furnished their salaries." 
 
 "Well, well, professor," said I, laughing, 
 " I do not know but you are right." 
 
 " Towards the last of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury the changes in the coinage of the vari- 
 ous nations of the world caused a great deal 
 of attention to be devoted to this subject, 
 and it was this fact which led to a radical 
 change in society. You remember probably 
 that the question was between bimetallism and 
 monometallism. There were in the United 
 States some men who, in studying up this 
 question, were convinced that society existed 
 upon an unjust basis, and they believed that 
 that unjust basis was the current theory of 
 finance. You will, of course, remember that 
 your circulating medium consisted primarily 
 of gold and a certain amount of credit money 
 based on this gold and redeemed with this 
 gold. Now it is evident, said these thinkers, 
 that this is entirely wrong and unjust ; for no 
 matter how well a certain amount of circu- 
 lating medium may handle trade at one time. 
 
The Money Republic 21 
 
 if trade increases, the amount of medium 
 must increase, or else it cannot handle the 
 increased trade." 
 
 " Hold on, do not go so fast. These things 
 are so new to me that it takes time for me to 
 fully comprehend them." 
 
 "Well," said the professor, "what shall I 
 explain .-' You surely understand that money 
 is simply a medium of exchange." 
 
 " Why, no ; it has a double function. It is 
 also a measure of values." 
 
 "There you are in error," said the pro- 
 fessor. " No commodity or substance can 
 justly be a measure or standard of values." 
 
 "Why, I do not understand," said I. "How 
 can you measure values except by comparing 
 the purchasing power of one substance with 
 that of another which is accepted as a true 
 and never changing standard.? And when we 
 read in the market reports of a fall in price in 
 any substance, how do we know what it means 
 unless we accept some standard commodity 
 like gold ? " 
 
 " Let me illustrate the foolishness of your 
 last statement by a simple example. Suppose 
 there is in a room a thermometer, and that 
 you, a slave, are required to keep the tempera- 
 ture up to 100'', we will say, by working at a 
 
22 The Great Awakening 
 
 furnace. Every now and then you run to the 
 thermometer to watch the temperature, which 
 keeps mysteriously falHng. You cannot un- 
 derstand it. You work harder and harder, 
 but the temperature keeps going down, and 
 you are at a loss to comprehend it, until it 
 dawns upon you that your master, by his 
 manipulations outside of the room, is rais- 
 ing the scale by which the temperature is 
 measured, for the satisfaction of making you 
 work. This is especially applicable to your 
 times, if we remember that the man who 
 manipulates the scale is the capitalist, that is, 
 the man who deals in money. His object in 
 manipulating the scale is this : in general he 
 is a creditor, and it is important to him that 
 the debtor be kept in debt as long as possible, 
 for the longer the debt lasts, the more inter- 
 est the creditor gets. So he will raise the 
 scale gradually, and when the temperature 
 climbs up to it, up goes the scale again ; so 
 that the poor debtor, although he has paid the 
 debt three and four times over actually, yet, 
 measured by the scale, the debt is never paid. 
 So you can see that, unless the creditor is will- 
 ing, the debtor can never pay the debt. If 
 the latter should suggest that perhaps the 
 creditor has raised the scale, there would be 
 
The Money Republic 23 
 
 an awful cry. Repudiation it would be called. 
 This was the condition of affairs in your time. 
 The moneyed power was on the throne. Yet 
 there were some men who saw the fallacy of 
 this thing." 
 
 " Why, professor, you throw a new light on 
 the subject. It never struck me before that 
 gold, a standard, might appreciate, and yet it 
 evidently can, for value being a ratio which 
 one can express by a fraction, it may be 
 changed by changing either the numerator or 
 the denominator. Well, in the future I shall 
 be more careful in thinking of these things, 
 but as you express it, it seems perfectly 
 simple and easy to understand by any man 
 who uses his brains." 
 
 "It is," said the professor, "but in politics 
 a voter of your century never used his own 
 brains. He always borrowed those of the 
 editor of his pet newspaper. Now you see 
 that the fallacy of this scheme of finance lies 
 in limiting the issue of redemption money to 
 the amount of one commodity. Of course it 
 is immaterial which commodity is used, as the 
 fallacy is in using only one." 
 
 "But," said I, "how else can you do it? 
 You cannot call a bushel of wheat a dollar, 
 or a dozen eggs fifty cents ; a man cannot 
 carry these things in his pocket." 
 
24 The Great Awakening 
 
 " No," said the professor, " nor does the 
 man carry the gold in his pocket. In your 
 century and in ours he carries paper in his 
 pocket ; only, in your times the amount that 
 could be issued was dependent upon the 
 amount of gold in existence, while in our times 
 it is dependent on the amount of wealth in 
 existence. In one case the supply is limited, 
 therefore its value as a commodity is con- 
 stantly appreciating, as is shown by a constant 
 fall in prices ; while in the other case the 
 supply is unlimited, as it depends upon the 
 amount of wealth, and therefore it has no 
 value as a commodity, so that it makes the 
 best possible medium of exchange." 
 
 " But, professor, in speaking of falling 
 prices, you must admit that it shows progress 
 — shows that we can now make useful com- 
 modities much cheaper than we could one 
 hundred years before." 
 
 " Right here, in order not to get confused, 
 we must go slowly," said the professor. " If 
 you only mean that we can make useful 
 things with less expenditure of labor, your 
 statement is true ; but if you mean that be- 
 cause of this fact their worth has decreased, 
 then you are wrong. The worth of a hat is 
 the same, whether it costs $io or $2. You 
 
The Money Republic 25 
 
 confound the worth of a thing, which depends 
 on its inherent characteristics, with the mar- 
 ket value, which depends on the effective 
 demand and supply. As the effective de- 
 mand is wholly dependent on the amount of 
 money in circulation, it is evident that the 
 capitalists in your day controlled market val- 
 ues. Now some of your greatest statesmen 
 declared over and over again that your hard 
 times were entirely due to overproduction, 
 which was an absurdity, taking into consid- 
 eration that at the same time people were 
 starving. It is only explained when you un- 
 derstand that it was the effective demand that 
 was stopped by the capitalists for their own 
 benefit. The amazing thing to me in all this 
 is that the majority believed the way the cap- 
 italists did and actually voted for the so-called 
 honest or hard money, which meant appre- 
 ciated money ; and as we look back at the 
 century we are also amazed to see that people 
 thought it a sign of progress to see prices 
 fall ; and we find but few men going deeply 
 into the subject, or else they would have seen 
 what one man saw very clearly, and that is, 
 that with progress comes poverty. This is 
 such an evident fact in all growth of the past 
 that it is astonishing that most men could 
 overlook it. But to return. 
 
26 The Great Awakening 
 
 " There were, I say, a few men who under- 
 stood the true conditions and resolved to 
 change them. They gathered a large number 
 around their standard and met in Chicago in 
 June of the year 1904. There were present 
 about five hundred men of all classes, and they 
 undertook to discuss the various methods of 
 testing their own theories. The meeting 
 lasted for three weeks, and nothing was set- 
 tled. The various platforms had not met with 
 enough approval to warrant deciding upon any 
 one, and until the last week no understanding 
 had been reached. During the last of the 
 meetings some one suggested that they start a 
 gov^ernment of their own, which plan was dis- 
 cussed by those present ; and although it did 
 not receive a unanimous vote, still there were 
 a great number who were in favor of it. At 
 the end of the conference, while most of the 
 members went home feeling that the time had 
 not come when concerted action could produce 
 good results, there was a little band of two 
 hundred or more resolved on emigrating to 
 some foreign land and starting a government 
 on their own plans. During the following 
 year their plans matured, their number in- 
 creased to six or seven hundred, and they 
 departed from America for Africa on May 7, 
 
The Money Republic 27 
 
 1905, and arrived in sixteen days at their 
 destination, which was a strip of land on 
 the western coast. The main points of 
 their constitution, aside from their theory 
 of finance, were that they had only two 
 branches of government, executive and legis- 
 lative. These men claimed that a judiciary 
 was not needed where scientific and just laws 
 existed, holding that disputes never could be 
 hot enough not to be settled out of court, as 
 it were, unless it were a matter of life or 
 death, starvation or plenty ; and as they con- 
 sidered that these conditions could only exist 
 where there was a poor scheme of finance, 
 they judged, and rightly, there was no need 
 of this department. 
 
 " It was written in their laws that all dis- 
 putes should be considered settled when 
 judged by three men, one to be chosen by 
 each of the contestants, these two to choose 
 a third. Their legislative branch was much 
 like your house of representatives and they 
 had no senate. They had a very strong 
 power of taxation, which they enforced ; and 
 yet no tax, in the sense you would understand 
 it, was collected. You must remember that 
 the flying machine, large enough to carry five 
 or six hundred pounds, was in existence at 
 
28 The Great Awakening 
 
 this time, and that its use was very general. 
 These machines were cheap, being made of 
 wood, steel tubing, and cloth, and were run 
 by small gas motors. In our museum I will 
 show you a picture of what we consider the 
 primitive machine. It consisted of super- 
 posed aeroplanes driven forward by propellers, 
 or in some cases by small flapping wings. 
 These machines, being in existence at the 
 time of the founding of the colony, were a 
 strong factor in its growth. Many times they 
 were used for the defence of the nation. 
 
 " Now we see that the radical difference 
 between this and other nations was in its 
 financial system. As nations grew older, pov- 
 erty which had not existed before, showed its 
 head, and many wondered if it would be the 
 same with this nation." 
 
 Our conversation at this point was inter- 
 rupted by a call from Dr. Coburn, and it so 
 happened that it was some days before the 
 professor found time to take up the story 
 again. Meanwhile I busied myself sightsee- 
 ing on my bicycle, and the district, with its 
 fine residences and boulevards, pleased me 
 greatly. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 MY FRIEND ENTERTAINS ME WITH A NOVEL 
 FINANCIAL SYSTEM, AND CONTRASTS IT 
 WITH THE BARBAROUS ONE IN FORCE IN 
 MY TIME. 
 
 " Well, my friend, have you been enjoying 
 yourself since I saw you last .-* " the professor 
 asked me one day after luncheon, as we again 
 adjourned to the library for a quiet chat. 
 
 "You may be sure of it," said I, "your 
 district here is so well planned, your streets 
 are so beautiful ; but do you know, I miss the 
 horse." 
 
 " Yes, that is to be expected. Of course 
 
 in your day he was a necessary animal, and 
 
 contributed not a little to your comfort and 
 
 convenience ; but at the same time he also 
 
 did his share towards the progress of disease. 
 
 He is practically extinct now, only a few 
 
 being found in the zoological gardens, for of 
 
 course there was no use for him when we had 
 
 invented our little compact engines and mo- 
 29 
 
30 The Great Awakening 
 
 tors, so there were none bred, and the race 
 died out very quickly." 
 
 " I must say, I did not enjoy the production 
 last night at the Esplanade Theatre. You 
 know, professor, I am slightly old-fashioned, 
 belonging to the last generation but twelve, 
 and I could not understand the sentiment." 
 
 " It is not to be expected. In your day 
 there must always be a villain in the play, 
 lovers who are parted, some heroine who is 
 despoiled of her wealth. Now, you know, in 
 our day those people don't exist, simply be- 
 cause the system which bred them does not 
 exist. Why, it is some ten or fifteen years 
 now since I have seen any revival of such 
 plays. As you cannot understand our drama, 
 so we cannot understand yours. You know 
 that the ancient Greek drama was rarely 
 played to your audiences, for in your time it 
 was action that was wanted ; the Greek plays 
 are more displays of oratory, as ours are now." 
 
 " It was, however, admirably well staged and 
 ably managed. But let us return to our inter- 
 esting conversation of last week. Do you 
 remember where we were .-• You were telling 
 me of the rise of the new republic." 
 
 " Oh, yes," said the professor ; " I never 
 forget that history. The growth of that re- 
 
Contrasts 31 
 
 public did more for humanity than any other 
 movement has done since the change from 
 Pagan to Christian rehgion. That is a period 
 in the history of the world that our children 
 have to understand before all others. 
 
 " Let me see, I believe our little band of 
 colonists had just got to Africa — was not 
 that where we were ? Yes, I thought so. 
 Their first thought was to provide food and 
 shelter, and as they were all enthusiasts there 
 were no shirks. They worked and exchanged 
 by barter for the first year or two until 
 they had accumulated some wealth, and then 
 they had a meeting to start their scheme of 
 finance. The basis of their scheme lay in the 
 fact that the total amount of money must 
 increase as the wealth does, and not be limited 
 to the increase of any one commodity, so that 
 the amount of money issued at first was of 
 little importance so long as the future issue 
 was regulated by the increase of wealth. Their 
 first issue was therefore made ^100 per capita. 
 We now come to an important step. The 
 question which they next settled was to whom 
 and in what proportion it should be issued. 
 
 " This was a difficult point and caused much 
 discussion, for the question whether or no ten 
 hours labor in one trade deserved more than 
 
32 The Great Awakening 
 
 the same time spent in another, arose immedi- 
 ately. They argued it for some time in their 
 little town meetings, but finally decided to 
 divide equally all money issued by the govern- 
 ment, and passed a law to that effect. The 
 principal arguments in favor were: first, since 
 they had left America to escape that state of 
 affairs which fostered the growth of privileges 
 based upon the private ownership of land and 
 capital, to divide unequally would tend imme- 
 diately to produce those differences of oppor- 
 tunity from which they had just escaped ; and 
 second, that as the distribution of existing 
 wealth was the main factor which determined 
 the future production of wealth, and as the 
 future production of wealth would never be so 
 great as under absolutely equal division of 
 existing wealth, to divide unequally would tend 
 to prevent the production of wealth. This 
 last argument is an economic law not known 
 in your time, some of your statesmen even 
 going so far as to say that distribution had 
 nothing to do with production. Now, of 
 course it is practically impossible to divide 
 wealth equally, so they did the next best 
 thing — divided money equally. 
 
 " They had now taken their first step to 
 test the system. Their pieces of paper money 
 
Contrasts 33 
 
 had written on their face the words, 'The 
 Government of the Money Repubhc (that was 
 its name) guarantees this bill to be exchange 
 able for any or all commodities to the amount 
 of one dollar,' and on the back, 'This bill is 
 legal tender for all debts public or private of 
 whatever nature.' The first issue was all in 
 ones ; but as wealth increased, there were twos, 
 fives, tens, twenties, and so on, issued, besides 
 smaller subsidiary issues. Upon the day of 
 their first issue the time of the second issue 
 was discussed, and it was voted to make it a 
 year later. The meeting then broke up, each 
 man holding his pieces of paper which, while 
 of no value in themselves, were the capitaliza- 
 tion of his labor. He knew that the govern- 
 ment was strong enough to enforce its stamp, 
 or, in other words, that a majority of the 
 people believed in the system ; and he knew 
 that the currency was on a firm basis since, 
 being issued on all forms of wealth, it was not 
 dependent upon the quantity of any one form. 
 Since all forms of labor could be capitalized, 
 he knew that the way to get rich — that is, 
 to get some of the medium of exchange — 
 was to produce wealth. 
 
 " In your day the way to get rich was not 
 to produce wealth, but to take what there was 
 
34 The Great Awakening 
 
 in some one's else pocket and put it in your 
 own. This idea was so prevalent that the 
 number of actual producers compared to the 
 whole number of consumers was very small, 
 and therefore perforce those producers worked 
 the hardest and the longest. In your time a 
 banker would come into his office from the 
 stock exchange and, rubbing his hands, would 
 say, ' That was a fine stroke of work — 
 ;^ 10,000 in fifteen minutes.' All this man 
 had done was to transfer some wealth from a 
 number of other people's pockets to his own 
 pocket. This state of things bred a race of 
 men who were cutthroats. I do not mean 
 this literally, of course, but I mean that a vast 
 number of your brainy men, young and old, 
 were engaged in the pleasant occupation of 
 forcing each other to the wall. While this 
 was going on, the laborer, the real producer 
 of all this wealth, for the control of which all 
 your men of brains were striving, got only a 
 bare living. His condition was almost as low 
 as was possible for existence. He received 
 no attention except such as he could force 
 by trade unions. I will admit, however, that 
 periodically at elections he was much petted 
 — for his vote. 
 
 " This condition of affairs was so universal 
 
Contrasts 35 
 
 throughout the world that, in speaking of it 
 now, we call it the Age of Degeneration, be- 
 cause men had degenerated from producing 
 to controlling wealth. This could not have 
 happened if your nation had had a good finan- 
 cial system. Your circulating medium being 
 one commodity, its quantity was easily con- 
 trolled ; and since it was that medium which 
 purchased all commodities, the aim in your 
 day was to control that medium. When we 
 look back, we see that there was only one 
 man who appreciated fully the fact that with 
 progress came poverty. His medicine for 
 the disease was a single tax on land values. 
 He accepted concentration as a condition of 
 progress, and saw clearly that, with that con- 
 dition, private property in land wrought ter- 
 rible havoc. Let us now go deeper than he 
 did and examine the case. 
 
 " Is concentration a condition of progress ? 
 The answer is yes, in those countries which 
 have a bad theory of finance ; no, in countries 
 having a scientific theory of finance — that 
 is, a theory in which money is based upon all 
 commodities and not on one. Under the 
 gold standard system, the amount of money 
 being limited, it became of the utmost impor- 
 tance to be where the gold was, in order that 
 
36 The Great Awakening 
 
 you might be on hand to take advantage im- 
 mediately of any slip of your adversary, so 
 that you could transfer some of his wealth 
 into your pocket. Nations became bodies 
 of men absolutely intent on picking each 
 others' pockets. The cry was, money, money, 
 money ! Those who were the smartest in 
 picking pockets with neatness and dispatch 
 were looked up to as models, and formed a 
 moneyed aristocracy before which other poor 
 foolish mortals humbly bowed. In your an- 
 cient city of London, the centre of trade and 
 commerce of the world, the capital of a king- 
 dom under the most perfect sway of the gold 
 standard, people were huddled together like 
 sheep in a fold. Wealth was constantly be- 
 fore them, from morning till night did they 
 toil, and yet what was their reward .-' Noth- 
 ing but a bare living. Do you wonder that 
 bomb throwers, dynamiters, assassins, fanatics, 
 existed ? Do you wonder that men questioned 
 the principles on which society was built ? 
 Pain in our bodies means disease. To an 
 economist the existence of destructionists, 
 nihilists, means disease. In a system founded 
 on just laws, such things could not be. 
 If we shun the warnings of pain, the ex- 
 istence of our body is threatened. So it is 
 
Contrasts 2>1 
 
 with society. However, to return to concen- 
 tration. 
 
 " It is evident that when the aim of men 
 was to control wealth, they must be near each 
 other. As their business was to transfer 
 wealth from the other fellow's pocket to their 
 own, it became necessary to get close to 
 the other fellow's pocket ; hence they would 
 pay for the privilege, hence the value of 
 land. Now when, under a scientific theory 
 of finance, the easiest way of getting hold 
 of the medium of exchange is by producing 
 some commodity, it is evident that there will 
 be no need of getting near the other fellow's 
 pocket, since the amount of circulating me- 
 dium he may have will amount to nothing in 
 comparison with what you may procure for 
 yourself by increasing the total wealth. So 
 we find no such competition as existed in 
 your day, under this system, and no concen- 
 tration, there being no cities with their twenty- 
 story buildings at all. Our population is 
 spread out over the country now, and I be- 
 lieve there is no family without at least ten 
 thousand or twenty thousand feet of ground 
 for a home." 
 
 At this point the professor stopped, and 
 suggested that we should take a bicycle ride. 
 
38 The Great Awakening 
 
 that he might show me some of the residences 
 and homes of which he had been speaking. 
 " The day is too fine to stay indoors," he said. 
 " I heartily agree with you, and I am sure 
 I shoukl be delighted to take a spin." 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 WE ENJOY A BICYCLE RIDE. 
 
 We were soon on the road which led to the 
 west for forty miles, and passed by some of 
 the most beautiful homesteads I had ever 
 seen. This boulevard, like all the other 
 streets, was two hundred feet wide. In the 
 centre there were walks, with flower beds and 
 beautiful trees. It was an earthly paradise. 
 One who rides a bicycle appreciates the 
 smoothness of a hard road uncut by horses' 
 feet or iron tires. Coaches passed us at high 
 speed with no noise, and as I rode along I 
 appreciated fully the fact that here at least 
 was a rich, prosperous, and happy nation ; no 
 squalor, no ragged clothes, no careworn faces. 
 As I thought this over I could see that I my- 
 self was entirely unsuited for such conditions, 
 that my mind was sordid, my nature selfish ; 
 how else could it be, brought up as I was in 
 the nineteenth century to look on money as 
 the aim, the highest goal of existence, and 
 having as a guide the common saying, " Get 
 
40 The Great Awakening 
 
 money — get it honestly if you must, but get 
 it " ? And as to get it honestly simply limited 
 the extremes to which one was allowed to go 
 in picking another's pocket, we were all in 
 the same business. 
 
 We spent the afternoon on our wheels, and 
 I saw countless fine residences with large 
 lawns and beautiful driveways. There was 
 no monotony of architecture, and everything 
 was to me new, fresh, and beautiful. In glid- 
 ing through the streets the absence of sur- 
 face cars astonished me, and I mentioned my 
 astonishment to the professor. 
 
 "Why," he said, "our horseless carriages 
 take their place. While you have horses, 
 you must have pavements, and with pave- 
 ments tracks are necessary, since a heavy car 
 cannot be run on the uneven stones which 
 are necessary for the horse ; but with no 
 horses pavements give w^ay to asphalt, and 
 then tracks are no longer needed, hence we 
 have returned to the old method of transpor- 
 tation, the stagecoach. I imagine, however, 
 our coaches are somewhat different from 
 yours," added the professor, with a smile. 
 
 This brought to mind the Broadway stage 
 line of New York, with its rumbling wagons 
 always on the point of falling apart and its 
 
A Bicycle Ride 41 
 
 skeletons for horses ; and I was thinking of 
 the many uncomfortable and noisy rides I 
 had taken in these old coaches when a mod- 
 ern stage passed us. Large, well lighted, and 
 running upon immense pneumatic tires, no 
 noise was audible save the merry laughter and 
 talk of the occupants. Driven by electricity 
 from an efficient thermopile, it was controlled 
 with the greatest ease and seemed to stand 
 for the perfection of surface travel. 
 " What speed is allowed, professor .-' " 
 " Twelve miles an hour and sometimes fif- 
 teen. Our longer roads connecting districts 
 use rails, since with the speed obtained — 
 about eighty miles an hour — it would be im- 
 possible to steer and turn curves, for the wheels 
 would not grip the road, but only slide ; but in 
 shorter distances, with speeds up to twenty 
 miles an hour, rails are not used." 
 
 We did not in this ride come close to any 
 flying machines, although there were plenty 
 of them in the air, since they rarely landed 
 on the ground, but on a high tower built 
 especially for the purpose and called an air 
 wharf. These buildings were the highest of 
 any, being almost always over six stories. 
 This did not seem high to me ; but no other 
 building that I remember seeing was over 
 
42 The Great Awakening 
 
 three stories, so it was high by comparison. 
 By the way, this fact in itself showed me that 
 land values had fallen, for people spread over 
 the earth instead of rising above it. To re- 
 turn ; from the top of these buildings a large 
 openwork tower of steel ran up for a hundred 
 feet, and inside of this was an elevator ; and it 
 was from the top of this tower that all flying 
 machines started. Our ride lasted for two 
 hours, and we returned with fine appetites, 
 ready to do justice to the dinner awaiting us. 
 
 After a refreshing bath, I joined the pro- 
 fessor in a delicious cocktail before sitting 
 down to table. He is an adept at the making 
 of cocktails, and that one, I know, went to 
 the right spot. When it came to the coffee, 
 cigars, and cordials, I started the professor on 
 the Money Republic again, for its history in- 
 terested me. 
 
 " Well, professor, how is the Money Re- 
 public .-* It is very interesting to me now, as 
 the republic must be getting into a place 
 where it will need capital for growth. A 
 country does all very well without it when 
 young, but to grow it must have capital." 
 
 "Really," said the professor, "you do not 
 understand the function held by capital in 
 your day. Let us consider for a moment. 
 
A Bicycle Ride 43 
 
 In your day capital was money, cold cash, 
 gold, — that is, in young countries, of course ; 
 as nations grew older, capital was represented 
 by buildings and other forms of wealth. Now, 
 when a man came to an undeveloped country, 
 with say ^100,000 in gold, he was a capitalist, 
 and was called an aid to the growth of the 
 country. If, however, he should pile his gold 
 in stacks, he might wait until doomsday and 
 there never would be one cent's worth of 
 wealth produced. The two essentials are 
 land and labor. How, then, can a capitalist 
 produce wealth ? He cannot produce it ; all 
 he can do is to assure to the laborer a certain 
 quantity of the circulating medium if he, the 
 laborer, consents to produce it. From this 
 you can see what a tremendous hold upon the 
 course of industry have they who control the 
 circulating medium. With us now the act of 
 creating wealth assures to the laborer a cer- 
 tain quantity of money. As our issues each 
 month are made on the actual increase of 
 wealth in dollars, you can easily see that no 
 matter where a man works in our realm, so 
 long as he produces he receives money. This 
 is why we have no cities. In your day it was 
 not sufficient to create wealth ; you had to 
 imdersell your neighbor and compete in in- 
 
44 The Great Awakening 
 
 dustrial warfare for the chance of exchanging 
 your wealth for as much of the circulating 
 medium as you could possibly get. This ne- 
 cessitated concentration, for it was a fight at 
 close quarters." 
 
 " But you say that these pieces of paper 
 were legal tender for all debts, public or pri- 
 vate. Now, in my time the majority of the 
 people would have laughed at you had you 
 said that such stuff was money. Why, one 
 of our ablest statisticians was heard to say 
 on the platform that only that was money 
 which was worth as much without the govern- 
 ment stamp as with it ; and past history was 
 quoted to show that from time immemorial 
 gold had always had preference as money." 
 
 " Let us consider, then, the value of the 
 government stamp. Suppose I owe you ;^ioo, 
 and you refuse to take the piece of paper 
 that I offer you. What can you do about it ? 
 And now we see the real reason why gold 
 has had preference in the past. If the gov- 
 ernment is stronger than the creditor, then 
 the creditor must accept the paper, as, if he 
 makes a fuss, the government will have the 
 power to arrest him and will use it, unless 
 the creditor controls the government. This 
 latter condition was, I am afraid, the one prev- 
 
A Bicycle Ride 45 
 
 alent in your time. If, however, the creditor 
 is stronger than the government, the debtor 
 must pay in whatever commodity the creditor 
 stipulates ; otherwise his very life will be in 
 danger, since the government is powerless 
 to interfere. This was the condition before 
 your day. In the past men have always been 
 stronger than governments. It was always 
 the oratory or personal magnetism of the in- 
 dividual which carried the day. 
 
 " It may be well to state here that by 
 strong government I do not mean that gov- 
 ernment which has an armed force at its com- 
 mand, but that which has behind it a large 
 working majority of voters who believe in 
 the principles it tries to enforce. If ideas 
 are changed and the majority dwindles to a 
 minority, then the government is weak, re- 
 gardless of its army and navy, and will fall 
 and give way to the government representing 
 the majority. We thus see that that coun- 
 try in which the government is most easily 
 changed to suit the change in public opinion 
 will exist longest as a unit, and will be dis- 
 turbed by the fewest political uprisings by 
 force ; since, when an abuse becomes very 
 great, its existence will be evident to the ma- 
 jority of voters, and the then existing govern- 
 
46 The Great Awakening 
 
 ment will be overturned with no more excite- 
 ment than a political campaign. Realizing 
 this, we must see that, to change a policy, one 
 must change opinions. 
 
 " To return. Since it was a great advan- 
 tage to the creditor to make the debtor pay 
 in a commodity of which the quantity in ex- 
 istence was small, and which by its properties 
 lent itself to hoarding, he chose gold and 
 silver ; and when governments were formed 
 and money issued, it was only gold and silver 
 money, since that was the creditor's money 
 and the creditor was a powerful man." 
 
 " But in our time, professor, men said that 
 government could not by legislation create 
 values ; they claimed that government never, 
 entered trade." 
 
 " They were wrong. Governments were the 
 heaviest purchasers in any market. There 
 was in the Germany of your time a million- 
 aire named Krupp. This man's whole fortune 
 depended on the fact that governments were 
 buyers of iron and steel in the shape of war 
 materials. There were numbers of other 
 men who got a living trading with the gov- 
 ernment. Now, legislation can create market 
 value. Given a rich government, and it can 
 increase the market value of any commodity 
 
A Bicycle Ride 47 
 
 whatever by entering the market as an unHm- 
 ited buyer of that commodity. It was only 
 when governments were poor and did not 
 hold the taxing power that their legislation 
 was of little value in trade. 
 
 " In our African republic it was only neces- 
 sary for a man to suggest a way in which 
 the total wealth of the community could be 
 increased, and to convince others of this fact. 
 There never was a lack of laborers, since any 
 increase in wealth meant to them more 
 money. So we see that because of this the 
 growth of this republic was tremendous : it 
 soon became quite a power, and its area was 
 greatly increased. There were no cities, no 
 misery, no squalor ; everybody produced, as 
 otherwise he got no money — this being quite 
 the opposite of the conditions in your times, 
 when the manipulator got all the money and 
 the producer none. Of course the increase 
 of wealth was enormous, and as it was equally 
 divided all had plenty, so that soon the hours 
 constitutiiig a day's work were decreased, 
 until now we work only four hours a day. In 
 your time some did not work at all, others 
 worked seventeen hours a day ; with us all 
 work four hours a day. 
 
 " Our morals are far ahead of yours. Con- 
 
48 The Great Awakening 
 
 centration could not but breed immoral char- 
 acters. The social evil is extinct now. To 
 have intercourse with the opposite sex is the 
 natural appetite of humanity. To do it mor- 
 ally is by marriage. But in your time it was 
 hard enough to support oneself without feed- 
 ing a wife and children, so we see that as the 
 nation gets older men marry later, or marry 
 not at all. The bachelor of your time, with 
 his morals and his mode of life, the prosti- 
 tutes, the thieves, murderers, maniacs — all 
 were the offspring of that barbarous financial 
 scheme which had been handed down to you 
 from the Middle Ages. The philosopher must 
 take this calmly and lay it to the ignorance 
 of the masses. 
 
 " If in your time you had told an average 
 man that one commodity could not possibly 
 be a just standard for the measurement of the 
 values of all commodities, he would have 
 looked at you blankly and told you you were 
 a fool. Years before your day this same 
 fight was made over the divine right of 
 kings. Progress is slow. But to return to 
 our republic ! Its growth was so rapid that 
 very soon all eyes were centred on it. The 
 discontent in other nations grew stronger and 
 stronger, until finally the smouldering fires 
 
A Bicycle Ride 49 
 
 burst out, and then the havoc and ruin 
 wrought were frightful. The lives lost num- 
 bered hundreds of thousands ; property on all 
 sides was destroyed, chaos reigned supreme, 
 and during these months the most tremen- 
 dous anxiety was felt as to what would be the 
 result. Now it is of course a matter of his- 
 tory. Out of the flames the phoenix rose. 
 Never more could the few prey upon the 
 many. All governments were on the new 
 foundation, and peace and prosperity again 
 settled over the earth. This regeneration of 
 society has been considered of such impor- 
 tance that our new era begins with it. It is 
 the year 2 1 5 now with us, but measuring from 
 the birth of Christ, it would be 2199. The 
 exact date of the beginning is June 10, 1984, 
 A.D., this being the date of the birth of 
 Thomas H. Blackburn, who was the leader of 
 the regeneration and the direct cause of the 
 chaotic era from which came such great 
 results. He was struck down by the hand of 
 the assassin. The day of his birth is now an 
 international holiday with us." 
 
 " I assure you, professor," I said, as he 
 paused in his history, "never has anything 
 interested me so much. The period of regen- 
 eration must be even more interesting than 
 what you have told me." 
 
50 The Great Awakening 
 
 " It is ; and I want you to come with me 
 to-morrow night and hear Professor Waters 
 speak on it. You will enjoy it, I am sure." 
 
 " It will be a great pleasure, and I shall be 
 very glad of the opportunity." 
 
 Thus ended our conversation upon the 
 Money Republic, and we adjourned to the 
 library, where I spent the evening in reading 
 the latest volume of Professor Hazelit upon 
 " Mental Telegraphy : Its Effect upon the 
 Brain Cells and the Means of Acquiring Effi- 
 ciency in the Art." A truly wonderful book 
 this, and its explanation of that phenomenon 
 by natural laws is extremely lucid. I became 
 absorbed in it. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 WHICH TREATS OF THE OFT-PREDICTED 
 REVOLUTION WHICH FINALLY OCCURRED 
 IN THE YEAR 2021. 
 
 On the night of the lecture the professor 
 and I started together for the hall. It was a 
 lovely moonlight night, and the walk down the 
 boulevard was delightful. 
 
 " Nature is the same as it was two hun- 
 dred years ago, professor, and how lovely it 
 is!" 
 
 "Yes," he answered, "but do you know 
 that our condition in life affects our apprecia- 
 tion of nature .-' In your time how could the 
 masses, who had to toil from morning to 
 night in dark rooms, know anything of 
 nature, its beauties and its charms } When 
 one has worked hard for ten hours in a day, 
 one is in no condition to think of anything 
 but the pleasure of the moment, and when 
 crowded together in small areas this invaria- 
 bly led to low morals and filth. You were 
 
52 The Great Awakening 
 
 saying that nature had not changed ; that is 
 true, but I think that soon man will change 
 it. There is an invention, I understand, that 
 is about to be announced which will add to 
 the length of the year. Our earth is rushing 
 through the ether at the rate of a thousand 
 miles a minute ; and this invention will put a 
 brake on it, so to speak, with a view to con- 
 verting the kinetic energy of the earth into 
 electrical energy. The use of this machine 
 will be limited at first, in order to ascertain 
 just what happens to the earth's motion ; but, 
 of course, if it can be used safely it will be a 
 great saving, as our supply of electricity will 
 be unlimited, at least for millions of years." 
 
 When we got to the hall we found it 
 crowded, and had considerable difficulty in get- 
 ting to our seats. At eight o'clock Professor 
 Waters appeared, amidst great applause. He 
 was a tall man, well proportioned, with a 
 smooth face, high forehead, and dark, piercing 
 eyes. His hair was black and very thick. 
 He had an easy but commanding presence. 
 The following was the lecture as I remember 
 it : — 
 
 " Ladies aiid Gentlemen : The subject 
 which I am to treat to-night is the Era of 
 Regeneration. Although this era covers a 
 
The Revolution 53 
 
 number of years, properly speaking, I wish to 
 talk to you only of the few years previous to 
 and following the so-called Chaotic Era. We 
 are, I think, familiar with the formation and 
 rise of the Money Republic. That was the 
 subject which I tried to treat very fully in my 
 last two lectures. This evening, then, we are 
 mainly concerned with the acts which led up 
 to the tremendous revolution of 2021. 
 
 " There had been in the United States, dur- 
 ing the period following the formation of the 
 Money Republic, a number of men who had 
 watched its enormous progress very carefully. 
 Many of these men had journeyed to the Re- 
 public to learn its methods, a great number 
 had gone to become citizens, but many had 
 remained at home and devoted their energies 
 to sowing the seed of revolutionary feelings. 
 At the dawn of the twenty-first century the 
 gold standard theory of finance was so strong 
 that, in spite of the example of the republic 
 across the water, that theory still flourished. 
 The governments holding it were under the 
 absolute control of the few who manipulated 
 the currency. Of course it goes without say- 
 ing that these men were creditors, since oth- 
 erwise they would not have been anxious to 
 decrease the volume of money. As this state 
 
54 The Great Awakening 
 
 of affairs is so strange to us, let me give you 
 an illustration of it. There were in circula- 
 tion in our country, during the ancient Civil 
 War in 1 862, a lot of notes called legal tenders, 
 and these notes were redeemable in coin, that 
 is, either gold or silver, but in nothing else. 
 Now, by an act of legislation those notes were 
 made redeemable in gold. It is evident that 
 this act had for its end the draining of the 
 treasury's gold, — and why ? My friends, for 
 a very simple reason. It was necessary that 
 a certain amount of gold should be kept as a 
 reserve. Now, if the government had kept 
 the right of paying these greenbacks in gold 
 or silver, upon their coming in in large quan- 
 tities they might have been redeemed in silver, 
 thus keeping the gold reserve intact ; and this 
 fact of redeeming in silver would have tended 
 to prevent redemption, since, silver being 
 bulky, men would have preferred the paper, 
 and it would have been kept in circulation 
 where it belonged. But the few men behind 
 the legislation did not want the gold reserve 
 kept intact; it was not for their selfish inter- 
 ests that the government should have gold, 
 since, if the reserve dropped, gold would have 
 to be borrowed on bonds ; and thus the action 
 of redeeming the greenbacks forced a bond 
 
The Revolution 55 
 
 issue. Of course this issue did not come im- 
 mediately after the legislation, but the gold 
 men did not care for that, — they knew it was 
 only a question of a short time. They were 
 willing to wait because they would be sure to 
 keep the government in debt. 
 
 " In this way we see that, by concerted action 
 on the part of bankers and capitalists, a bond 
 issue could at any time be forced, for, having 
 control of the currency, they could easily drain 
 the treasury of gold. Knowing this, we can 
 understand, somewhat, the influence gold had 
 in legislation. The financial system had such 
 a hold on the people it hurt that it seemed a 
 hopeless task to teach its errors to the lower 
 classes. There were, however, a number of 
 men who worked faithfully and without re- 
 ward for the interests of humanity. These 
 men worked on their own lines and did not 
 join with any of the other sets of workers. 
 They realized it was a question of education, 
 and were willing to educate slowly. 
 
 ** It was not until the last of the twentieth 
 century that activity was shown. You, of 
 course, know to whom I am going to refer 
 now. Is it necessary for any one in this vast 
 audience to be told who it was that carried 
 the era of regeneration to a successful termi- 
 
56 The Great Awakeninc)^ 
 
 nation ; who it was that in the midst of scorn 
 and enmity completed the great work of refor- 
 mation ; who it was that in the United States 
 Senate, May 4, 2021, defied the power of the 
 capitalist, and in his speech, which I shall 
 read to you to-night, warned his fellow sena- 
 tors — yes, warned the world, of what was to 
 come ? If, I say, there is one so ignorant 
 that he does not know this man, let him look 
 while I show him the statue, let him listen 
 while I pronounce the name of Thomas H. 
 Blackburn." 
 
 As Professor Waters uncovered the statue 
 which stood on a pedestal on the platform, 
 the audience arose as one man, to a cheer such 
 as never was heard before. Such enthusiasm 
 and applause showed me the feeling the 
 people had towards this man, and I thought 
 to myself, " This is their George Washing- 
 ton." When quiet had been restored. Pro- 
 fessor Waters continued with the lecture. 
 
 "Thomas H. Blackburn was born in Illi- 
 nois, in a city called Springfield, on June 10, 
 1984. His father was in the dry goods busi- 
 ness and was a prosperous merchant, except 
 that he, like the others, suffered from peri- 
 odic panics. The son had a good education, 
 high school and college, I believe, and then 
 
The Revolution 57 
 
 entered his father's business as a small part- 
 ner. In his college days he had read much 
 of the money-reform literature which was be- 
 ing circulated very freely just at that time by 
 our friends, who had a number of prominent 
 citizens of the Money Republic behind them. 
 This literature had left a deep impression on 
 him, and being of an investigating nature, he 
 had not been content to follow the party 
 leaders, but had done some thinking on his 
 own account — a thing very uncommon in 
 those days. He never told his father of his 
 theories, since Blackburn senior was a man 
 who, if you asked him why he always voted 
 the same ticket, said indignantly, ' Why do I 
 vote for the Republican party, sir > Why, sir, 
 that party was good enough for my father, sir ; 
 it is my party, sir ; it is good enough for my 
 son, sir,' and he considered the question set- 
 tled. For myself, I fail to see the force of 
 this argument. 
 
 " In his work at the office, Blackburn jun- 
 ior, after he had acquired the necessary knowl- 
 edge of the details, found that he could draw 
 his share of the profits, which amounted to 
 about $2,500, without doing anything but 
 staying in the office and seeing that every- 
 thing was right. This was a very easy task, 
 
58 The Great Awakening 
 
 and he wondered why it was necessary to 
 have to look out for these things. He soon 
 saw to the bottom of the barbarous system. 
 He saw that, with a hmited quantity of money, 
 it was a fight to the death to get what there 
 was ; and he saw that if he did not stay in the 
 office, some concern, also in the fight, would 
 cut his throat while he was not looking. I 
 am inclined to think that Blackburn did not 
 like this state of affairs. He shows this in 
 his early writings and his later speeches. His 
 first writings were published by the little 
 band of money reformers, and were essays on 
 business in general, in which he set forth 
 with great clearness the functions of the va- 
 rious men in different departments. In a 
 pamphlet on economics he showed very ably 
 that to exchange goods for money was only 
 half a transaction, the other half being the 
 exchange of the money for goods, and there- 
 fore, he reasoned, it must be the money which 
 fits itself to trade, and not trade which fits 
 itself to money. 
 
 '' These writings were all under an assumed 
 name, and he was only twenty-three at the 
 time of publication. His father had known 
 nothing of this work, but had fumed a 
 great deal over some articles he had read 
 
The Revolution 59 
 
 in the daily papers, little knowing they were 
 written by his son. Of course the break had 
 to come sooner or later, and when it came the 
 son was too firm in his convictions to try to 
 patch up the matter. He quietly withdrew 
 what little wealth he was entitled to from the 
 business, and went to the city called Chicago — • 
 which at that time was in the same state as 
 Springfield — on the border of Lake Michigan. 
 This city held over three million people, and 
 in some parts of it the condition of these 
 people was one of such filth and degradation 
 that I think I may fairly say it is beyond our 
 comprehension. Here he drifted into politics, 
 and we lose sight of him until he appears 
 in the city government. 
 
 " I think there is nothing in this part of his 
 career of which I wish to talk to-night. He 
 went from city to state, from state to na- 
 tional politics, and at the age of thirty we find 
 him on the floor of the Senate. This, you 
 know, was the Upper House, which did not 
 become extinct until after the reformation. 
 Here he did good work on committees, showed 
 much ability in speaking of foreign affairs, 
 and was continually elected from his state 
 until his untimely death. It was during the 
 last seven years of his life that he formed a 
 
6o The Great Awakening 
 
 secret political machine ; for he recognized 
 that the time was approaching when the blow 
 should be struck, and he prepared himself for 
 it. He had been receiving news from all 
 over the civilized world that the example, the 
 progress of the Money Republic, and the 
 teaching of the believers in that theory of 
 finance had at last had an effect, and that at 
 last the people understood what had been go- 
 ing on and were determined to stand it no 
 longer ; so that he thought the realization of 
 this fact would influence senators more than 
 gold possibly could. He was not afraid of 
 the Lower House. Consequently, in April, 
 202 1, the last effort to attain the end peace- 
 ably was begun. It was generally understood 
 by the labor leaders that, if Blackburn was 
 not successful in the passage of the finance 
 bill through the Senate, the end of his speech 
 was to be the cue for a tremendous revolution 
 throughout the world. The foreign workers 
 were content to await the result of Black- 
 burn's efforts, since, if the United States 
 changed its system peaceably, foreign govern- 
 ments would fall in line. So the reformers 
 said they would wait for this, but if the sen- 
 ator was unsuccessful, then an international 
 uprising must immediately follow. That Sen- 
 
The Revolution 6i 
 
 ator Blackburn knew his efforts would be 
 watched with great interest is true, but that 
 he ever suspected his speech would precipitate 
 what it did is not true. We have abundance 
 of proof in his letters and papers of what he 
 had intended to do if unsuccessful, and no- 
 where do we find that he had even a suspi- 
 cion of what was to follow his exit from the 
 Senate chamber. Even the letters to him 
 from the labor agitators conveyed no informa- 
 tion concerning the plans they must have 
 known. It is probable they did not dare tell 
 him from fear of his breaking down under 
 the tremendous strain, and it is also probable 
 that the size of the revolution was greatly in- 
 creased when the news of his death at the 
 hands of another senator was telegraphed 
 over the world. At any rate, he came into 
 the Senate chamber on the eve of May 4, 
 looking calm but determined. 
 
 " After much fighting the bill had been 
 pushed through the House ; it had come to 
 the Senate, but had met with obstruction and 
 had not been passed. Just before he rose to 
 speak, Blackburn told his friend. Senator 
 Chase, that he intended to take a trip abroad 
 to improve his health, get rest, and confer 
 with labor leaders there. This is also another 
 
62 The Great Awakening 
 
 proof that our senator had no knowledge of 
 what was to come, in spite of the fact that 
 part of his speech was prophetic. It was half 
 past ten when Blackburn arose. He spoke 
 for ten minutes only, but his speech was the 
 tinder that fired the reformation of 202 1 . It 
 was as follows, and history says it was deliv- 
 ered by Blackburn in his best possible voice 
 and manner : — 
 
 Blackburn's Speech. 
 
 " * Mr. Presidefit : I wish to say a few 
 words upon the action of the Senate in refus- 
 ing this finance bill. For a short time, only 
 a short tmie, I wish to talk to you, not as pol- 
 iticians, but as men. 
 
 " ' Many years ago, when our forefathers 
 settled in this beautiful country, a common 
 danger from tyranny caused the formation of 
 a compact government, with rights vested in 
 our Constitution. In that Constitution it was 
 declared "all men are born free and equal," 
 and history tells us that the men who framed 
 this document were honorable men — men who 
 had the freedom and liberty of the masses at 
 heart, men who gave up in many instances 
 chances of personal advancement for the sake 
 of benefiting others. 
 
The Revolution 63 
 
 " ' For two centuries and a half descendants 
 of these men have occupied this continent ; for 
 two hundred and forty-five years have the 
 rising generations been taught to respect and 
 value the Constitution — yet what do we find 
 to-day ? How have the legislators understood 
 that document which in their childhood they 
 were taught to respect ? Have they endeav- 
 ored to give all men equal opportunities, to 
 crush at all hazards powerful monopolies ? 
 Have they acted toward the people they repre- 
 sent as Washington and the statesmen of his 
 time did ? Alas ! any schoolboy will tell you 
 that a man goes into politics nowadays not to 
 represent his district, but to enrich himself ; 
 any schoolboy will tell you that our politics 
 are controlled by the lowest and meanest of 
 our citizens, and that the only man repre- 
 sented is the one capable of buying a repre- 
 sentative. This is but too true. The history 
 of this country is the history of the rise of 
 the money power ; and within the last century 
 we have had, as every one knows, nineteen 
 Presidents whose elections have been bought 
 by capitalists supporting the gold standard, 
 and our policy has been shaped by these same 
 capitalists, until now things have reached such 
 a stage that it is time to call a halt. 
 
64 The Great Awakening 
 
 " ' Our whole political system is honey- 
 combed with corruption, and the man who has 
 the largest purse, who is the most unscrupu- 
 lous, or who controls the most perfect political 
 machine, shapes the policy which governs the 
 welfare of 200,000,000 of souls. You all 
 know well enough what I mean ; and also it is 
 not necessary for me to tell you who is the 
 head of the syndicate which furnishes the 
 money behind the obstruction to this finance 
 bill. This same thing has been done before ; 
 and this same syndicate has feathered its nests 
 several times on bond issues into which it has 
 forced the government, which never could 
 have occurred except under this unjust system 
 of finance. If we look around us to-day, 
 what do we see as the result of this mon- 
 strous system.-* We see gigantic trusts, tre- 
 mendous monopolies, which wield their power 
 only for the benefit of the few who own them, 
 which control industry and direct it only into 
 those channels which cater to the few, which 
 corrupt legislators with their wealth, and cause 
 the degeneration, yes, the decay of the body 
 politic, which utterly ignore those who labor, 
 those who produce all the wealth from which 
 these same monopolies gain their sustenance ; 
 and when discontent shows its head and the 
 
The Revolution 65 
 
 toilers murmur, what is done ? A little char- 
 ity perhaps is given, but no justice. Weak, 
 incapable men, the tools of capitalists, are 
 sent out, and the poor, ignorant people listen 
 to honeyed words about the rights of labor. 
 They are told that civilization must see to it 
 that labor is better rewarded ; they are rocked 
 to sleep with fulsome promises of immediate 
 financial legislation in their interest ; they are 
 told that the administration is toiling night 
 and day in order that a better system may be 
 inaugurated. This is what they are promised, 
 this is what they are told ; and in their igno- 
 rance, and with almost superhuman patience, 
 they believe and are content to wait. By 
 heaven, how long will this patience last.-* 
 
 " ' But what is done ? I ask you, gentlemen, 
 what is done .'' Nothing ! At the last election 
 more than $20,000,000 was spent to bring the 
 present administration into power ; to bring 
 into power that party which three years ago 
 promised on the stump such wide-reaching 
 and beneficial reforms ; and in these three 
 years what has been done ? Nothing ! How 
 long is this to last ? How long is this to 
 last .'' How long will this administration seek 
 to divert to foreign questions the minds of our 
 people, in order that they may be less occu- 
 
66 The Great Awakening" 
 
 pied with this vital problem which is knock- 
 ing at our doors for admittance, and which, if 
 entrance is refused, will by the very force of 
 its momentum overthrow the reigning powers 
 and precipitate us all into a sea of chaos, the 
 like of which the world has never seen ? 
 
 " ' Can this continue forever ? Will the peo- 
 ple always be patient ? How long have we 
 got to stand this tyranny ? Fellow senators, 
 I pray you to remember we are all human be- 
 ings, that the lowest and poorest of us, whom 
 I represent to you to-night, are flesh and 
 blood. Hath not a poor man eyes ? Hath 
 not a poor man hands, organs, dimensions, 
 senses, affections, passions ? Fed with the 
 same food, hurt with the same weapons, sub- 
 ject to the same diseases, healed by the same 
 means, warmed and cooled by the same win- 
 ter and summer as a rich man is ? If you 
 prick us, do we not bleed ? If you tickle us, 
 do we not laugh ? If you poison us, do we 
 not die ? And if you wrong us, shall we not 
 revenge ? If we are like you in the rest, we 
 will resemble you in that. The villainies you 
 teach us we will execute ; and it will go hard, 
 but we will better the instruction.' 
 
 "And here history says that Blackburn 
 paused and stood with folded arms, gazing 
 
The Revolution 67 
 
 from face to face, his manner, more than his 
 words, holding the attention of every one. 
 
 " ' I stand to-night to represent suffering hu- 
 manity to you ; I warn you that your love of 
 gold will be your ruin ; that the system of 
 government which you represent is tottering, 
 and like Rome of old, the hordes of barba- 
 rians are waiting, only waiting for the mo- 
 ment of invasion. Are they on our borders ? 
 No, they are already among us, in our cities ; 
 they are the toilers, the workers, the produ- 
 cers of all that wealth which, by God, you — 
 you, I say — you who are supposed to repre- 
 sent them, steal from them. Are you so blind 
 that you do not see this .■' Are you so vile 
 that you will not see it .-' Must it be written 
 on the walls of this Senate as it was in Baby- 
 lon, " Weighed in the balance and found 
 wanting " ? ' 
 
 " At this there was an angry murmur, and 
 Blackburn raised his hand. ' One moment 
 more. I leave this Senate to-night a sorrow- 
 ful man. Could my death bring relief to 
 suffering thousands I would not hesitate. I 
 have given you warning, now you must take 
 the consequences, and God will decide the 
 issue. Mr. President and fellow senators, I 
 have done.' 
 
68 The Great Awakening 
 
 " Blackburn then calmly left the Senate 
 and was immediately driven to his apart- 
 ments. Here his control gave way, and he 
 became prostrated as a result of the nervous 
 strain. 
 
 " These were the last words Blackburn ever 
 spoke in the United States Senate, and they 
 were sent by wire to all parts of the world ; 
 the cue had been given, the revolution be- 
 gan. In Chicago that night six fires broke 
 out simultaneously, and the rapidity with 
 which they spread soon put them beyond the 
 control of the fire department, so that the 
 whole city was soon in flames ; and although 
 word was sent for help, nothing could be done 
 to stop the conflagration which was soon rag- 
 ing. The people of London awoke to find 
 their city in flames and mobs in the streets ; 
 it was the same with Paris, Berlin, Vienna ; 
 and, in short, the work of organization was so 
 complete that, from a reign of apparent peace, 
 the world passed to one of bloody war in the 
 short space of an hour. 
 
 " It was not until the morning papers were 
 read that Senator Blackburn appreciated fully 
 the importance of his speech. He hurried 
 off to telegraph the leaders with whom he 
 was in touch, in the vain hope of influencing 
 
The Revolution 69 
 
 them to prevent the spreading of the rebel- 
 lion, and went to the hotel to send his tele- 
 grams, after which, as he was crossing the 
 office, he passed a group of senators who 
 were talking angrily of his speech and the re- 
 bellion which it had seemingly precipitated. 
 They did not see him until he had gone quite 
 a distance, but then they recognized his fig- 
 ure and cried out. It is not known who it was 
 that fired the fatal shot ; there is, however, 
 abundant proof that it was a senator, and that 
 he was quickly spirited away by his friends dur- 
 ing the excitement. Blackburn was carried 
 into an inner office and laid on a sofa, while a 
 physician was summoned. He lived that day 
 and all night, but he never regained conscious- 
 ness ; and towards noon of the following day 
 his condition grew much worse, and he died 
 that afternoon. 
 
 " When the cause of his death was known, 
 the fury of the mobs on both sides of the 
 water was terrible. The leaders had no con- 
 trol whatsoever, and the Chaotic Era ran its 
 full course ; mob law ruled everywhere for 
 four months, during which time hundreds of 
 thousands of lives were lost and thousands of 
 millions of dollars' worth of property was de- 
 stroyed. 
 
70 The Great Awakening 
 
 " As I shall discuss this Chaotic Era in a 
 lecture by itself, I shall not stop to say any- 
 thing, except that it was safely passed and the 
 new governments formed were based practi- 
 cally on that of the Money Republic. Of 
 course details had to be changed to fit condi- 
 tions, but the people had learned the lesson, 
 for never after this could the circulating me- 
 dium be controlled and restricted by a few in- 
 dividuals, and thus never could the laborer be 
 enslaved by the capitalist," 
 
 The last part of Professor Waters' lecture 
 I cannot remember with distinctness, for my 
 mind was occupied during the rest of the 
 evening with thinking of what he had already 
 said. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 A PARABLE IS ALWAYS INTERESTING, AND 
 THIS ONE IS INSTRUCTIVE. 
 
 On the way home the professor entertained 
 me with the parable of the clock-makers, 
 which doubtless many of you have heard, but 
 for the benefit of those less fortunate I give 
 it as the professor told it. 
 
 " Once upon a time there were a lot of 
 clock-makers who started to make a clock. 
 They got a spring, a lot of wheels, and a frame ; 
 and each being anxious to show what he could 
 do, they all had a share in the work. 
 
 " The framework they called government, 
 the wheels they called the social or industrial 
 system, the escapement money, the spring la- 
 bor, and the little hands, called happiness, were 
 made to show by their motion the perfection of 
 the other parts. They were very proud of their 
 machine when it was finished, and setting it 
 on a pedestal which they called the consent 
 of the governed, they brought in their neigh- 
 
72 The Great Awakening 
 
 bors to see the Httle hands go round ; and 
 when everything was ready and all were 
 looking, they started the machine. 
 
 " The hands began to move. * Look, 
 look ! ' cried they, * is n't it fine .-' See how 
 complex it is, see how all the wheels move ! ' 
 And they began to chatter away at a great 
 rate on the wonderful success of their labor. 
 While this was going on, the hands of happi- 
 ness stopped. ' Hullo ! ' said they, ' what is 
 the matter .'' ' and they all crowded around to 
 examine. Soon the little hands started again, 
 slowly at first, and then faster, when suddenly 
 they stopped. Meanwhile the neighbors had 
 left in disgust, well knowing that there was 
 something wrong ; and while the clock-makers 
 were thinking over the problem the little 
 hands kept going and stopping ; only, when 
 they did move, they never went so fast as 
 they did originally. These periods were so 
 rhythmic that they were given names. They 
 were called hard times or panics, according to 
 how long the hands kept still. * Have confi- 
 dence, the machine is all right, even if the 
 little hands do not move smoothly,' said those 
 who thought it a success, since the wheels 
 which they had contributed always moved on 
 in spite of the little hands. These men were 
 
Parable of the Clock-makers 73 
 
 the capitalists whom panics never brought to 
 the verge of starv'ation. 
 
 " All the rest, however, agreed that there 
 was something wrong. They sat down to 
 discuss it, with the clock before them, and one 
 of them said, ' It needs a little oil,' and there- 
 uporthe proceeded to oil it. He was the man 
 who believed in charities. But the hands 
 stopped just the same. Another said oil did 
 no good since there was something radically- 
 wrong. He was the man who put justice 
 ahead of charity. Suddenly one in the circle 
 jumped up, took the clock, and gave it a vigor- 
 ous shake. At this all was chaos, everybody 
 was afraid the machine would be spoiled, 
 although all admitted it did n't work anyway ; 
 and after they had taken it from this man, 
 they asked indignantly what he meant by 
 such a thing — to which he replied that he 
 thought a shaking would do it good. He 
 was the destructionist, who threw bombs. 
 
 " When quiet had been restored, some one 
 on examining the clock said that he saw the 
 trouble. One wheel was bent out of shape, 
 and if the next wheel was bent to correspond 
 everything would be settled. He was the 
 man who, seeing the abnormal concentration 
 of capital, suggested the abnormal concentra- 
 
74 The "Great Awakening 
 
 tion of labor on a gigantic scale as a remedy ; 
 he believed that to form trade unions would 
 settle things. The wheel was bent, and still 
 panics came at regular periods. Another 
 said that to bend the second wheel to conform 
 to the first was to prevent the second wheel 
 from moving freely. He was the man who 
 said that socialism, or lack of competition, 
 would prevent the free growth of the indi- 
 vidual. A third said that if they did away 
 with the frame, put the wheels together any 
 way, and started the spring, the wheels would 
 naturally take the best position suited to 
 them, and everything would work smoothly. 
 He was the anarchist, who did not believe in 
 governments. 
 
 " ' No,' said a fourth, ' for without a frame 
 the motion could not be regulated, and all the 
 wheels would be scattered to the four winds.' 
 He was a believer in strong governments. 
 ' There are too many wheels, ' said the man 
 who believed in restricted immigration. ' They 
 move too fast,' said he who foolishly thought 
 overproduction was the evil. 
 
 " Finally some one said that the wheels 
 were not placed right : there were some large, 
 strong wheels which should be placed so that 
 they might bear more of the strain. He was 
 
Parable of the Clock-makers 75 
 
 the man who believed that landowners should 
 bear the greatest burdens in taxation, since 
 by their monopoly they were best able to 
 stand them. One man even suggested that 
 the whole trouble with the clock lay in the 
 metal of which it was composed. He was 
 symbolic of those who claimed that the error 
 was in human nature, and until that changed 
 everything would have to remain as it was. 
 
 " At last one of their number, who had up to 
 this time said nothing, got up and examined 
 the clock very attentively ; he took it up, 
 looked carefully at the hands and all the 
 wheels, and then said, ' Where is the escape- 
 ment (money) ?' He was told it was hidden 
 away below all the wheels, in a corner. It 
 took him some time to find it, the affair being 
 so complicated that it was necessary to use a 
 microscope to see how it was made, for there 
 were so many wheels in the way that it was 
 very confusing to tell which one was the 
 escapement. Finally he got his eye on it, 
 and then he set the clock down, and it 
 started to go. He watched it until a panic 
 happened ; then, with a smile of satisfaction, he 
 said, turning to his friends, * Gentlemen, the 
 trouble with your clock is that the motion of 
 the escapement wheel (money) is clogged and 
 
76 The Great Awakening 
 
 hampered ; givo that free play, and your little 
 hands, happiness, will continue to move on 
 smoothly forever.' He was the man who 
 believed that money should be issued on all 
 commodities, and not on one. 
 
 " The others laughed at him, but he said, 
 'Very well, gentlemen, you will see, for I 
 shall construct a clock of my own,' which he 
 proceeded to do, when, what was every one's 
 astonishment to find that he was right ! The 
 little hands of happiness moved along beauti- 
 fully and never stopped, for he had given the 
 escapement (money) free play, in order that it 
 should follow the direction of the spring (labor). 
 
 " What do you think of that .-' " said the 
 professor. 
 
 " That is intensely interesting," said I. " I 
 suppose the moral of it all is, look deeply 
 before you judge." 
 
 "Just so," said the professor ; " don't study 
 the top wheel, but look below for the escape- 
 ment." 
 
 Upon reaching home the professor and I 
 went into the library and lighted our cigars. 
 I knew that the professor would soon have 
 something to say on economics, so I led the 
 conversation quietly round to the point of 
 values, and he rose to the bait like a trout and 
 opened on me at once. 
 
Parable of the Clock-makers ']'] 
 
 " In your century it was generally believed 
 that the cost of production was the determin- 
 ing factor in values. Nothing could be 
 farther from the truth. The relation of these 
 two factors was but little understood in your 
 time." 
 
 " I am afraid, professor, that you have no 
 use for our century. You do not give us 
 credit for the great progress we made in the 
 sciences and arts. It seems to me that the 
 nineteenth century was preeminently one of 
 progress and advancement." 
 
 " One of progress, when in the midst of 
 wealth there was the greatest poverty } When 
 whole families lived in a single room and, 
 toiling all day, got but a bare living.-' When 
 some by birth received a right to live on the 
 labor of others ? If this is progress, what is 
 the goal toward which it leads .'' An age of 
 advancement in science and art } Did disease 
 exist the less } On the contrary, it multiplied. 
 Did persecution exist the less .'' There is but 
 a difference in name between the persecution 
 of the priest, the king, and the capitalist. In 
 the midst of Christianity, religious persecution 
 flourished simply because the surrounding 
 nations could not come to an agreement as to 
 how the offending nation should be divided 
 
78 The Great Awakening 
 
 between them, and while they were discussing 
 this question the slaughtering kept on. An 
 age of advancement ? You must be crazy. 
 If my criticism hurts you, I will desist, but do 
 not blind yourself to facts. 
 
 " Let us now look at the question of value 
 with a view of finding out, not who is right, 
 but what is right. I will first define some 
 words which we shall have occasion to use 
 frequently in the future. They are worth, 
 labor value, and market value. The worth 
 of a commodity is its power of satisfying 
 human desires ; the labor value of a commodity 
 is the amount of labor necessary to produce it ; 
 and the market value is the ratio of exchange 
 between a commodity and the dollar. 
 
 "Worth is not measurable and fluctuates 
 only as, by the changing of the attributes of 
 the commodity, it satisfies more or less the 
 demands of human beings. Thus if I, by 
 careful preservation, keep a hat for a year so 
 that it is in just as good condition at the end 
 as it was at the beginning of the year, the 
 worth has not changed, but the market value 
 may fluctuate, for this is a ratio and may 
 be changed by altering either numerator or 
 denominator. Thus my hat is worth as much 
 at the end of the year, but if more hats have 
 
Parable of the Clock-makers 79 
 
 been made than there have been dollars issued, 
 it will purchase fewer dollars ; therefore its 
 market value has fallen. 
 
 " Now for a simple illustration of the rela- 
 tion of worth and market value to the cost of 
 production. Let us consider a horse, a cart, 
 and a man. The horse we will call worth ; 
 the resistance offered by the cart we will 
 term the cost of production. As the brakes 
 are put on, the cost of production increases, 
 and vice versa. The speed of the man (who 
 represents the capitalist) in the cart we will 
 term the profits of capital — the greater the 
 speed, the more profits. Now let the man 
 get in the cart, put on the brakes, and try to 
 start. If the horse is strong the cart will 
 move ; that is, with a high cost of production 
 there will be profit if there is worth. Worth 
 is the determining factor. If the brakes are 
 taken off a little the speed will be increased, 
 but this does not mean that the strength of 
 the horse has been increased ; that has not 
 changed in any way. We see, therefore, that 
 the primary effect of the cost of production 
 is one acting only on profits. Worth must 
 exist before either of the other factors. A 
 cart might be made with pneumatic-tired 
 wheels and ball bearings offering but little 
 
8o The Great Awakening 
 
 resistance {thus representing an extremely low 
 cost of production), yet there would be no 
 speed (profit) at all if it were not for the 
 horse. Do you understand the illustration ? 
 If you do, you will see that, given worth, the 
 cost of production affects profits and not 
 market value, for with a decreasing cost of 
 production you must have an increasing profit. 
 " Now the effect of this is to determine 
 more capital into this particular industry, and 
 this causes an increase in the supply of the 
 particular commodity produced ; but if there 
 could be a proportional increase in the amount 
 of circulating medium, with an increased sup- 
 ply of goods would come an increased effect- 
 ive demand for them, so that as long as worth 
 remained constant — that is, as long as the 
 goods themselves did not deteriorate or wear 
 out — market value would remain constant. 
 And indeed, it may be stated as an economic 
 truth that the price of anything should never 
 fall because of an increased production of 
 that thing, but only upon its deterioration. 
 Market value and worth should fluctuate in 
 concert, and the only way to bring this about 
 is to increase legal tender money in the same 
 proportion as wealth increases. Labor value, 
 however, is entirely independent of either of 
 
Parable of the Clock-makers 8i 
 
 the other two terms, and although not meas- 
 urable, fluctuations in it may be perceived. 
 For instance, if with improved machines I can, 
 with the same amount of labor, produce two 
 hats where before only one was produced, the 
 labor value of the hats has fallen ; and this is 
 true whether I work the same time and pro- 
 duce two hats, or only half the time and pro- 
 duce one hat ; but in neither case has worth 
 changed, provided, of course, the hats are 
 just as good in the one case as in the other." 
 
 " But, professor, with this improved ma- 
 chinery and consequent fall of labor value ; 
 would there not come a fall of market value ? 
 And if so, is it not just to say that market 
 value must fluctuate with labor value and not 
 with worth ? " 
 
 " Not at all. Market value depends upon 
 the number of commodities produced and of- 
 fered for sale, divided by the number of dol- 
 lars offered to purchase, and this is entirely 
 independent of labor value ; for if, as in your 
 day, a trust controls industry, it can, by intro- 
 ducing new machinery, reduce the labor value 
 of its commodity, while at the same time con- 
 trolling the amount produced, it can keep the 
 market value constant. This is just why 
 trusts formed. By keeping market value con- 
 
82 The Great Awakening 
 
 stant and reducing labor value, profits may be 
 increased, provided, as before stated, worth is 
 constant ; but this state of affairs always 
 means misery to the masses, for any check 
 to the production of wealth diminishes the 
 amount which may be consumed, and this 
 means unhappiness under any distribution. 
 On the other hand, a vast increase in the 
 number of laborers means more commodities 
 produced, and if this is not met b}' an in- 
 creased number of dollars, market value will 
 fall, in spite of the fact that it takes just as 
 much labor to produce the commodity as it 
 formerly did — that is, in spite of the fact 
 that labor value has not fallen ; for we are 
 assuming that machinery has not been intro- 
 duced, but only that the number of laborers 
 has been increased. So we see that labor 
 value may fall while market value remains 
 constant, and market value may fall while 
 labor value remains constant ; and the correct 
 deduction is that the two are entirely inde- 
 pendent of each other. The cause of this 
 fall of market values, which is always bad, is, 
 as you can now see, the limitation of the in- 
 crease of money, not decreased cost of pro- 
 duction, not decreased labor value. Do not 
 forget this." 
 
Parable of the Clock-makers 83 
 
 " But, professor, let us consider the oppo- 
 site. If market value is rising, what differ- 
 ence will that make to the laborer, even sup- 
 posing his wages will be higher ? If his dol- 
 lars come easier, will it not cost him more of 
 them to live ? Where is the gain ? " 
 
 " Well, provided the rise of market values 
 is caused by an increase of legal tender money 
 and not by a decrease of wealth, there is a 
 vast difference to him. Let me ilhistrate. 
 Suppose you are a capitalist with one hundred 
 thousand dollars, which you are willing to in- 
 vest in a business paying six per cent, a year, 
 and you find the opportunity and do invest. 
 Now let us see what would result. Of the 
 total amount of cash received during the 
 year, there must be paid you $6,000 regularly, 
 or else you will withdraw your capital. Now 
 let us suppose that the total receipts for one 
 year are $50,000. Your $6,000 represents 
 twelve per cent, of the total receipts, and the 
 remainder, we will say, is consumed in the 
 buying of stock, minor expenses, and the 
 wages of labor. For the sake of argument, 
 let us say $22,000 is spent in the former and 
 $22,000 in wages. Now let us assume the 
 quantity of money in circulation is cut in two, 
 thus cutting prices in halves, and making 
 
84 The Great Awakening 
 
 your receipts $25,000. You may now say, 
 that as the cost of living is halved, it will be 
 no hardship to halve wages. Suppose, then, 
 we give $1 1,000 as wages and spend $1 1,000 
 on raw material, getting thereby just as 
 much as we could with $22,000 when prices 
 were double. But 1 1 -|- 1 1 = 22, which leaves 
 only $3,000 as interest, which you, as a capi- 
 talist, would never submit to, for that would 
 be but three per cent. What, then, is the alter- 
 native, if $6,000 must be paid as interest and 
 $11,000 to purchase new stock.'* Why, only 
 $8,000 can be paid to laborers, so you see that 
 while there has been a drop of fifty per cent, in 
 the cost of living, there has been a drop of sixty- 
 three per cent, in wages ; and remember that 
 it must always happen that with any drop in 
 prices, either interest must drop proportion- 
 ally or wages must drop to a greater extent. 
 Dividends are always paid at the expense of 
 labor. Bear in mind that by wages I do not 
 mean the average pay of laborers, but the 
 lump sum of the receipts which is expended 
 in wages. It will often happen that because 
 of new machinery the same volume of busi- 
 ness may be conducted with fewer hands, in 
 which case the average wages may be higher ; 
 but this only means men out of work : so 
 
Parable of the Clock-makers 85 
 
 that whenever the sum set apart for wages 
 decreases, either the average wage drops pro- 
 portionally or the number of employees is 
 decreased, thereby keeping the pay of some 
 the same, but throwing other men out of 
 work. Now it is well known that any board 
 of directors will cut expenses in any way 
 rather than diminish the amount of dividend. 
 
 " To go back — we also see that if $6,000 
 is paid upon an earning of $25,000, the pro- 
 portion of the total wealth produced, which 
 goes to the non-producer, i.e., the capitalist, 
 is now twenty-four per cent, where before it 
 was twelve per cent., and now the laborers 
 only get thirty-two per cent, where before 
 they got forty-four per cent. 
 
 " On the other hand, if the quantity of 
 money was doubled, the receipts would be 
 $100,000, cost of stock $44,000, interest 
 $6,000, which v/ould leave $50,000 for wages ; 
 so that, whereas cost of living has jumped up 
 in this case one hundred per cent., wages 
 have jumped up one hundred and twenty-two 
 per cent. ; so that it must be evident that 
 rising prices, caused by increased issue of 
 money, would make considerable difference to 
 the laborer. 
 
 " I do not mean to say that owners would 
 
86 The Great Awakening 
 
 pay this increase unless they were forced to, 
 which would be the case, however, in a short 
 time, and would be brought about by the in- 
 creased demand for labor caused by the in- 
 creased issue of money ; but I do mean to 
 say that owners in your day would cut down 
 everything rather than dividends, during as 
 long a period as they could possibly do so, 
 and by thus keeping interest practically a 
 constant quantity — it being always a percent- 
 age on capital stock — they forced a greater 
 and greater percentage of the total wealth 
 produced away from the producers into the 
 hands of those who live by lending, thus lead- 
 ing to the concentration of power with its 
 ever-present abuses." 
 
 " But, professor, I am still somewhat in the 
 dark with regard to values. To take an ex- 
 ample. If you can raise fifty bushels of 
 wheat from a plot of ground where before, 
 with cruder instruments and methods, you 
 could only raise one bushel, does n't that mean 
 that the value of wheat is decreased .-' " 
 
 " You are confounding labor value with 
 market value. The labor value of that wheat 
 is less, for it takes less labor to produce it ; 
 but market value should not be decreased, for 
 the worth of the wheat has not decreased. 
 
Parable of the Clock-makers 87 
 
 When with improvements we can take fifty 
 bushels where before we had only taken one, 
 does that mean that each bushel will not 
 make as many pounds of flour, as many loaves 
 of bread — will not satisfy as many hungry 
 mouths ? Of course it does not. Worth 
 depends on total demand, which in its turn 
 depends upon the characteristics of the com- 
 modity to satisfy human desires, and total 
 supply. Market value depends on effective 
 or money demand and total supply : there is 
 quite a difference. The total demand for 
 anything having worth, for anything which sat- 
 isfies the needs of body or mind, is unlimited. 
 That is a fact that the people of your time 
 could not see, and yet they had sayings 
 which showed they had some comprehen- 
 sion of it, as, for instance : ' A man's tastes 
 increase with his income,' ' Give him an inch 
 and he'll take an ell,' 'Man's desires are 
 never satisfied,' 'The more he gets, the more 
 he wants.' A sane man will not refuse a 
 good meal for a crust of mouldy bread, and if 
 he eats the latter you may be pretty sure it is 
 not because he wants to, but because he has 
 to ; his actual demand is for the good meal, 
 his effective demand for the crust of bread — 
 or, in plain words, he has n't any money. 
 
88 The Great Awakening 
 
 Now you can see at once that falHng prices 
 show that there are not enough units of cir- 
 culating medium in existence ; but since what 
 there is is all there is, and since what there 
 is has got to take care of existing trade, it 
 follows that, as the number of units cannot 
 increase, the purchasing power of each unit 
 must. That is to say, each unit must handle 
 a greater amount of trade to the great advan- 
 tage of the man who owns the units. 
 
 " This question of money is of vast impor- 
 tance and is deeper than either free trade or 
 single tax. To treat land as private property 
 is morally wrong, but it is not such an evil as 
 to hmit the increase of money, for if it were 
 not for the latter, land market values would 
 not exist. By land market values, or economic 
 rent, is meant that market value which is 
 attached to land by virtue of its location. It 
 has nothing to do with the chemical composi- 
 tion of the earth, but comes simply from the 
 situation relative to centres of business ; and 
 in order to accept the natural existence of 
 such market value, we must believe that 
 concentration is the natural order of things. 
 Now, we know that people like to get away as 
 much as possible from the city, that their 
 homes are in suburbs ; that concentration leads 
 
Parable of the Clock-makers 89 
 
 to low morals and filth, that people need pure 
 air, sufficient light ; that the noise and jar of 
 the city lead to many nervous diseases; that 
 it is not natural for human beings to crowd 
 themselves into buildings twelve and fifteen 
 stories high. All this we know, and it shows 
 that there must be some artificial force at 
 work which leads men to abandon farms 
 and crowd into cities. Let us see what 
 in the past has caused men to concen- 
 trate in tribes. First, it was for protec- 
 tion : in union there is strength ; surely 
 that is not the reason which accounts for the 
 concentration in the nineteenth century. 
 Then crude means of transportation caused 
 men to live near each other for the purpose of 
 exchanging thoughts; surely that is not the 
 reason of your century — a century noted for 
 its telegraph, telephone, efficient postal service, 
 and quick methods of all kinds of transpor- 
 tation. What is the reason ? The limitation 
 of the issue of money is the reason. The 
 giving to one commodity, gold, the exclusive 
 right of acting as the circulating medium and 
 standard of value is the cause of this concen- 
 tration, this degradation in the midst of wealth. 
 Could a man capitalize any form of wealth, 
 he would not crowd to the city. Could a 
 
90 The Great Awakening 
 
 man by producing wealth be assured of that 
 quantity of money which is equivalent to the 
 amount of wealth produced, he would not 
 crowd to the city ; but since you make money 
 one commodity, gold, you give to the holders 
 of and dealers in that commodity a privilege 
 excluded from other men very similar to the 
 privilege given to landowners ; for if land 
 is necessary to our existence, so is money ; 
 and since any commodity must be changed to 
 money before it is changed back to another 
 commodity, it is evident that, to make the 
 first change in your century, it was necessary 
 to go where the money was. This concen- 
 trated the population in centres which in 
 your day were called just what they were, 
 i.e., moneyed centres. Now, with us it is 
 only necessary that a man shall produce 
 wealth to receive from the national govern- 
 ment a certificate of such labor performed. 
 With us there is no competition in the sense 
 you understood it, for such competition means 
 essentially a fight to turn your commodity 
 into money before the other man can ; there- 
 fore you had to be near the other man in 
 order to keep an eye on his movements. 
 This competition on the face of it showed that 
 there was not enough of the circulating 
 
Parable of the Clock- makers 91 
 
 medium in existence to handle the trade in 
 existence. I wonder your thinkers could 
 not see it. 
 
 "Although a greater evil in many ways, 
 the limitation of the issue of money is similar 
 to private property in land. Both land and 
 money give to the owner increased value 
 as time goes on, regardless of whether he labors 
 or not. An owner of land may absent himself 
 from his property and perform no work, yet 
 the market value is constantly increasing; the 
 owner of a dollar in gold may stow it away 
 in a safety deposit vault, absent himself and 
 perform no work, and yet the market value of 
 that gold is constantly increasing. It will 
 buy more commodities than it formerly did. 
 The demand for a circulating medium in- 
 creases as the total number of commodities 
 increases ; but under your system the medium 
 itself could never increase in amount in like 
 proportion, since it was only one commodity ; 
 therefore it increased in value. This was 
 brought about by the use of the so-called 
 honest dollar, and was the cause of more 
 misery and vice than any system of tyranny 
 which has ever been invented. Rome at her 
 worst never caused such misery. True it 
 is that by her system of taxation she sucked 
 
92 The Great Awakening 
 
 the Mediterranean provinces dry to gratify 
 the sensuous and vicious tastes of a few ; but 
 what is that compared to the world-wide mis- 
 ery caused by the system in existence in the 
 nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which, 
 with its head at London, spread its grasping 
 tentacles to the farthest ends of the earth ? 
 
 " Oh, well, we must be charitable, we must 
 not expect too much from such uncivilized 
 and ignorant people as lived in your day ; and 
 we must remember that you were just at that 
 time passing through the third tyranny of 
 mankind — that of the capitalist. When we 
 look at it from that point of view, we as philoso- 
 phers feel a sorrow and a sympathy for the 
 masses and thank heaven that we were born 
 in a civilized age." 
 
 At this point in the conversation the 
 professor said : " Well, I guess this is enough 
 for to-night, it is time to retire. To-morrow 
 I will show you my horseless carriages and 
 give you a ride in a flying machine." 
 
 I bade him good-night and went up to my 
 room, where I was soon asleep. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 SOME NEW INVENTIONS. 
 
 After breakfast the next morning the pro- 
 fessor took me out to the barn to show me his 
 apphances for heating and Hghting his house, 
 and also his carriages. His generator was 
 pecuHar in that it turned the energy existing 
 in gas into electric energy direct. There was 
 standing on a platform a jacketed cylinder 
 about three feet high and a foot and a half in 
 diameter. At one side of that was a door, 
 near the bottom, which the professor opened 
 for me so that I could see the gas jets strik- 
 ing the coils of wire ; and he explained that 
 the wire was composed of two metals of very 
 great difference in polarity, and that these 
 metals were so welded that, whereas in the 
 thermopile of the nineteenth century only 
 about five per cent, was obtained, in this al- 
 most ninety per cent, of the heat energy was 
 transformed. I realized that here at last was 
 the solution of the great problem of how to 
 
 93 
 
94 The Great Awakening 
 
 generate electric energy direct from coal ; and 
 while standing before this simple little boiler 
 my thoughts went back to my own times, 
 when our greatest inventors were toiling night 
 and day over this problem, in many cases 
 simply from their love of science ; and I re- 
 called the doings of certain charlatans who 
 claimed everything, had nothing, but suc- 
 ceeded in fooling the ignorant. 
 
 " This must make a great difference in the 
 ease and comfort of living, professor," said I. 
 
 " You can hardly realize the difference. 
 Why, housework for the women is nothing 
 compared to what it was in your time, as all 
 the disagreeable work is done by electricity. 
 The washing, sweeping, mixing of food, drying 
 of dishes, cooking, heating, cooling — every- 
 thing is performed by our servant that you 
 see before you ; and when you remember that 
 most of the dirt existed because you lived in 
 cities where thousands of boilers poured their 
 volumes of smoke hourly into the air, where 
 horses powdered the streets into the finest 
 dust, where the congested travelling spread 
 that dust everywhere ; when you come to 
 realize that the primary causes of dirt and 
 filth, with the coexisting disease, were con- 
 centration and the use of coal, you are forced 
 
New Inventions 95 
 
 to ask yourself whether there is any compar- 
 ison between your time and to-day, when we 
 have sense enough to have a system which 
 does not necessitate crowding, and when our 
 inventors have given us a cheap and clean 
 method of heating our houses and doing all 
 our work." 
 
 " But, professor, city people are in general 
 in better healtn than country people." 
 
 " Which only proves the adage, ' Necessity 
 is the mother of invention.' As fast as dis- 
 ease springs up, a doctor springs up to cure 
 it. To get a living a doctor must be where 
 there is disease, therefore you find him in the 
 city. I do not think you can truly say that 
 the civilization of your times had blotted out 
 disease ; rather the opposite was true, it had 
 increased the number of diseases, but it had 
 also, directly from this fact, been the cause of 
 the existence of that large body of specialists, 
 the medical profession. This was only an- 
 other example of the waste which went on in 
 your times, since if it had n't been for concen- 
 tration, a great many diseases would not have 
 existed, and, therefore, a large body of men 
 could have turned their attention to other and 
 more profitable things ; but people's thoughts 
 seemed to be upside down then, as you would 
 
96 The Great Awakening 
 
 hear that such and such a disaster was a good 
 thing, since it meant work for men. People 
 were ahvays talking about wanting work or 
 wanting to give men work ; they never seemed 
 capable of understanding that work was only 
 a means to an end ; that what men wanted 
 was to satisfy their desires, or, in other words, 
 to be happy. But we are diverging. Let me 
 show you the arrangement of the gas." 
 
 " I should think, professor, it would be 
 cheaper to generate electricity at the mines 
 and wire direct from there." 
 
 " In some cases, where the distance is not 
 too great, that method is used, but here it is 
 found cheaper to pipe for gas and use individ- 
 ual generators. Come this way and see the 
 carriages." 
 
 The professor then took me into another 
 room which was on the ground floor and had 
 large folding doors. It was much like our 
 carriage houses. Here there were four auto- 
 mobiles of different capacities, each having a 
 small electric generator burning kerosene ; and 
 the professor told me that on average level 
 roads these carriages — which differed from 
 any I had been familiar with in that the 
 frame of each was built of thin steel tubing 
 after the fashion of our bicycles, which made 
 
New Inventions 97 
 
 a very light but strong construction — could 
 attain easily a speed of twenty miles an hour. 
 At the right of the driver were the guiding 
 levers, and the professor assured me that at 
 all times the machine was under perfect con- 
 trol. 
 
 We left the carriage house, and walking 
 back, entered the kitchen ; and the professor 
 took great interest in showing me all the 
 cooking appliances. There was a large switch 
 board at one side, and on a table under it was 
 an electric oven, which was nothing more nor 
 less than a large magnesium, air-tight box, in 
 the centre of which was a coil of wire. The 
 food was put in the box, the door was shut, a 
 current of electricity was turned on, and the 
 cooking began. One very interesting feature 
 of this was that the door of the box was glass, 
 through which, by the aid of an electric light 
 in the oven, the process could be watched ; 
 and there was also a thermometer inside, so 
 that the temperature could be kept constant, 
 and that simply by the turn of the .switch ; no 
 coal, no ashes, no drafts. The machine for 
 washing dishes stood near the sink, while the 
 drying box was nothing but another oven, 
 having an outlet for steam. Surely here was 
 perfection in the culinary department. 
 
98 The Great Awakening 
 
 "And your neighbors — can they afford 
 these things? " 
 
 "Of course, why not?" 
 
 "Well, if everybody is as well off as this, 
 the wealth per capita must be something 
 tremendous." 
 
 "Or else the wealth per capita in your 
 time must have been beggarly — for it 's a 
 poor rule that does n't work both ways, and in 
 this case the last way is the true way : it was 
 beggarly. How could it be otherwise with 
 the barbarous scheme of finance current ; for 
 just think a minute ! The controllers of the 
 circulating medium were the controllers of 
 industry, and determined it in any direction; 
 and since the capitalists cared nothing for 
 wealth per capita, but only for the satisfaction 
 of their silly whims, we see industry deter- 
 mined not in those directions for the general 
 good, nor for the greatest production of the 
 permanent forms of wealth, but in those 
 directions where the benefit accrued only to 
 some special class. The industries for the 
 manufacture of jewelry, trinkets, novelties, 
 energy spent in producing fast horses, fast 
 racing yachts, and all such things, are 
 examples of them. When a man spent 
 ^50,000 on a private racing yacht, the nine- 
 
New Inventions 99 
 
 teenth-centiiry people did not criticise, they 
 said it was a good thing, as it gave men work ; 
 but they did n't realize that there were 
 thousands of other ways in which that money 
 could be used where it would not only give 
 men work, but would create something of 
 real and lasting worth." 
 
 "But do you think it is wrong to indulge 
 oneself in luxuries, professor?" 
 
 "Yes, when some are without necessities. 
 But I am criticising the system now, and I do 
 say emphatically that any system of civilization 
 wherein the inequality of distribution is as 
 great as it was in your times is radically and 
 wholly wrong." 
 
 We had walked into the library and sat 
 down, and the professor, continuing, said : 
 " This room has a charm for me. I invariably 
 choose it for work of any kind, although, as 
 you know, my study is upstairs; but still 
 I can enjoy myself more here than in any 
 other room, and it is here I spend many hours 
 of meditation. Many is the time, coming 
 home late from the theatre, that I doff boots 
 for slippers, coat for gown ; and, drawing my 
 chair close to the roaring fire, with lights dim 
 and pipe in hand, my mind wanders back to 
 the dark ages of the past ; and, I must admit. 
 
lOO The Great Awakening 
 
 with the saddest of feelings I trace the 
 progress of man towards enlightenment from 
 century to century. 
 
 "Seated here by myself, undisturbed by 
 any sound save the gentle crackling of the 
 burning embers, I see man first as the savage, 
 rude in all his manners, ignorant in all his acts. 
 Those were the days when his brain was 
 weak, when everything unknown was a god, 
 when nature was the master, man the slave. 
 As the embers fall and the fire brightens, I 
 see man again. Now he appears to me 
 different, he has evolved a step. I see him 
 tilling the ground. He recognizes in his 
 fellow man a comrade, he has some conception 
 of his duty to man ; he is less ignorant, he 
 has fewer gods, simply because he can 
 explain more things naturally. Another 
 period passes, and the creed religion is born. 
 He passes from many gods to one. Surely 
 this is evolution, this is a change for the 
 better. But man is still the slave, nature the 
 master. 
 
 "It is not until the western civilization 
 appears that man's condition assumes a new 
 aspect. The Christian religion was, I think, a 
 tremendous force in forming that civilization. 
 When we look at that religion from a historic 
 
New Inventions 
 
 lOI 
 
 point of view, we realize the tremendous 
 power it exerted. Its teachings, acting on 
 the Aryan race, had a beneficial effect ; but 
 it was not long before a change came. The 
 fire burns brighter, and I see man again. He 
 is now less the slave of nature, but alas! 
 more the slave of his fellow men. 
 
 "Let the creed religionist of your time 
 think of the Dark Ages, think of the tyranny 
 of priest over layman ; is he so blind as not 
 to see the change that has taken place.? 
 What would Christ have said if he had known 
 the torture, the suffering inflicted in his 
 name ? 
 
 " I was saying that man was less the slave 
 of nature, more the slave of man. This was 
 caused by the distorted views on religion, 
 which gave into the keeping of a few priests 
 the keys to the gate of heaven. This would 
 be laughable if it were not the cause of the 
 first great enslavement of the human race. 
 But it is sad. Sad to think of are the days 
 when creed religion reigned ; sad to think of 
 the days when humanity was ruled by an 
 oligarchy of priests. But there came a time 
 when humanity rebelled. No longer did the 
 priest govern human actions. The history of 
 our race is the history of the martyrdom of 
 
I02 The Great Awakening 
 
 man ; the history of his fight, first with na- 
 ture, then with his fellow men. The power 
 of the priest waned, the power of the king 
 took its place. 
 
 " Based on divine right, a few members of 
 the human family succeeded in enslaving the 
 rest for centuries. Their monopoly of the 
 power to make laws was handed down from 
 father to son, and perpetuated, as it seemed, 
 forever. But no, not forever, for humanity 
 awoke again, destroyed its persecutors, and 
 reserved for itself the right of making laws, 
 entrusting this monopoly to no one. And 
 yet again was humanity enslaved. As trade 
 increased, a circulating medium became neces- 
 sary, and in its ignorance humanity accepted 
 for this medium one commodity of which the 
 quantity was limited, namely, gold. Again, 
 based on the rights of property, did the few 
 enslave the many. Were they priests ? Were 
 they kings .-' No, none of these were the 
 masters. They neither governed religion nor 
 did they by themselves make laws. How, 
 then, did they enslave ? Simply by controlling 
 the circulating medium. The masters were 
 given a new name. Capitalists they were 
 called. They pressed on humanity the ab- 
 surdity that it was they who furnished the 
 
New Inventions 103 
 
 capital which allowed labor to work. It was 
 the old, old story. In days gone by the 
 priests had said, ' Your only hope of salvation 
 lies in our hands.' Humanity finally denied 
 this and took its own salvation to itself. 
 Kings said, ' The only way to get just laws is 
 to let us make them '; humanity rebelled and 
 made its own laws. Capitalists said, ' The 
 only way of exchanging the products of your 
 labor for those of another is by coming to 
 us'; and at last, for a third time, humanity 
 rebelled. 
 
 "Through all this, one sees ignorance — ig- 
 norance shown in the conception of salvation, 
 ignorance shown in the value and relation of 
 laws to human happiness, and lastly, igno- 
 rance shown in the conception of a just circu- 
 lating medium. My friend, how many 
 intelligent people of your time understood the 
 theory of evolution in its broad application to 
 human actions .'' Most men and women, 
 while realizing progress in the past, regarded 
 the fundamental condition of things in the 
 nineteenth century with satisfaction. They 
 kept holidays in memory of dead patriots, and 
 persecuted the living ones. Especially was 
 this the case with those who, from some 
 opportunity to which they were born, led an 
 
I04 The Great Awakening 
 
 idle, wasteful life. While hearing the rumbling 
 voice of the downtrodden, they dismissed any 
 earnest desire to change society, by laying the 
 blame on human nature, by giving charity 
 while denying justice ; and some there were 
 who to all these entreaties for justice turned 
 a deaf ear and said, with Louis, ' Apres moi le 
 deluge.' Their retribution was quick and ter- 
 rible ; and sad to say, the innocent suffered 
 with the guilty. But it is always thus. No 
 great change for the good of humanity has 
 ever taken place but some innocent people 
 had to suffer. 
 
 " But come, come, let us not think of these 
 things. The three tyrannies humanity has 
 had to suffer from — priest, king, and capital- 
 ist — are too sad to dwell on ; let us only think 
 of the fact that at last they are things of 
 the past." 
 
 " Professor, what you have said has made 
 a deep impression on me. I must admit that 
 under the influence of the age of money my 
 mind had been prejudiced. It stands now 
 before me as clear as crystal." 
 
 " Yes ? I am glad it is so. But let us go 
 out. I want to show you our money depots 
 and our methods of issuing currency." 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 IN WHICH THE HEAD OF THE MONEY BUREAU, 
 MRS. BRONSON, GIVES ME MUCH INFORMA- 
 TION. 
 
 From the library the professor took me back 
 to the carriage house. We got into a hght, 
 open buggy, and soon were rolhng along the 
 smooth avenue. We passed many residences 
 on either side, which were mostly built, like 
 the professor's, of artificial stone ; and although 
 there was no monotony, neither was there the 
 tremendous difference in structures which in 
 my time denoted tremendous difference in 
 wealth. After travelling about four or five 
 miles, we turned off the avenue to the right, 
 into what was termed a small side street 
 (this is sarcasm : it was sLxty-five feet from 
 curb to curb, with twenty-foot sidewalks), and 
 crossing one more avenue, finally stopped at 
 a large brown stone building setting quite a 
 way back from the sidewalk, with a fine lawn 
 all around it. It had a large, arched entrance 
 
io6 The Great Awakening 
 
 with fine, heavy carving on either side, and 
 the steps to the door were massive and broad, 
 with elegant raiHngs. The structure was 
 three stories in height and had numerous win- 
 dows, and this fact, coupled with its standing 
 by itself on a plot of 'ground at least two 
 hundred feet square, must have made it a de- 
 lightful place to work in. 
 
 The professor got out and said, " I will in- 
 troduce you to the manager of this depot, a 
 Mrs. Bronson, and she will explain everything 
 and take you over the building. Be careful 
 you do not let her know the true state of af- 
 fairs, for I shall introduce you simply as Mr. 
 Pangloss." 
 
 We left the carriage and entered the build- 
 ing. In the centre there was a statue of 
 Justice, a really magnificent piece of work, 
 heroic size ; and on either side broad stairways 
 led above. These stairways were built of 
 marble, and the floor was laid in mosaic. 
 
 We were ushered into a reception room by 
 an officer, and the professor handed in his 
 card and asked for Mrs. Bronson. While the 
 usher was away, the professor told me that 
 most of the clerks in the depot were women, 
 the work being light and in many ways suited 
 to them. Soon the door opened, and a lady 
 
Mrs. Bronson, Financier 107 
 
 appeared, who greeted the professor cordially. 
 The professor said something to her which I 
 could not overhear, but which I knew must 
 be an explanation of my ignorance. I was 
 then introduced to Mrs. Bronson, and the pro- 
 fessor said to me, " My friend, I leave you in 
 good hands, and if you will excuse me for half 
 an hour, I will call for you on my way home." 
 
 " Very good," said I. He then left me. 
 
 Mrs. Bronson, who was to enlighten my 
 ignorance and initiate me into the secrets of 
 the scheme of finance, was a woman of about 
 sixty. She was of medium height, with dark 
 eyes and hair, and had a very pleasant face. 
 Like the rest of the women of this republic, 
 she was wonderfully well preserved ; one 
 would have thought she was thirty, except 
 perhaps that her manner and dignity showed 
 her maturity ; but this was the case with all, 
 and can only be accounted for by the fact that 
 the people of this day had little or nothing to 
 worry about. A man, with simply his hands 
 and brain, could always earn a fine living ; he 
 did n't have to be born into an opportunity, as 
 it was in my day. 
 
 " Your friend, Professor Harding, tells me 
 that you are unfamiliar with the finances of 
 the country." 
 
io8 The Great Awakening 
 
 " Yes," I remarked, " I am woefully igno- 
 rant concerning these questions." 
 
 " Well, let me hear just what you know con- 
 cerning our system. Of course you under- 
 stand that market value is simply a ratio of 
 exchange, and that the legislation of a rich 
 government can raise or lower that ratio." 
 
 " Yes, I believe that is so," 
 
 " Also, that in order never to have the unit 
 of value appreciate, the volume of money must 
 increase in exactly the same proportion that 
 wealth and trade do." 
 
 " Yes, I agree with you." 
 
 " Then of course you understand that no 
 matter how much increase there may be in 
 the production of commodities, their price 
 must never fall, for if their price falls, it means 
 that the volume of money has not increased 
 as the volume of the other commodities has ; 
 therefore the unit has appreciated, which can- 
 not be just. Now, it is also evident that if 
 the volume of money must keep pace with the 
 production of wealth, it cannot be redeemable 
 in any one or two or three commodities, since 
 money should be based on all — so we stow 
 nothing in our treasury vaults. Our bills are 
 exchangeable for any or all commodities, and 
 they can never be redeemed, but circulate as 
 
Mrs. Bronson, Financier 109 
 
 they should. In the old days, all the circu- 
 lating medium being based on gold, there 
 were often times when there was not gold 
 enough to go round ; therefore confidence was 
 shaken and people hastened to redeem their 
 bills. The treasury gold reserve was drawn, 
 which forced another bond issue, thus keep- 
 ing the country perpetually in debt. Come 
 with me now, and I will show you our storage 
 rooms." 
 
 I followed my guide across the hall and 
 into a large room to the right of the entrance. 
 Here in large wooden drawers were stored 
 the new bills which were to be issued next 
 month. The bills were of one, two, five, ten, 
 twenty, fifty, one hundred, one thousand, and 
 ten thousand dollar denominations, and were 
 very artistic productions. The scroll work 
 was admirable, and the vignettes of Blackburn, 
 the father of this republic, and Putnam, its 
 first president, were far better than any I had 
 ever seen in my century. In most respects 
 these bills were copies of those of the pre- 
 ceding republic, the only difference being 
 that the government guarantees these bills to 
 be exchangeable and not redeemable ; that is, 
 the government will itself pay no commodity_ 
 for them, but will force a creditor to take 
 
I lo The Great Awakening 
 
 them as a settlement of debt ; and if the credi- 
 tor wishes gold or any other commodity 
 instead of these pieces of paper, he is at per- 
 fect liberty to buy gold of any one who has it, 
 giving in return these same pieces of paper, 
 
 " Is it well to let so much wealth lie here, 
 with no protection but a wooden case?" 
 said I. 
 
 "Why, this is not wealth, it only represents 
 wealth, and who would take it ? We have 
 very heavy punishments against theft, and 
 also many unwritten laws which are very 
 much harder on criminality than the laws of 
 the past were. We do this with safety, for 
 now there is no reason for criminality. In 
 the old days, with one hand government 
 pushed the criminal on with barbarous laws 
 enacted for private interests, while with the 
 other it tried to check criminality by punish- 
 ment. The people were so foolish as not to 
 see that an ounce of prevention is worth a 
 pound of cure. To-day we have no mercy for 
 criminals, but we have no criminals. 
 
 "This money is sent here from the central 
 depot where it is made, and it is kept here 
 until distributed. Now, if you will follow me, 
 I will show you the Recording Bureau." 
 
 I was taken then across an entry, into 
 
Mrs. Bronson, Financier 1 1 1 
 
 another room, where about thirty women 
 were working at desks. My guide explained 
 that these clerks were figuring from market 
 reports and quotations which were sent here 
 day by day from all the district markets in 
 the country, in order to compute the increase 
 of wealth. These figures were examined and 
 corrected by different experts, and on the last 
 day of the month were sent to the central 
 depot. Here they were received to the 
 extent of many thousands ; and the director 
 of the mint, comparing them, easily found 
 the mean between all these reports, and de- 
 termined his monthly issue of money upon 
 this. He then notified the different outlying 
 depots of his decision and the amount that 
 each depot might issue, this latter being de- 
 termined by the population of males and 
 females over twenty-one years of age residing 
 in the district covered by the depot. 
 
 And now came the method of collecting 
 taxes, which was simplicity itself. Before 
 each month's issue of money was made, 
 enough to pay the running expenses of the 
 district and the remuneration to those work- 
 ing on public works was deducted, and so 
 the taxes were collected without any trouble 
 at all. When the day of issuance came, the 
 
1 1 2 The Great Awakening 
 
 people filed into the delivery room, and after 
 going through a certain form, as in my day 
 we did when passing into a voting booth, 
 their money was handed out to them and 
 they receipted for it. In order to understand 
 everything clearly, I put several questions to 
 my guide. 
 
 "If every one should be allowed to come 
 here and receive money simply on the ground 
 of living in the district, I should think there 
 would be many lazy ones who would do 
 nothing but draw their salaries." 
 
 "No," said my friend, "and for this reason. 
 The issuance of money is based on the wealth 
 produced, and therefore if some are lazy, they 
 hurt the pockets of the others, for they decrease 
 the amount of money issued ; and if you hurt 
 a man through his pocket, you have hurt him 
 badly. No, lazy folks cannot exist here. If 
 a man or woman performed no labor which 
 tended to the general good, he or she would 
 be ostracised and banished, or perhaps some- 
 thing worse would happen. We, however, 
 exempt married women from every duty but 
 the care of the family, while all over fifty may 
 receive a pension from the government, and 
 do not work unless they prefer to do so. The 
 money which is spent on public works is 
 
Mrs. Bronson, Financier 113 
 
 divided equally among the workers, it being 
 recognized that each worker is as important 
 for the accomplishment of a piece of work as 
 any other," 
 
 " In the old times I have read that it was 
 absurd to divide equally, since the difference 
 in the quality of work was so great. How is 
 this remedied now?" 
 
 "Why, there is no difference now. We 
 have mechanics, carpenters, laborers nov/, all 
 trades are represented, but the mental calibre 
 of our laborers is as fine as that of any other 
 man. What a man works at has nothing to 
 do with the calibre of his brain." 
 
 "Why, I have read that the terms applied 
 to the laborer were always associated with 
 the lowest class in intellectual development." 
 
 "Oh, I see what you are aiming at. You 
 do not understand the conditions under 
 which the brain develops. The first and 
 primary condition is a wholesome environ- 
 ment, and the second is leisure for brain 
 exercise, or reading. Now, in barbarous times, 
 when people lived in crowded cities and the 
 distribution of wealth was so cruelly unjust, 
 the environment was of the worst possible 
 kind, and added to this was the fact that this 
 unjust distribution caused the lowest classes 
 
114 The Great Awakening 
 
 to have no leisure at all. How, then, could 
 you expect mental or moral advancement ? 
 The cart was put before the horse. It was 
 not human nature which caused the distress 
 and the lack of prosperity and happiness, it 
 was unjust and barbarous laws which per- 
 verted human nature. All of our acts are 
 the result of environment, and of that alone. 
 Take any nation, no matter how large, take 
 any people, no matter how different may be 
 their intellectual capacities, and keep the 
 wealth equally divided between them for a 
 period of three or four generations, and that 
 inequality of intellectual capacity will dis- 
 appear. Environment is everything." 
 
 " But you allow nothing to heredity, then ? " 
 " I allow much to heredity ; but what is 
 heredity if it is not the environment of our 
 ancestors passed down to us through our 
 parents .'* Remember the environment of to- 
 day is the heredity of the future. Remem- 
 ber that all legislation which affects living 
 men also affects the babes unborn, even to a 
 greater degree than it can ever affect the leg- 
 islators. That was the trouble in the past. 
 People never thought that not onf^ were they 
 discussing politics of their own day, but they 
 were shaping the politics of their children. 
 
Mrs. Bronson, Financier 115 
 
 Because a couple were ignorant is no reason 
 why their children should not have as good 
 an education, environment, and opportunities 
 as any other. Society owes it to them, and 
 society will be more than repaid in the return 
 made by the good citizen which will result 
 from the payment of the debt." 
 
 " What you say is very interesting to me, 
 and it causes me to look at things from an- 
 other point of view entirely. If you distrib- 
 ute equally, do all live alike, then ? Is there 
 a monotony in life now .? " 
 
 " Not at all. There is no law against a 
 man hoarding if he wants to ; so long as he 
 labors he can spend or not as he pleases, and 
 it is often the case that a man will cut down 
 his expenses and save money in order to make 
 some great expenditure, like travelling. Or 
 if a man wishes to devote a year or more to 
 the preparation of some work for his own 
 personal gratification, he may take a year's 
 vacation at any time, as he simply has to save 
 enough to support him during that year. Of 
 course if a man chooses to do this, his name 
 is crossed off the list of people to whom 
 money is to be issued, during the period of 
 his vacation. When he returns to work he 
 simply notifies us, and his name is again en- 
 
ii6 The Great Awakening 
 
 tered. The difference between this method 
 and the ancient one is that with us a man can 
 Hve only on his principal ; in no way can he 
 get interest. Interest on money implies on 
 its face a scarcity of what of all things 
 should be common — a circulating medium. 
 So while in ancient times a man, by accumu- 
 lating money, could put it in land or stocks 
 or bonds, and thus live on the rent or profits, 
 with us rents and profits do not exist ; so that 
 a man can live only on what he is entitled to, 
 that is, what by his industry and frugality he 
 has saved. In ancient times one man by his 
 industry could not only live in his old age, 
 which is just, but he could arrange it so that 
 neither his son, nor his grandson, nor any of 
 his descendants, even to the tenth genera- 
 tion, need work, which is manifestly unjust. 
 
 "The industry of one man can justly affect 
 his own life, but only his. The condition of 
 every man can justly depend upon his own 
 labor and nothing else, regardless whether he 
 is born of thrifty or lazy parents. 
 
 " What the rich people of the nineteenth 
 century left to their sons was not wealth, but 
 it was a patent issued by the governments 
 whereby the holder was entitled to take as his 
 own some of the wealth of other people. He 
 
Mrs. Bronson, Financier 117 
 
 was thus a legal robber, and his patent was 
 represented by stocks or bonds. Money is 
 not wealth and never can be wealth. It is 
 simply a permit, backed up by the govern- 
 ment which issues it, which allows the owner 
 of it to procure wealth in exchange. It is 
 simply a receipt for labor performed. If is- 
 sued to laborers, it is just ; if issued to non- 
 producers, it is criminally unjust." 
 
 At this moment I saw the professor coming 
 back in the buggy, and I was obliged to stop 
 in the midst of my interesting conversation 
 with the manager of the depot. She came 
 with me to the door, and as we said good-by I 
 promised to visit her again and talk with her 
 on finance. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 WHICH TELLS OF MY FIRST RIDE IN A 
 FLYING MACHINE. 
 
 During my ride home the professor and I 
 conversed on many subjects. He had been 
 to a lecture on psychology, and we got talk- 
 ing about the sixth sense, as it was called. 
 
 " When we look out of this buggy," said 
 the professor, " the rays of reflected light, 
 striking the retina of our eyes, stimulate the 
 optic nerve, and a message is carried to the 
 brain. This modifies certain conditions pre- 
 vailing there in such a manner as to give us 
 the sensation of sight. Now, it was thought 
 that this brain condition could not be brought 
 about unless stimulated by the optic nerve, or 
 by a reflex action of certain nerve cells which 
 govern memory ; but this is found to be un- 
 true, and it is well known now that any brain 
 condition may be produced simply by the 
 action of some other brain, by induction, as it 
 were ; and any condition so produced is said 
 
Through the Air 119 
 
 to result from the use of the sixth sense. 
 This sometimes happens when the people are 
 widely separated, and matter seems to have 
 but little effect upon the phenomenon. To- 
 day, during the lecture, a very interesting 
 experiment was tried. Wehlen showed that 
 certain vibrations of ether did have a tremen- 
 dous effect on thought transference. Pro- 
 fessor Harvey seated himself upon the stage 
 with his side to the audience, and a Mr. 
 Archer was seated on the other side, back to 
 the professor. Mr. Archer was blindfolded, 
 and then from a table Professor Harvey took 
 up a pack of cards, one after another ; and Mr. 
 Archer had no trouble in naming all of them. 
 A screen of baize was next placed between the 
 two men, but the result was the same. With 
 glass or metal, the callings were slower, Mr. 
 Archer claiming that the impressions were 
 not nearly so distinct ; but in no case did the one 
 fail to call the impression in the other's mind. 
 When, however, a beam of white light was 
 thrown across the field between the two 
 brains, the impressions were different. Mr. 
 Archer could in no case tell the color, although 
 he could call the number of spots. If differ- 
 ent shades took the place of the white light, 
 the impressions were still different. There 
 
I20 The Great Awakening 
 
 can be no doubt now that one brain can con- 
 verse with another through the medium of 
 ether. Just how to perfect this art is a very 
 deep problem, however, and I suppose it will 
 advance slowly, as language did. Hazelit, 
 whose book you were reading the other night, 
 is an authority on this. 
 
 " You see now that we can explain natu- 
 rally certain phenomena which were unexplain- 
 able in your day. For instance, if suddenly 
 a man had a vision of the death of a friend — 
 a vision so perfect in all its details as to leave 
 a lasting impression - — and afterwards found 
 that the vision was a true and exact one, he 
 concluded that either his friend's soul had 
 visited him or his soul had suddenly been 
 transported to the death scene. Neither con- 
 clusion was correct. The amount of the 
 matter is, that from some cause or other, at the 
 instant of death the two men's brains became 
 sympathetic, and the dying man firmly im- 
 pressed his surroundings upon his friend's 
 brain. It was a question of thought trans- 
 ference." 
 
 As the professor had been talking, our 
 machine had been running along at a good 
 speed. We had not taken the same road 
 back, however, and from our surroundings 
 
Through the Air 121 
 
 I recognized the fact that we were not going 
 home. The professor, it seems, had another 
 treat for me, and before I knew it, we 
 rode up to a very high tower-hke struc- 
 ture, standing on a massive granite building, 
 which was six stories high. An air wharf it 
 was called ; and the professor ran our buggy 
 into the yard, and we both got out and entered 
 the building, and were lucky enough to be able 
 to hire an aerodrome, as the machine is called. 
 I suppose the word is derived from the Greek 
 and means to run on air. The professor paid 
 at the ofhce, and we were conducted to the 
 top floor, which was simply an open loft, in 
 which were several machines. A number of 
 men were examining and cleaning the motors, 
 and we were introduced to one of the engi- 
 neers, who, when I begged to be allowed to ex- 
 amine the drome before we set out to fly, 
 kindly explained everything. 
 
 This machine consisted of three kite-like 
 surfaces, placed one above the other, with 
 about six feet between. The framework was 
 of steel tubing guyed with fine wire. Each 
 surface was curved in cross section, somewhat 
 like a bird's wing, and was seven feet broad 
 by thirty feet long, which gave sLx hundred 
 and thirty square feet as the total supporting 
 
122 The Great Awakening 
 
 surface, that being sufficient, so the gentle- 
 man said, to support at least twelve hundred 
 pounds. The machine weighed, as it stood 
 before me, motors and all, about five hundred 
 pounds. The body rested on three pneumatic- 
 tired wheels, and between the lower and second 
 surface was an open framework, on which 
 rested the boat-like structure in which we sat. 
 Behind us were the rudder and the two pro- 
 pellers and their motors, while in front was the 
 generator. This was in the body of the ma- 
 chine, which could be moved at the will of 
 the operator to any part of the open frame- 
 work, this movement assuring stability. It 
 was something like the sliding seat which was 
 used in the racing canoe of my day, and an- 
 swered the same purpose. 
 
 We all took our seats, myself opposite the 
 professor, while the engineer sat in front to 
 be near the guiding lever ; and when the 
 elevator came down our machine was wheeled 
 on, and in a moment we were rising inside of 
 the steel tower. When we got to the top, I 
 will admit that I felt nervous and would have 
 backed out if it could have been done with 
 honor ; but no, I was in for it, and I knew I 
 was going to drop over the edge of that tower 
 one hundred and sixty-five feet from the 
 
Through the Air 123 
 
 ground. The elevator stopped when we ar- 
 rived at the top, and I saw that we had been 
 so placed on it that we were exactly facing 
 the wind. 
 
 " Now," said our friend, " do you want to 
 look about, or shall we sail off immediately } " 
 
 " Oh, let us go," said the professor, and be- 
 fore I could offer any objection, our friend 
 blew a whistle, whereupon one side — the lee- 
 ward — of the elevator raised itself, and as our 
 machine was on wheels, it naturally rolled off 
 the edge. 
 
 Words cannot describe my feelings during 
 that first horrible moment of falling. The 
 motion of a swing conveys the same, but, oh, 
 so feebly. It seemed as if my very bowels 
 were falling away from me, as if I was falling 
 apart. This feeling, I am happy to say, did 
 not last, for after a fall of fifty or sixty feet, 
 with a turn of the lever our captain brought 
 us to the horizontal ; another turn, whirr ! 
 went the propellers, and we were in full flight. 
 I had now got over my fright and was be- 
 ginning to feel another sensation, a most de- 
 lightful one. Never in all my life had I felt 
 such a charming one. I cannot account for 
 this except on the ground that to feel firmly 
 supported and yet to look down and see 
 
124 The Great Awakening 
 
 nothing but space between one and the earth 
 is such a novel sensation that it is charming 
 simply from its novelty. 
 
 I now perceived that we were going up hill, 
 and while our little motors were working away 
 at a great rate, the earth was gradually falling 
 away from us. As we went higher, the wind 
 got stronger, and the captain had to move us 
 constantly to different parts of the frame to 
 keep the machine balanced. The gusts were 
 frequent and powerful and came apparently 
 with no regularity, so that I realized that it 
 took no mean degree of skill to keep the 
 drome on an even level. I could now sit and 
 look at the landscape at my leisure, and I saw, 
 stretched almost as far as the eye could reach, 
 the same country I had ridden through, the 
 same beautiful streets with flowers and trees, 
 the same beautiful houses, and no smoke, no 
 chimneys, no wires to mar the beauty of na- 
 ture moulded by man. When we had reached 
 an altitude of i ,000 feet, the captain said it was 
 as high as he dared to go. The wind was 
 getting stronger, and he carried too much sail 
 for safety. I asked him why it was not so 
 arranged that some of the sail could be taken 
 in — reefed, so to speak — to which he replied 
 it was not practicable to do so in such a frail 
 
Through the Air 125 
 
 machine as an aerodrome must necessarily be, 
 so to take in sail one must make a landing. 
 And now we began to circle. The motors 
 were stopped, the propellers disconnected, and 
 we commenced soaring. We glided in great 
 circles of, I should say, a mile in diameter ; 
 and as we went with the wind we would drop, 
 and then, turning into a puff, we would with 
 our increased velocity regain our former alti- 
 tude ; but each circle was a little farther from 
 the wind than the former ; in other words, 
 while always at the same average height, we 
 were gradually drifting to leeward. This, in- 
 deed, was the very poetry of motion. This, 
 indeed, was the triumph of man's skill, of his 
 control over nature. 
 
 For three quarters of an hour we sailed one 
 thousand feet above the earth, during which 
 time we covered at least eighteen or twenty 
 miles in circles, and this with no effort except 
 a turn of the captain's hand, as he kept the 
 machine balanced at the necessary angles. 
 Think of it ! There was twelve hundred 
 pounds in mid-air, seemingly unsupported, and 
 yet our friend could move that weight up or 
 down, to the left or right, and this without 
 any machinery moving at all. In my time 
 this would have seemed little short of miracu- 
 
126 The Great Awakening 
 
 lous ; still, what was so common as to see a 
 hawk performing just such a feat ? 
 
 No other method of travel can be compared 
 with this. Here is no smoke, no dust, no 
 noise, no jar. Seasickness is unknown here. 
 The calm and peacefulness of this heaven in 
 the skies is unbroken, save by the murmur of 
 the wires as we rush through the air. Being 
 so far from any earthly things, we do not 
 realize the speed with which we are moving ; 
 and if it were not for the whistling wind, we 
 might easily imagine that some kind fairy had 
 placed us here in order that we might com- 
 mune with nature, uninfluenced by the busy 
 world beneath. I really think that a week 
 spent in the air, entirely away from the earth, 
 would be such a rest that one, on returning, 
 would be only too anxious to .get back to his 
 haven of heavenly calm in the skies. This 
 thought found my tongue. 
 
 "Professor," I said, "do people ever sleep 
 in these machines and spend more than one 
 day in the air } " 
 
 " Yes, indeed. I have some friends who 
 are very fond of spending weeks in that way. 
 They, of course, have to take provisions and 
 extra supplies, and as these weigh considera- 
 bly, only two men can go in a machine. The 
 
Through the Air 127 
 
 cabin is partly decked over, giving room for 
 two bunks ; but some one has to be at the 
 lever all the time. The two men take turns." 
 
 " I should think their quarters would be 
 terribly cramped." 
 
 " Well, they are ; but my friends tell me 
 that the effect of the view on the mind is 
 partly to mitigate the feeling, for the pano- 
 rama is so extensive, and the possible move- 
 ment of the machine so great, that the fact of 
 their being tied to a box the size of this is not 
 realized. However, if they stayed over one 
 spot the view would soon become monotonous, 
 and then they would feel their confinement ; 
 but in a week they sometimes travel as much 
 as 3,000 miles — not in a straight line, of 
 course, but in circles. If one is used to tak- 
 ing exercise every day, he feels the lack of 
 it, but for a man in middle age nothing gives 
 such rest and quiet as a week spent in the 
 skies." 
 
 As the wind was freshening up a bit and 
 our time had expired, the captain turned our 
 ship towards home, and with a swoop we 
 darted down across the wind. Rising in a 
 circle, another swoop was made, and, alter- 
 nately rising and falling, the captain ma- 
 noeuvred our craft back towards the tower 
 
128 The Great Awakening 
 
 where we had made our start. When we 
 had got within a mile or two of the tower the 
 propellers were started, and the professor ex- 
 plained that to make a safe landing this was 
 necessary. We approached the building at 
 high speed, and I saw that the elevator was 
 down, and wondered what we would do, for 
 we were now about one hundred feet above 
 ground and travelling in such a direction that 
 we would leave the tower on the left. 
 
 " Watch, he will signal for the elevator," 
 said the professor. 
 
 It was so ; for, as we passed the building, 
 the captain blew a great number of short, 
 sharp whistles, and then we began to rise. 
 As we went higher we made a big circle to 
 the left, and came round so as to face the 
 tower again. The elevator was rising, but 
 before it reached the top we had to make 
 another complete circle, so that at the second 
 trial it was ready, and we approached it, from 
 a slightly lower elevation, however. 
 
 " He will rise to it," said the professor. 
 
 As we got within one hundred feet of 
 it, a turn of the lever changed the angle ; 
 swiftly we rose, and an excellent landing 
 would have been made if, unluckily, a heavy 
 puff had not come at just the wrong mo- 
 
Through the Air 129 
 
 ment. This puff drove us upward, and the 
 opportunity was lost. Quickly the propellers 
 were started, the angle was changed, and we 
 were off to circle once more. A landing was 
 then made successfully, and the captain 
 jumped out, fastened the machine, blew the 
 Avhistle, and in a short time the elevator had 
 lowered us, bag and baggage, to the loft. 
 
 Thus ended my first ride through the air, 
 and I can truthfully say that never, either 
 before or since, have I enjoyed anything as I 
 did that sojourn in the skies. My ride back 
 with the professor in his nice little horseless 
 buggy seemed tame, and I wondered how I 
 ever could have been captivated with things 
 that move on the rough, uneven earth, when 
 I could soar forever with the eagles in the 
 deep blue sky. My friend must have read 
 my thoughts, for he said, " To fly is a pleas- 
 ure, to ride in streets a necessity." 
 
 "True, a place for everything, and every- 
 thing in its place," I said. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 IN WHICH THE ECONOMICAL ERRORS OF MY 
 DAY ARE EXPLAINED TO ME. 
 
 After this the conversation lagged, and we 
 were both occupied with our thoughts. A 
 half hour went by, and we were at home. 
 The carriage was put up, and the professor 
 and I went into the house. The next morn- 
 ing we were again in the buggy on our way to 
 visit one of the large factories, and this time 
 we took another direction. 
 
 "Professor," said I, "you say you have no 
 cities. Surely, all over the country the popu- 
 lation is not spread out as it is here ? " 
 
 " No, this is a thickly settled district, and 
 corresponds to the outskirts of your city. 
 We do not live miles apart, for that were 
 foolish ; we do not live in each other's back 
 yards, for that were more than foolish and an 
 artificial condition besides. Congestion (or 
 in other words, cities) was necessary with 
 such a barbarous system of finance current in 
 your time, but it is not so now." 
 
Economic Sophistries Exposed 1 3 1 
 
 " Then you have some open country left 
 still?" 
 
 "Of course, acres of it." 
 " Well, to whom does it belong ? " 
 " Why, to nobody in particular, but to any- 
 body who will show that he can increase the 
 total wealth by using it. It can be used by 
 no one for a monopoly, but by any one to in- 
 crease wealth." 
 
 " Well, but how is this settled ? Suppos- 
 ing I own a piece of ground — " 
 
 "That is not allowed," said the professor. 
 " You may use a piece of ground, but you 
 cannot own it, for that implies the ability to 
 use it for any purpose whatsoever and is not 
 countenanced for a moment. One cannot 
 own other forms of wealth, if the use of that 
 wealth helps to create more wealth. Any 
 wealth that is used simply to satisfy human 
 desires directly may be owned, such as food, 
 clothing, dwelling houses, pictures, books, 
 musical instruments, etc.; but the wealth in 
 the form of machines, used to create this 
 other wealth, cannot be owned ; its use cannot 
 be controlled by individuals." 
 
 " How can you prevent this, professor } " 
 " It is a very simple matter. Since the 
 issuance of money every month is based on 
 
132 The Great Awakening 
 
 the increased wealth, it follows that everybody 
 is anxious to use these labor-saving machines 
 in such a way as to produce the greatest 
 amount of wealth. If, for instance, I and sev- 
 eral of my friends are working in a building, 
 and some one shows that if different machines 
 and different methods are introduced more 
 wealth will be created, why, then everybody 
 welcomes the change, since it means more 
 money in everybody's pocket. In your time 
 such a change meant only money to the one 
 who suggested it, and those turned out did 
 not benefit by it. This was why ignorant 
 men always fought against the introduction 
 of labor saving machines. However, they 
 were not so wrong, after all. Those machines 
 never did them any good — that is to say, 
 relative to the benefit reaped by the private 
 owners. They should have been called profit- 
 making machines. Did the man who was 
 bom with no ability but to labor get more 
 than a bare living, in spite of the so-called 
 labor-saving machines ? The wealth of a 
 country depends upon the speed and ease of 
 production, but the happiness of the people 
 of that country depends upon that wealth be- 
 ing equally distributed. Now, it was a hard, 
 cold fact, and even the lowest classes some- 
 
Economic Sophistries Exposed 133 
 
 times saw it, that when weahh was produced 
 in greatest abundance, it was divided with the 
 greatest injustice. This was why the com- 
 mon people wished to prevent the production 
 of weakh, and therefore they broke the labor- 
 saving machines. In your century this aver- 
 sion to so-called overproduction was found in 
 the doctrine of protection which prevailed to 
 a greater or less extent in all the half-civilized 
 countries of Europe and America. People 
 should have had sense enough to see that the 
 error lay, not in the production of wealth, but 
 in the terribly unjust distribution. Let the 
 medium of exchange increase in just the same 
 proportion as the wealth does, and the wealth 
 will be equally divided. Then the richest 
 countries will be the happiest. The reverse 
 was true in your time. England, for in- 
 stance, by her legislation on the tariff, had 
 made herself rich, for she had enormously in- 
 creased her trade ; and one must trade what 
 one has before more can be produced. But 
 failing to bring legislation to bear on the dis- 
 tribution of that wealth by increasing the 
 circulating medium in a similar proportion, she 
 thus grew in poverty as fast as she grew 
 in wealth." 
 
 " I have read, professor, that private prop- 
 
134 The Great Awakening 
 
 erty in land was the cause of the evil in 
 England." 
 
 " Private property in land is but a neat way 
 of perpetuating the inequality of the distribu- 
 tion of wealth, which has its origin in the lim- 
 itation of the issue of money. Increase the 
 quantity of money with wealth, so that there 
 can be no interest, and there will be no inequal- 
 ity to perpetuate." 
 
 " What would have been the result of the 
 single tax, professor, if it had been applied.'' " 
 
 " A very beneficial one. It would have 
 stopped land speculation and forced owners to 
 use unoccupied land. In many ways it would 
 have been excellent. For instance, the tax 
 could have been collected with the utmost 
 ease ; it would have fallen on those who, in 
 your time, were best able to bear it. It could 
 not have been forced on to the laborer, as the 
 tariff was ; and it would have made a country 
 grow rich, since it would have stimulated and 
 not hampered industry. But I doubt if it 
 would have made any more equal distribution 
 of wealth. It amounts to this. Under the 
 single tax system land rent would go to 
 the State. Now, in your time the State was 
 composed of a body of men nominally elected 
 by the people, but really elected by a certain 
 
Economic Sophistries Exposed 135 
 
 set of henchmen who worked the primary 
 caucuses. It follows that, with such a large 
 fund in the treasury which the single tax would 
 collect, under the control of the few men who 
 composed the State, the chances of its being 
 spent wholly in a way to benefit the masses 
 were very small. With such a fund politics 
 would be more corrupt than ever, and land 
 ownership would be simply transferred from 
 the many nominal owners to the few who 
 really controlled the State. 
 
 " To treat land as private property is mor- 
 ally wrong, but to say that the single tax was 
 a remedy for all existing evils is another thing 
 entirely. A country would grow immensely 
 rich under it, as under free trade, but what 
 wealth did not go to the capitalist would go to 
 the politician, so there would still be a great 
 inequality of distribution and therefore un- 
 happiness. But then, inequality of distribu- 
 tion started long before land values existed. 
 It started when trade started, and was caused 
 by the fact that unwritten legislation — that 
 is, custom — gave to one commodity the at- 
 tribute of a standard of market values and al- 
 lowed that commodity to circulate as a medium 
 of exchange. It naturally followed that as 
 trade increased, money got scarce, and the 
 
136 The Great Awakening 
 
 owners of the commodity, money, Hved by 
 lending a thing which could not justly belong 
 to them. This caused the first unjust dis- 
 tribution of wealth, which would not have ex- 
 isted except for the ignorance of the masses 
 concerning the true function of money. 
 
 " Interest, considered by itself, is not un- 
 just ; but interest implies that there is a bor- 
 rower and a lender, and the injustice lies in 
 the fact that there should be such inequality 
 of distribution that some exist simply by lend- 
 ing, while others, less fortunate in their birth, 
 should be always borrowing." 
 
 " But, professor, if there is no natural jus- 
 tification of interest, how is it, then, that you 
 can say that interest in itself is just ? " 
 
 " Why, for this reason. Society is not jus- 
 tified in forcing one individual to help another. 
 The laws should be so adjusted that all have 
 similar opportunities and enjoy similar benefits. 
 In any society in which this is true, wealth 
 would be equally divided ; and if any borrow- 
 ing took place it would not be from necessity. 
 Under such conditions interest on the loan is 
 justifiable, since no man is called upon indi- 
 vidually to help another gratis, by the laws of 
 society. 
 
 " The curse of interest in your time was 
 
Economic Sophistries Exposed 137 
 
 the fact that it existed to such an extent that 
 thousands of people were idlers living by 
 lending ; and the cause of this was the finan- 
 cial system, which limited the increase of 
 money, thereby making it scarce, and thereby 
 giving the owners of it the opportunity of liv- 
 ing royally by lending. 
 
 " It was the ' honest dollar ' which caused 
 this. Consider for a moment. As popula- 
 tion was always increasing, there was a con- 
 stantly increasing horde of applicants for 
 work. Now the ' honest dollar ' made it very 
 hard to get work, since if a dollar buys much, 
 it is hard to get, which is evident, since such 
 a dollar shows that the supply is very much less 
 than the demand. From this you can easily 
 see that monometallism was bad economics, 
 since, no matter how well it fitted one genera- 
 tion, the next, an enlarged one with many 
 more demands, always suffered by it. Mono- 
 metallism was bound to cause a deterioration 
 in any nation which upheld it, and it finally 
 led to the Chaotic Era, as you already know. 
 But we are at the end of our journey, and our 
 conversation must be postponed." 
 
 The factory we reached was used for the 
 making of shoes. It was a one-story stone 
 affair, full of windows, and set upon a large 
 
138 The Great Awakening 
 
 plot of ground some way from the street, with 
 a pretty la^vn in front, having beds of flowers 
 on either side of the path to the door ; while 
 farther away on the right and left were broad 
 driveways, where the drays came and went 
 from and to the retail stores. We left our 
 carriage, and walking up the path, entered the 
 building, where we were met by a young 
 woman, to whom I was introduced, and who 
 gave us permission to look over the factory. 
 As the professor had been here several times 
 no guide was necessary. 
 
 In one end of the building were the finish- 
 ing and packing rooms, where a great many 
 men were working, sending off case upon case 
 of fine shoes and boots to the market ; and 
 the most noticeable thing to me in this room 
 was the cleanliness of the workers, their intel- 
 ligence, and the quiet and order which reigned 
 in every part. 
 
 " Who is the manager of this depart- 
 ment .-' " I asked the professor. 
 
 " Sometimes one man, sometimes another. 
 They take turns." 
 
 "Well, but does it not take more brains to 
 manage than to simply pack shoes ? And if 
 so, are there not some who are mentally more 
 capable of this work than others .'' " 
 
Economic Sophistries Exposed 139 
 
 « You must remember that these men who 
 pack shoes are not unequal intellectually to 
 any other men, having had the same environ- 
 ment and the same hereditary influence. 
 Their leader for the day is simply the one who 
 takes a general charge for that day, and since 
 those under him are of high intelligence, his 
 task is but light." 
 
 We moved off to another room and wit- 
 nessed in detail the manufacturing process. 
 All the work was done by machines driven by 
 the electric current, and the men simply man- 
 aged the machines. There were but few 
 styles of shoes made ; the professor telling me 
 that as the race progressed people cared less 
 and less for the ornamentation of their 
 persons. 
 
 "I do not mean that we do not worship 
 beauty in design and manufacture," he said. 
 " We do, and strive in all our garments to get 
 the greatest beauty compatible with useful- 
 ness. But in all things made to satisfy human 
 desires, utility is first considered with us. 
 This saves an immense amount of labor ex- 
 pended in your day on fashions — creations 
 which subordinated the chief use of an article 
 to an artificial use, born wholly in those who, 
 by their wealth, stood before the foolish mul- 
 
140 The Great Awakening 
 
 titude as models to be copied, and diverted in- 
 dustry to those channels in which perishable 
 wealth was always created. This creating of 
 commodities which one day had a high mar- 
 ket value and the next day no value, be- 
 cause of fashion, wasted the energies of many 
 brains and many hands. The cause back of 
 it all was the unequal distribution of wealth, 
 caused by the barbarous financial scheme in 
 which those who had got more, and those who 
 had not got nothing. With an equal distri- 
 bution of wealth, which would take place with 
 a scientific system of finance, no one could 
 pose as a model, therefore there would be no 
 fashions, so that this energy lost in your day 
 is saved now. 
 
 " In the finest economic system wealth is 
 created only in those forms that are perma- 
 nent as long as the commodity itself does not 
 deteriorate. But with you, fashion caused the 
 creation of wealth which was only wealth 
 while the fashion lasted, and as soon as that 
 changed the wealth disappeared, in spite of 
 the fact that the commodity itself lasted in 
 good condition. There are, of course, forms 
 of perishable wealth which have to be created 
 only to be destroyed, such as food, drink, and 
 all those commodities which satisfy human 
 
Economic Sophistries Exposed 141 
 
 desires and are lost in the consumption. 
 Clothing must be considered in this class, 
 although it has a longer life as wealth than 
 the other forms. In any system where wealth 
 is equally divided, consumption and production 
 go hand in hand. In a system where wealth 
 is concentrated in the hands of the few, the 
 lack of money in the hands of the many 
 checks consumption, and this reacts on pro- 
 duction, so that since the stock is produced 
 before the market is ready for it, the producer 
 finds on opening his market that he has pro- 
 duced more than he can sell. He calls it 
 overproduction. The many want, but have 
 no money to buy with. The key to the situ- 
 ation is the money question, every time. All 
 of your panics were financial panics ; all of 
 your hard times were due, not to bad harvests, 
 but to bad finance. You were standing on 
 your head and trying to look pleasant. Come 
 this way and see the other department." 
 
 We went into another room and saw the 
 first processes in making the shoes, the cut- 
 ting of leather and sewing of the uppers. 
 
 " Professor," said I, " do you not think that 
 it is unfair to give to a man that simply runs 
 one of these machines as much money as you 
 give to the man who is at the head of the de- 
 
142 The Great Awakening 
 
 partment ? And do not the heads of the 
 departments object that they do not get more 
 in proportion, since their work requires more 
 brains than the other work does ? " 
 
 "It is impossible to answer your question 
 yes or no, as it would imply. In the first 
 place, your ideas on this subject were formed 
 in a civilization where labor sold itself to cap- 
 ital and was subject to demand and supply^ 
 and where money was so scarce and so neces- 
 sary to life that the masses were constantly 
 on the verge of poverty, into which the periodic 
 hard times eventually pushed them. Now, 
 with us money is so plentiful and so equally 
 divided that to manage a business takes al- 
 most no skill at all. To make it clearer. In 
 your time, when the increase in money de- 
 pended on the quantity of one commodity — 
 gold — in existence, the increase of other com- 
 modities seeking capitalization and the increase 
 of population caused a terrible competition 
 in all classes outside of capitalists or land- 
 owners. This competition was so sharp that 
 it required exceptional brains and energy at 
 the helm of the business to capitalize the 
 stock, that is, to sell goods and manage the 
 financial part. Therefore some proved more 
 suited than others to this, and consequently 
 
Economic Sophistries Exposed 143 
 
 obtained lucrative positions. Now, with us, 
 as I have told you before, the simple act of 
 creating is sufficient to obtain capitalization, 
 our money increasing with our wealth, not 
 with our gold ; it therefore takes no special 
 skill to manage, more than to simply produce. 
 Also, since our people have had equal advan- 
 tages in education, they are as capable of 
 managing as of simply producing. Therefore it 
 is customary with us to change managers, and 
 the settlement of this question is left entirely 
 to the producers themselves. As to the other 
 matter. 
 
 " You imply that you are astonished that 
 more of our people do not object to equal 
 division, since it is impossible to conceive that 
 all work is equally hard. That also implies that 
 you would be astonished if people did not ob- 
 ject to a system in which men were paid while 
 doing nothing. This is the extreme of the 
 case. Now, how was it with you ? Did you 
 not know of thousands that lived all their 
 lives without working one day ? You lived all 
 your life in the extreme of this system, and 
 yet are astonished at us where every one 
 works." 
 
 " But, professor, they lived on the stored- 
 up labor of others. Their capital, which was 
 
144 The Great Awakening 
 
 nothing but stored-iip labor, was given them 
 by their fathers, and it was to the fathers 
 the reward of abstinence. Why is this not 
 just?" 
 
 " In the first place, you cannot store up 
 labor. If you could store up labor in capital, 
 then you could regain it without any more 
 labor being put in. But this is impossible. 
 If all the capital in the world were left to itself, 
 if all the stored- up human labor were permitted 
 to produce, it would never produce a cent's 
 worth of wealth if live men were not ready to 
 use it." 
 
 " But the live labor only unlocks the doors 
 of stored-up labor." 
 
 " Nonsense ! " said the professor. " Let us 
 consider one moment. Suppose by some 
 method of labor you become possessed of 
 $100,000. That represents, does it not, from 
 your point of view a certain amount, $100,000 
 worth, of stored-up labor, no more, no less .-* " 
 
 "That is right," I said. 
 
 "Well," said the professor, " suppose you 
 invest that in a plant and business, and that 
 at the end of the first- year your gross receipts 
 have been say $40,000, your expenditures 
 $25,000 in taxes, lights, shrinkage on the 
 plant, power, and wages. Then by hiring your 
 
Economic Sophistries Exposed 145 
 
 laborers you have been able to unlock the 
 doors of stored-up labor, as you say, to the ex- 
 tent of 1^15,000. Very well. This goes on, 
 and in ten years your profit is still fifteen per 
 cent., but in ten years you have got out of 
 the $100,000 of stored up labor $1 50,000, and 
 you still own the plant. Where did this in- 
 crease come from .-* ' ' 
 
 " Well, in ten years capital will increase of 
 itself. If let alone, some forms of wealth, or 
 capital, will increase and grow by nature ; and 
 since these forms are exchangeable for all 
 other forms, this increase is certainly a justi- 
 fication of interest and profits." 
 
 " In no sense is it," said the professor. " I 
 am aware that an economist of your time, in 
 his able work upon a land tax, attempts to 
 justify the claim to interest and profits in this 
 manner. He casts aside the example of the 
 French economist Bastiat, and substitutes one 
 of his own, in which he states that if the 
 carpenter, instead of having as his capital a 
 plane, had had some seeds, at the end of the 
 year he would have got back not only some 
 seeds, but would have had some fruit also, it 
 being a growth from his seeds caused by 
 nature — an increase on his capital for which 
 he did not expend labor. The able writer 
 
146 The Great Awakening 
 
 forthwith draws the erroneous conchision that 
 since some forms of wealth increase of them- 
 selves, and since they are exchangeable for 
 all other forms, an increase in all other forms 
 must be and is justifiable. 
 
 " Here is the error. The faculty of ex- 
 changeability held by all forms of wealth does 
 not, as he implies, make the characteristics of 
 all forms similar. There are some forms of 
 wealth which increase without labor by man 
 being performed during the process ; the labor 
 is performed gratis by nature, and therefore 
 all holding this form of wealth are entitled to 
 this increase, since their taking of it does not 
 decrease the store of any one else. But nature 
 does not increase all forms of wealth, so that 
 it is absurd to say that for the above reason, 
 where labor causes the increase, it just as 
 rightfully belongs to the so-called owner as 
 it does when nature does the work. In the 
 one case, human labor enters as a controlling 
 factor and destroys completely any similarity 
 between the two phenomena such as econo- 
 mists try to show through the interchange- 
 ability of wealth. In your day it was firmly 
 believed that the capitalists were living on 
 stored-up labor. They had a sort of inex- 
 haustible purse, and although anybody in his 
 
Economic Sophistries Exposed 147 
 
 right mind must have -known that the quan- 
 tity of labor stored up, as you say, was a 
 definite one, interest and profit — that is, the 
 unlocked streams of stored-up labor — went on 
 forever. This was a sort of perpetual motion 
 machine, made expressly for the capitalists 
 and used for their own benefit — the only 
 one, I believe, that ever worked. You stated 
 that the capital your father got was a reward 
 of abstinence. Now abstinence is the last 
 thing to be rewarded. Abstinence means re- 
 duced consumption, this means reduced pro- 
 duction ; and, in any civilization where the 
 population increases, reduced production 
 means poverty in the masses and the concen- 
 tration of wealth in the hands of the few. 
 
 " There is no natural justification of interest 
 except as relates to those few cases where 
 nature does the work, as with seeds, etc. In- 
 terest is but the lesser of two evils, for capital 
 is necessary for the production of wealth ; and 
 if it can only be obtained by the payment of 
 interest or by force and bloodshed, then we 
 can easily see that the payment of interest is 
 the lesser evil. Realizing now that there is 
 a vast difference between a benefit and the 
 lesser of two evils, our object should be to 
 bring about those conditions in which capital 
 
148 The Great Awakening 
 
 may be obtained without the existence of 
 these two evils, and this can only be done by 
 allowing money to increase as wealth does. 
 But to return to the question of equal wages. 
 Did you in your time make much stir because 
 an acquaintance of yours, who did not work 
 nearly as hard as you, got as much salary ? " 
 
 " That depended, professor, on whether the 
 size of his salary affected mine or not." 
 
 " Exactly," said my friend. " If you were 
 comfortably off, you did not worry much 
 whether your friend was paid more or less 
 than he deserved ; it was only when it was 
 hard to get a living that the size of his salary 
 made a difference to you, especially if he was 
 paid out of the same treasury. With us all 
 are rich in corporal and mental necessities 
 and luxuries, and we do not worry or feel badly 
 over the imaginary laziness of a fellow being." 
 
 We went to the back of the building and 
 saw the big motor drays come to the platform, 
 load up, and move off. Everything was done 
 with neatness and despatch, and with but 
 little noise, the carriages running on large 
 pneumatic tires. 
 
 " I should like to go to one of the retail 
 stores," I said. 
 
 " Very well, we will take the automobile 
 
Economic Sophistries Exposed 149 
 
 and visit one." And we were soon rolling 
 swiftly along the avenue. 
 
 " Your streets are so beautiful here, pro- 
 fessor, it is a very great pleasure to ride on 
 them." 
 
 " Yes, without the horse and with pneu- 
 matic tires a macadam or asphalt road requires 
 but little care to keep it in fine condition. 
 What ruined the streets in your time was the 
 iron shoes of the horses continually pounding 
 and grinding, and the narrow iron tire sink- 
 ing deep where there was improper drain- 
 age. Our roads are built beautifully to begin 
 with, and afterwards they receive but little 
 wear." 
 
 " In building your roads, professor, there 
 must have been considerable rough and dirty 
 work which men of high intellectual calibre 
 would shrink from performing ; and indeed, I 
 should think that in many branches of labor 
 the work must have been of this kind. How 
 did you persuade men into this branch if you 
 did not pay more .'' " 
 
 " In the first place, in such work fewer 
 working hours are considered a day's labor ; 
 and in the second place, no one man does the 
 same work for his lifetime. The different 
 classes or grades of work are performed by all 
 
150 The Great Awakening 
 
 men at different ages. A man of high intel- 
 lectual capacity does not with us object to 
 doing work which in your day was relegated 
 to those of a low mental status, because he 
 gets as much pay as any one else does, fewer 
 hours, and his position is not permanent in 
 the trade, but only lasts say five years, while 
 he is young and physically suited to the rough 
 and arduous labors." 
 
 " But how is the change effected from one 
 position to another, and who supports him be- 
 tween times ? " 
 
 " How was it in your time .'* " said the pro- 
 fessor. " A man often changed his occupa- 
 tion, did he not, sometimes because he had 
 to, and sometimes because he wanted to.^ " 
 
 " Yes, but in my day a man scarcely dared 
 to leave his position because it was so hard to 
 get another." 
 
 " True, thanks to the scarcity of the ' hon- 
 est dollar,' which paralyzed industry and 
 threw thousands out of work. Now, with us, 
 money is so plentiful and satisfies the de- 
 mands of trade so fully that the demand for 
 labor is always greater than the supply. I 
 have never in my lifetime seen any day in 
 which the demand for labor was less than the 
 supply — that is, there never was a time when 
 
Economic Sophistries Exposed 151 
 
 a man could not leave his position and secure 
 another easily. Indeed, I cannot see how it 
 can be othen\dse when our money increases 
 with our wealth, our object being to in- 
 crease production, while yours was to hamper 
 and control it. The protectionists hampered 
 it, and the trusts controlled it. This followed 
 as a matter of course, since you were all 
 foolish enough to hamper the increase of 
 money." 
 
 " But how, professor, did the man secure 
 another position .? Just what did he do .? " 
 
 "Why, he went around to the different 
 managers, asking for a job, just as he did in 
 your time, and he immediately got it ; just as 
 in your time, when business was good and 
 healthy — which really did occur occasionally 
 — an able man was not long out of employ- 
 ment." 
 
 " But if a manager gave him a job, tools or 
 a machine must have been lent him, and did 
 not the owner of the machine exact something 
 for the use of it ^ Was this not profits .? " 
 
 "The man that used the machine was the 
 owner, and his profit was simply the money 
 he received from the labor he put into the 
 machine— that is, if he worked by himself. 
 If he worked with others, his share was the 
 
152 The Great Awakening 
 
 same as all the others, if all were concerned 
 in the manufacture of one article." 
 
 "But, professor, if I save $1,000 and in- 
 vent a new machine, am I not entitled to 
 something if I lend it and thereby increase 
 the production of commodities?" 
 
 " If you can find any one who wants to bor- 
 row and is willing to pay for the privilege, 
 then that is a private affair ; but as you can 
 get no patents, other machines will be built, 
 and there will be no borrowers." 
 
 " But it would take a lot of money to con- 
 struct a plant to manufacture these machines 
 in quantity." 
 
 "True, and that money would quickly be 
 raised by the producers themselves by contri- 
 butions." 
 
 " But what would be the incentive to con- 
 tribute, since after the plant was built it would 
 not belong to the builders unless they worked 
 in it themselves .'' " 
 
 " Let us compare to-day with your time. 
 To float the stock of such a company as you 
 suggest, what was necessary .-' Simply a be- 
 lief that the plant would produce wealth and 
 they would gain thereby in their dividends. 
 Is this not so .'' " 
 
 "Yes," I said. 
 
Economic Sophistries Exposed 153 
 
 " Well, it is the same now. If such a plant 
 would increase the wealth of the nation, the 
 amount of money issued at the next pay day 
 would be increased, and therefore the con- 
 tributors would gain thereby, although they 
 never saw or used the plant thereafter. You 
 must remember that besides getting money 
 for his labor, every laborer receives money 
 from the government periodically, the amount 
 of which depends on the increased amount of 
 wealth produced. In this way there is a con- 
 stant stimulus to the increased production of 
 wealth, much greater than that caused by a 
 patent law or by any other of your laws, for 
 the protection of a monopoly." 
 
 " But, professor, if a man only got a portion 
 of the gain which he caused, the rest being 
 distributed to every other person in the coun- 
 try, would he work hard to increase the 
 wealth — would that not act as a brake on his 
 energies .-* " 
 
 " I see you are not familiar with a some- 
 what similar system which existed in your 
 time — I refer to the selling of goods on 
 commission. By giving the seller a percent- 
 age of his sales, his energies were incited to 
 the utmost. The difference between that 
 system and ours is that, in your system, the 
 
154 The Great Awakening 
 
 rest went as profits, while with us it is divided 
 amongst the rest of the workers ; so that while 
 every man gets but a per cent, of the result 
 of his labor along this line, he also gets a per 
 cent, of every other one's. 
 
 " It must, of course, be evident to you that 
 if we allowed these contributors to own this 
 plant and receive something as profit on it, 
 then those who use it would constantly have 
 to give some of their labor to those who own 
 it, and in a short time we should arrive at a 
 point where a man could live by lending. 
 This we do not intend to do, so we divide 
 whatever increase there may come from this 
 increase of wealth equally, and stand fast on 
 the principle that the user, and only the user, 
 of capital is its owner, the only one entitled 
 to the direct return from its use. This is an 
 underlying principle with us, and is one of 
 the bulwarks of our democracy. This equal 
 division of increasing wealth causes us all to 
 grow rich together, and now there are none 
 of us who are poorer off in material comforts 
 and luxuries than a man worth a million dollars 
 was in }'our day, and still we all ha\'e to work. 
 This seems ridiculous to you, does it not .-' To 
 be worth a million and still have to work ! 
 If you will think of it a minute, you will 
 
Economic Sophistries Exposed 155 
 
 understand it. To live without working, you 
 must lend and exact payment from the bor- 
 rower. Now, if everybody in the country was 
 worth a million dollars, to whom would you 
 lend ? To live without working, there must 
 be a lender and a borrower, rich and poor. 
 In a country where all are equally poor or 
 equally rich such conditions cannot exist. So 
 with us interest has died a natural death, and 
 the cases where there is a payment for a loan 
 are few and far between. This is entirely 
 the result of our scientific scheme of finance 
 and the equal distribution of money." 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 I AM INTERESTED IN THE SALE OF 
 COMMODITIES. 
 
 At this point in the conversation we rode 
 up to the store. This building was quite 
 large, although only one story high, and con- 
 tained counters with the goods on exhibition 
 and pleasant clerks behind them, ready and 
 willing to help in a purchase. I learned here 
 that the goods from each factory were marked, 
 so that, when sold, the money was credited 
 correctly, and at night, when the proper 
 amount was deducted as charges — that is, 
 the wages of the clerks, etc. — the remainder 
 was handed over to the manager of the fac- 
 tory to be distributed among the workers. I 
 do not mean to say the money changed hands 
 every night ; I believe that happened once a 
 month. It was wholly a matter of con- 
 venience. 
 
 Outside of the fact that it was only one 
 story high, there was nothing novel here. 
 The light came in a flood through the roof, 
 
 IS6 
 
Modern Department Stores 157 
 
 which was of glass in steel frames, the glass 
 being of a peculiar toughness quite different 
 from any I was familiar with. There were 
 pneumatic and cable cash carriers, and the 
 store in many ways resembled those I had 
 seen in my own country, except that, although 
 it was considered a large one and well stocked, 
 it had but few things compared with some of 
 the retail monsters I had been used to. 
 There were also but few people in it. The 
 cause of this was that, since no fashions existed, 
 the number of commodities was not one half 
 of what used to exist ; therefore, there were 
 almost no trinkets or novelties and only few 
 designs in the various goods. I remembered 
 the professor on finance, and said to myself, 
 " In my day money was so scarce that com- 
 modity dealers tried in every possible way 
 to attract the eye and thus the pocketbook : 
 hence novelties, hence jewelry, hence trinkets, 
 hence the great variety of designs in every- 
 thing. Now money is plentiful these things 
 have disappeared : cause and effect." I was 
 beginning to understand things, and to real- 
 ize what uncivilized brutes we were in the 
 nineteenth century. 
 
 I wondered if the lack of these things was 
 felt. No, of course not ; for, being bom with- 
 
158 The Great Awakening 
 
 out them, no one realized any loss. I never 
 cried over the lost arts of Egypt, and I doubt 
 if any other sane man did. 
 
 There was one point on which I wanted a 
 little information, and I put the question to 
 the professor. 
 
 " With your system, professor, you have no 
 standard commodity. Now, with no stand- 
 ard, how does a man know how much to ask 
 for a suit of clothes .'' Would he not be all at 
 sea about the question of market value ? " 
 
 " Well, let us examine the case. Let us 
 suppose a man with no knowledge of our 
 financial scheme to be placed in this region 
 with some clothing which he wants to sell. 
 Suppose he gets permission by some means 
 to open a store, displays his clothing, and then 
 is at a loss to know the market value of his 
 suits, for we tell him we have no standard 
 like gold, and that our government issues 
 paper money with promises to pay no com- 
 modity whatever, but which simply is ex- 
 changeable for any or all commodities. He 
 sees a one-dollar bill, and as it does not mean 
 anything to him — he being a barbarian and 
 coming from a country where they believe in 
 the, gold standard — how is he to tell what 
 value his suits hold in this market ? " 
 
Modern Department Stores 159 
 
 "He cannot, professor; that is just my 
 point." 
 
 "Very good," said my friend. "One 
 more question. I want you to tell me what 
 price he will ask for them." 
 
 " How can he determine that .'' " I said. 
 
 "He has got to, as he has got to sell his 
 goods." 
 
 " I don't see how he can, unless he asks 
 some one who keeps a clothing store near 
 him." 
 
 "That is not allowable in this supposed 
 case." 
 
 "Then he will have to shut up shop," 
 said I. 
 
 " Not at all," said the professor. " Listen. 
 He charges one dollar per suit and opens the 
 door. Crowds rush in to buy. Having so 
 many purchasers, he raises the price on his 
 suits to two dollars, to three, to four, until 
 finally he strikes a point where he can sell his 
 suits, pay his bills, and be rewarded for his 
 labor. He then has found the market value 
 of his suits in dollars ; and a standard, gold or 
 silver, has no more to do with market value 
 than the moon has." 
 
 " The quantity of money in existence, then, 
 is the determining factor in market value, 
 professor .'* " 
 
i6o The Great Awakening 
 
 " Not the quantity in existence, but the 
 quantity offered to buy. There is a differ- 
 ence. If I am a capitahst with $100,000 to 
 my credit, and walk into a stock exchange 
 such as used to exist in your time, it makes a 
 vast difference in market vahies whether I 
 determine to use that money or to let the 
 market alone. In both cases the money is in 
 existence ; but in the case where I do not use it, 
 it does not change market values in the least, 
 while if I wish I can bull or bear the mar- 
 ket to a considerable extent by its use. The 
 amount of money ready to purchase can never 
 be exactly determined. It, however, fluctu- 
 ates much, while the amount of money in ex- 
 istence remains the same. 
 
 "In 1873 the amount of legal tender 
 money in your country was much reduced, 
 thereby reducing this other unknown quantity, 
 the money ready to purchase, since it must 
 always be less than the whole amount of all 
 money. All other market values, therefore, 
 fell, not all at once nor in the same propor- 
 tion, of course ; but they fell at practically the 
 same time. 
 
 " The amount of money ready to purchase 
 is the determining factor in values, don't for- 
 get that. Some economists, when arguing 
 
Modern Department Stores i6i 
 
 against the quantitive theory of money, lose 
 sight of the fact that the amount of money 
 ready to purchase is never coincident with the 
 amount in circulation ; therefore their argu- 
 ments, based on figures relating to the amount 
 in circulation, are sometimes wrong, being 
 founded on wrong premises." 
 
 " If this is an unknown quantity, professor, 
 how can it be used intelligently in economic 
 science?" 
 
 *' In this way. We can find out what ac- 
 tion tends to increase or decrease it, and we 
 can find out whether it is better for the 
 masses to increase or decrease it. To in- 
 crease the amount of money ready to pur- 
 chase is to increase the number of purchases, 
 or, in other words, to increase consumption. 
 This in its turn increases production, which 
 shows us that the most good comes from in- 
 creasing this unknown quantity. A protec- 
 tionist, now, would argue the other way ; but 
 then, a protectionist wants to produce as little 
 as possible and eat most of it himself. Now, 
 then, if to increase this amount is good, to 
 decrease it is bad. We know that by decreas- 
 ing the amount of money issued, you make 
 the dollar buy more, but if it buys more, it 
 is harder to get, and if it is harder to get, 
 
1 62 The Great Awakening 
 
 it is slowly spent ; and when we say that 
 money is slowly spent, we know imme- 
 diately that the amount of money ready 
 to purchase is small, we know that consump- 
 tion is checked, we know that some people 
 have nothing to eat, that poverty and starva- 
 tion are everywhere seen, that production is 
 stopped, and that business dies ! 
 
 " Good heavens ! When I look back at 
 your generation, I stop and ponder on the 
 patience of men. It is a virtue, patience, and 
 the people of the nineteenth century had it in 
 generous quantities, else had they risen and 
 struck the oppressor from the earth. You 
 have the 'honest dollar' to thank for that." 
 
 I felt quite satisfied with what the pro- 
 fessor had said, and I knew it would be food 
 for reflection. 
 
 It was soon after this that we left the store 
 and rode toward home. While riding along, I 
 had the opportunity to watch many flying ma- 
 chines overhead, and I took occasion to ques- 
 tion the professor concerning the uses of 
 flying machines, particularly as a means of 
 defense. 
 
 " Professor," said I, " tell me just what part 
 the flying machine took in the formation of 
 the Money Republic and why it was so im- 
 portant?" 
 
Modern Department Stores 163 
 
 "Well, to explain the importance of that 
 invention, I must go back and tell you a little 
 about laws and their enforcement. Before 
 laws existed there was unwritten legislation, 
 custom, you know, that is what I mean by un- 
 written legislation, and that legislation existed 
 with no force behind it. It existed from a 
 sort of passive acquiescence from all con- 
 cerned. So it naturally followed that any 
 written legislation which conformed to the 
 unwritten was the most easily enforced. Now, 
 to make a law is only half an action, to en- 
 force it is just as necessary ; so we see that, 
 as the material means of enforcing it grow, a 
 law may diverge from custom more and more 
 with safety. The term * custom ' is applied to 
 certain conditions which have had their origin 
 in the past ; and, although at a remote time 
 they may have been just, they cannot possibly 
 hold that position as the race grows older, 
 but must constantly change as ideas change. 
 What does for a child will not do for an adult, 
 and it is the same with regard to the progress 
 of the human race. 
 
 " Now the inventions of gunpowder, the 
 printing press, the steam engine, the com- 
 pass, all helped to make material conditions 
 wherein laws could be more rigidly enforced ; 
 
164 The Great Awakening 
 
 it therefore follows that with these conditions 
 laws can be made, and generally will be made, 
 which get their origin from a moral concep- 
 tion of right and wrong, and have nothing to 
 do with custom ; but that law which governs 
 the issue of a circulating medium is the hard- 
 est possible one to enforce, since trade is a 
 primary action in human existence and took 
 place before governments existed. We, there- 
 fore, see that the written legislation upon 
 money is simply a record of the unwritten 
 legislation before it. Custom declared one com- 
 modity to be money ; legislation, coming after, 
 declared the same thing — even the wisest 
 of law makers well knowing that to declare 
 anything else would be foolish, since they 
 could not enforce it. No man could justly 
 claim, therefore, that because a law existed in 
 the jDast, it was just in the present. It existed 
 then simply because it could be enforced 
 and was suited to those times. 
 
 " Of course I know there were many acts 
 of legislation which were called laws but were 
 not enforced. These I do not consider laws 
 in the true sense. Only those rules are laws 
 which exert an influence in moulding society. 
 Now let us come to the flying machine. In 
 large countries, where the population is small, 
 
Modern Department Stores 165 
 
 it is naturally spread out over the land, and 
 farming or grazing is the chief occupation. A 
 farmer is near the man he trades with, but far 
 from the seat of legislation, and it therefore 
 follows that the rules governing his trading are 
 such as come from custom. If, however, it 
 could be possible for some one from the seat 
 of government to get to the farmer at a 
 moment's notice, and do this with little 
 trouble and expense, it would in reality bring 
 the seat of government as near to the farmer 
 as the trader is. This would mean that laws 
 could then be made from the dictates of 
 reason and not from custom, since they could 
 be as easily enforced as unwritten legislation 
 ordinarily can. Now, when our little army of 
 emigrants went to Africa, they proceeded to 
 fence in their country, not with such absurd 
 things as custom houses, but with police 
 stations. They owned, either by purchase or 
 grant, a plot of ground one hundred miles 
 square, and at intervals of ten miles they built 
 raised platforms, fifty feet square and fifty feet 
 high, on the border of this republic. Later 
 they also built them inside, so that they 
 finally had one hundred of these stations in 
 their country. These platforms were made 
 first of wood, but afterwards of steel, and all 
 
1 66 The Great Awakening 
 
 were open underneath. At the top there 
 was a neat arrangement of sails on rods fixed 
 so that on occasion they could be thrown into 
 a horizontal position by moving a large lever, 
 thus showing the sails to any patrolman 
 above. This was a signal, and the flyer 
 immediately descended to see what was the 
 trouble. 
 
 " In your day one went to a police station 
 and complained ; it was the same with this 
 republic, except that, no matter how far from 
 the seat of government one lived, his com- 
 plaint was never unanswered, for wherever he 
 lived, he was always near a police station. 
 Of course, with this condition of affairs laws 
 created in Congress were felt by every one 
 equally, and this republic was the first to 
 have laws based on common sense and not on 
 custom. Each station had an elevator to 
 raise flying machines, and stairs to reach the 
 top. Each district kept constantly on watch 
 a man whose duty it was to patrol the skies 
 above his station. Every man was subject to 
 the duty, all took turns at it, and all were 
 paid out of the treasury. There were, there- 
 fore, one hundred patrolmen in the skies, con- 
 stantly guarding the nation. These men 
 soared in circles and kept a watch not only on 
 
Modern Department Stores 167 
 
 their own station, but also on the patrolmen 
 next them. 
 
 " Of course a single patrolman was not 
 much of a power, but if he disappeared from 
 the skies his next door neighbor started to 
 find where he had gone, and it was ' follow the 
 leader ' until all of the hundred put in an ap- 
 pearance. Also, if the people near one station 
 saw that their patrolman had disappeared and 
 that no one else had taken his place, they 
 sent up another man to do duty until the 
 trouble should be settled. In this way it was 
 possible to mass any quantity of men at any 
 point in an incredibly short space of time, and 
 this with no railroads or telegraph lines. 
 
 " Perhaps it will appear simpler to you if I 
 compare it to the action of vultures when one 
 discovers carrion. These birds patrolled the 
 skies as we do now, and when one discovered 
 prey and dropped, the others from all parts of 
 the sky came quickly after him. If he found 
 he could not get at the prey, he rose again ; 
 and this was a signal that a false alarm had 
 been given, and the birds went back to their 
 respective positions. If, however, the coast 
 was clear the birds quickly gathered from all 
 quarters. This method of protection was the 
 means of saving the republic from many inva- 
 
1 68 The Great Awakening 
 
 sions sent by its enemies, who looked upon 
 the growth of such radical ideas with extreme 
 disfavor, as tending to overturn the old sys- 
 tem. Verily, our mental and social conditions 
 are dependent on our inventors." 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 NINETEENTH CENTURY THEORIES IN PRACTICE. 
 
 When we reached home and had put up 
 the carriage, the professor said, " Come into 
 the library, and I will read you a short history 
 of one of the eastern settlements." 
 
 I walked into that room and settled myself 
 in a comfortable chair, while the professor 
 took from the shelves a book and picked out 
 the part he wished to read to me. He then 
 sat down and said, " This is about the town 
 called Harwich. It was the most eastern 
 of all the police stations, and formed the 
 nucleus of a gathering of fifty or sixty 
 families. In the immediate neighborhood the 
 soil was very rich and well suited to farming, 
 so that naturally that industry flourished first. 
 Now let me read to you. 
 
 " ' This station has a local government en- 
 tirely its own and entirely distinct from the 
 other stations. It is modelled after the town 
 meeting of our times,' — this man is an 
 169 
 
170 The Great Awakening 
 
 American, writing before the Chaotic Era, you 
 know — ' and the laws made take effect upon 
 all who belong to this station. Any man 
 whose name is on the list of those to whom 
 money is to be issued comes under the juris- 
 diction of these laws ; but there is a limit to 
 their power, as no station can make laws regu- 
 lating the issuance of money, except so far as 
 its own citizens are concerned. When the 
 wealth has been increased, and the head of the 
 government is notified to what extent, money 
 is issued to the different stations ; and if there 
 are people who have shown a determination 
 not to work, but simply to live on this issuance 
 of money, they are ostracised, their names 
 are struck off the lists, and they therefore 
 have by their own action injured themselves. 
 This is done by a three- fourths registered 
 vote in the town meeting, the defendant hav- 
 ing previously been heard. Also no one 
 station can live on the money issued or the 
 wealth created at other stations, since that 
 would decrease the amount of money the other 
 stations received and would lead to an inves- 
 tigation. Of course, if disease or fire or other 
 natural agencies are the cause of the decrease 
 in wealth at any one station, then, upon in- 
 vestigation, the citizens would be relieved of 
 
Theories in Operation 171 
 
 all blame, and the condition would be accepted. 
 Also, if one station by its locality is richer, it 
 receives no more money, proportionally, since 
 the richness is natm'e's not man's. 
 
 " ' The little station of Harwich for the 
 first few years of its growth had a very peace- 
 ful time. The country had been cleared of 
 savages and wild beasts, and, with the patrol- 
 men above, the citizens knew they had nothing 
 to fear from a surprise. There are a great 
 many users of land here, but no owners, in 
 the sense we mean. The price of all things 
 put up for sale is regulated, as it is with us, 
 by the ratio between the quantity of money 
 offered to purchase and the supply of salable 
 goods. No matter what unit is used, the 
 price of any commodity for which money is 
 given must be regulated by this ratio. All of 
 our trading is simply barter, a barter of com- 
 modities for money, or money for commodities. 
 When the different citizens make in its en- 
 tirety any commodity, their remuneration is 
 the quantity of money they can get. 
 
 " ' This condition of affairs existed at first, 
 but afterwards, when industry was specialized, 
 a national law stepped in and declared that 
 " whatever is the quantity of money received 
 by sale of such goods or commodities as are 
 
172 The Great Awakening 
 
 the result of the co-operation of different 
 labors or exertions, that quantity shall have 
 equal division amongst all concerned in the 
 manufacture of said commodity." This law 
 is based upon the belief, strongly held by the 
 people of this nation, that the mental capacity 
 of any man is dependent upon his environ- 
 ment and that of his ancestors handed down 
 by heredity ; they believe that by starting 
 and keeping money equally divided, the great 
 difference of capacities will, in the course of 
 three or four generations, disappear. At the 
 present writing it is difficult to predict whether 
 in the long run the action of this law will be 
 as it is presumed. We can see, however, the 
 result of issuing money on increased wealth 
 and dividing it equally, for the growth of this 
 village is unexampled in the history of the 
 world, except perhaps by the other villages in 
 the republic. This is not socialism. Socialism 
 is a kind of protectionism. It has for its 
 object the controlling and hampering of the 
 growth of industry, in order to keep the results 
 more equally divided ; but as the control is by 
 the State and the State represents a few men, 
 only nominally elected by the many, it fol- 
 lows that socialism is the formation of a tre- 
 mendous trust, the managers of which are 
 
Theories in Operation 173 
 
 elected by the people and are supposed to 
 govern in their interests. But we find in the 
 history of the world that to delegate to one 
 man the control of interests is to tempt him 
 to satisfy his own, and not the people's wishes. 
 
 " ' This is not anarchy, for its primary 
 national laws are enforced much more rigidly 
 than with us. It is, however, more anarchy 
 than socialism, since it must tend to develop 
 the individual to the fullest extent, and 
 leaves industry to be controlled by no one. 
 
 "Tn our country it matters little to us 
 whether a man in another city fails or not; 
 but if our government were to issue money on 
 increasing wealth, we would be hurt by a 
 failure, no matter in what part of the country, 
 and would therefore take a vital interest in 
 one another's affairs. By simply changing 
 the financial scheme, we would all become 
 stockholders in every business in the com- 
 munity. When the village of Harwich 
 became older, there were of course men who 
 had saved money and men who had constantly 
 lived up to their incomes. One of the men 
 who had hoarded proposed an amendment in 
 which the money issued should be distributed, 
 not equally, but according to the quantity of 
 money each one had saved. Of course we 
 
174 The Great Awakening- 
 
 can see his motive. Being of a miserly dispo- 
 sition, he wanted to increase his hoard. The 
 discussion was carried on in the town hall. 
 Each of these villages sent representatives to 
 Congress, and the town vote on this amend- 
 ment was simply to determine whether the 
 representatives from this district should ad- 
 vocate the amendment in Congress or not. 
 There was a tremendous vote against the 
 amendment, the ablest men claiming that to 
 issue to those who had would bring about 
 class distinctions — a thing the government had 
 pledged itself to prevent at all costs. Money 
 issued in such a way would not be in active 
 circulation, since there would be a constantly 
 growing hoard under the control of a few 
 misers, which would force concentration of 
 population, because to get money every citizen 
 would have to go where the misers were. It 
 appears this is the only case on record where 
 there was an organized opposition to the con- 
 stitution in this village. 
 
 " ' In another there had been some opposi- 
 tion to equal division of wages, but it had no 
 strength ; for the people saw that of the total 
 number of men at work, one man's labor was 
 just as valuable as another's. This may seem 
 strange to my readers, but I think I can ex- 
 
Theories in Operation 175 
 
 plain the ground they stood on. In the first 
 place, every commodity which exists where 
 trade does has three values — a utility value, 
 more properly called worth, a labor value, and 
 a market value. The first is an intrinsic one, 
 depending upon the physical properties of the 
 commodity ; the second depends on the amount 
 of labor necessary to produce the commodity ; 
 the third is an artificial one, depending upon 
 the effective demand for and supply of the 
 commodity. Now the economists over the 
 way, in the Money Republic, claim that labor 
 has two values. They claim that each laborer, 
 no matter what he does, is as necessary as 
 any other, and therefore all should be rewarded 
 equally. They further state that the value 
 we attach to labor is the market value, that is, 
 we give labor that is performed by the great- 
 est number of men the least reward, and vice 
 versa. Now, there are certain kinds of labor 
 that require less brain work than other kinds ; 
 and since our scheme of finance is constantly 
 causing men to be born into poverty — giving 
 them, therefore, practically no brain develop- 
 ment — it follows that these lower grades of 
 labor must be performed by the masses, and 
 since the supply of such is large, the wages 
 are low ; but to make a man who is already 
 
176 The Great Awakening 
 
 poor, labor where he gets the least reward is 
 to constantly increase the class distinctions, so 
 that the next child born is still poorer in both 
 environment and heredity. 
 
 " ' Now, the economists claim that to bring 
 up a child in poverty because its father was 
 poor is morally as unjust as to bring up a 
 child a slave because its father was one, or to 
 bring it up a criminal because of its father's 
 tendencies. The two ways of preventing this 
 are, first, the separation of the child from the 
 parents, or, second, the constant equal divi- 
 sion of money, so that no child can be born 
 in poverty. The first way was not counte- 
 nanced, as it was recognized that to interfere 
 with the individual family relations was ruin- 
 ous to the nation. The second way formed 
 the basis of their issuance of money. Their 
 best statesmen acknowledge that at first the 
 scheme would seem unjust, but they claim — 
 and history backs them up — that, with money 
 divided equally, all would have to work, and 
 with all working, the wealth produced would 
 be so great that the hours of work would be 
 fewer, and with less work comes more leisure ; 
 and when all have some leisure and have 
 some labor to perform, except, of course, the 
 aged, then differences in mental capacity will 
 
Theories in Operation 177 
 
 disappear. If we look at the town of Har- 
 wich now, we shall see that wealth has in- 
 creased enormously, and still we find no vast 
 differences in mental development, such as are 
 evident in this country. The bricklayers, 
 the stonecutters, the carpenters, the labor- 
 ers, are not in these trades because they are 
 not capable of doing anything requiring more 
 brain work ; they are the equals of any other 
 men, having had practically the same environ- 
 ment and education, but they recognize that 
 this work must be done, and the lot falls to 
 them, either from choice or from the fact that, 
 by going into these trades, they can increase 
 the total wealth quicker than by doing any- 
 thing else. A very pretty little phenomenon 
 shows itself here. Those trades in which 
 strength is required are always carried on by 
 the strongest men. There is no law to this 
 effect, but everybody recognizes that if a 
 weak man works in a trade requiring strength, 
 he will not be able to produce as much as the 
 strong man would in his place ; therefore the 
 weak man will be anxious to change and the 
 strong man will also, for to each it will mean 
 an increased amount of money. The result 
 of this is that the different grades of work 
 gradually become fixed, not on different men. 
 
178 The Great Awakening 
 
 as with us, but on different ages of men, so 
 that the young and strong do the heavy work, 
 the okler the Hght work, and the aged no 
 work. The cause of this is not a network of 
 laws, but it is the direct result of issuing 
 periodically a sum of money based upon the 
 increased wealth, of dividing this money 
 equally, and of causing all labor to be paid 
 equally. 
 
 " ' In our day the stockholders of any con- 
 cern want as president a man who is fitted in 
 every way for the position. In the Money 
 Republic the stockholders of the nation (that 
 is, all the people) want every position to be 
 filled by the man who, in that position, is cap- 
 able of producing the most wealth.' 
 
 " You see," said the professor, " this writer 
 covers the interesting points very well." 
 
 " But, professor, there is one point he does 
 not touch on. If there were colonies on 
 either side of this republic, and these colonies 
 had the gold standard, was there not a great 
 deal of trouble in settling balances .-• " 
 
 " Trouble ? Of what kind > " 
 
 "Why, if the balance of trade was un- 
 favorable, it was necessary that gold should 
 move from the republic to the colonies. Now 
 where would the republic get the gold?" 
 
Theories in Operation 179 
 
 "Why, wherever it could be found. It 
 would be bought with commodities as it was 
 in your time. Trading is between individuals, 
 not nations, and the so-called balance of trade 
 means simply this. Let us suppose that I 
 am trading with you. I live in the Money 
 Republic and you in one of the gold standard 
 colonies. If the balance of trade is against 
 me, it simply means that the amount of my 
 commodities, plus a certain amount of gold, 
 is equal to the amount of your commodities 
 which I wish to procure. But since gold is a 
 commodity, it is evident that to say that at 
 any time the balance of trade is unfavorable 
 to either trader is an absurdity, since trade is, 
 always was, and always must be a simple 
 barter, a simple exchange of two things of 
 equal market value. When the exportation 
 of all commodities but gold did not equal in 
 market value the importation of all commodi- 
 ties but gold, it is evident that gold would 
 have to be exported if the man in whose favor 
 the trade was supposed to be demanded this • 
 difference in market value to be paid in the 
 commodity, gold. If he demanded the differ- 
 ence in any other commodity, that commodity 
 would have to be exported. Why trade was 
 called favorable or unfavorable in your time 
 
i8o The Great Awakening 
 
 was because you gave to one commodity, of 
 which the supply was Hmited, the function of 
 money, therefore making it imperative that 
 that commodity should stay in the country ; 
 and as all other nations did the same, there 
 was a constant fight going on to keep what 
 gold there was from going away, and to draw 
 in all that could be reached. This fight re- 
 sulted in prohibitive duties on imports and 
 bounties on exports, the aim being to export 
 more goods than were imported, in order that 
 gold might come in settlement of the dif- 
 ference. 
 
 " Now, in the Money Republic it mattered 
 not the least jot whether any one commodity 
 stayed at home or not. Their money was 
 based on all commodities, and more or less 
 gold or silver had no influence upon its issue. 
 They never worried themselves about such 
 a thing as a so-called unfavorable balance of 
 trade. If the man they traded with demanded 
 gold besides the other commodities, they simply 
 exchanged some more commodities for gold, 
 wherever they found the gold, and paid the 
 debt. If the trader had demanded the difference 
 to be paid in corn or wheat, the result would 
 have been the same. Now it is evident that 
 to settle a debt payable in any one commod- 
 
Theories in Operation i8i 
 
 ity, on the day the debt was contracted, will 
 be fair to both debtor and creditor ; but if the 
 debt runs say thirty years, as some of your 
 national debts did, a tremendous advantage 
 lies with the creditor — for in these thirty years 
 a great many things happen over which the 
 debtor or creditor has no control, which affect 
 the supply of and demand for gold — so to con- 
 tract a thirty-year debt, payable in say one 
 hundred ounces of gold, is to contract a con- 
 stantly increasing debt, since in the thirty years 
 the amount of trade increases out of all propor- 
 tion to the slow increase in the quantity of the 
 one commodity, gold ; and since to gold is given 
 the function of upholding the whole quantity 
 of circulating medium, it follows that with the 
 increase of trade there comes an increased 
 demand for gold, and as this is not met by an 
 increased supply, the market value of all 
 money rises. From one point of view trade 
 is but a barter of money for commodities, and 
 that money has been constantly appreciating 
 is conclusively shown by the fact that, at any 
 one time in your day, a unit of money would 
 exchange for more units of commodities than 
 it would at a time one hundred years previous. 
 This, of course, gave to those who dealt in 
 money units a privilege denied to other men. 
 
1 82 The Great Awakening 
 
 This privilege procured for its owners leisure, 
 with leisure came mental growth, and thus 
 the environment of the parent became hered- 
 ity for the child, and it started far ahead of 
 the child of the man who dealt in commodity 
 units. This unequal start was, of course, 
 exaggerated, for the child generally, or at 
 least very often, followed his father's foot- 
 steps. Thus, in proportion as a country was 
 old and commercially active, its people were 
 divided by class distinctions, which grew wider 
 every year. From this we would conclude 
 that in that country which had existed longest 
 as a national unit, which was the most active 
 in trading, and which had for the basis of its 
 circulating medium the one commodity, gold, 
 — in such a country, I say, we would expect 
 to find the greatest class distinctions. Our 
 expectations come true. Nowhere among the 
 uncivilized nations of your century do we find 
 a nation in which the difference in distribution 
 of wealth was so great as in England. No- 
 where was there a city in which such poverty 
 existed in the midst of such wealth as in the 
 city of London. This city was the financial 
 centre of the world, and nowhere did the gold 
 standard have such power as here. But let 
 us return to the effect of the flying machine 
 on civilization. 
 
Theories in Operation 183 
 
 "Long before the Chaotic Era — in fact, at 
 the beginning of the twentieth century, the 
 flying machine came into common everyday 
 use. It never carried hea\y weights ; even in 
 our day we have only a few machines capable 
 of supporting two tons. The commonest 
 machine is the one for a single person, weighing 
 — man, machine, and baggage — perhaps two 
 hundred and fifty pounds. These were quite 
 numerous in the early part of the century, 
 and besides their use for pleasure, they were 
 used to enforce law. Very early in its history 
 the flying machine occupied a prominent 
 place in enforcing law in the large, unoccupied 
 tracts of South America and Africa, where 
 population was scarce and thieves and outlaws 
 more or less common. Settlers living here 
 were protected not by scouts and soldiers, but by 
 aerial patrolmen, who, circling high above, 
 gave the most efficient protection possible. 
 When the settlers reached their destination 
 they built, not a blockhouse or a fort, but a 
 raised platform ; and around this they placed 
 their houses. They kept no specially trained 
 men to act as soldiers, but every man and 
 woman had to learn to manage an aerodrome, 
 the labor value of which was very small. All, 
 both women and men, took turns at patrol 
 duty. 
 
184 The Great Awakening 
 
 " In the old days the duty of the soldier 
 was a hard one. To stand the strain required 
 a strong man ; but to drive out an enemy 
 with the aid of the flying machine required 
 no exertion at all and no skill except that 
 required to fly, which every one was most 
 anxious to attain. One did not need to know 
 how to shoot ; he simply flew over his enemy 
 and dropped a small bomb. Women and 
 children were soon as proficient at this as the 
 men were, so that in this community all were 
 able-bodied men, so to speak. Indeed, guns 
 were seldom used, their method of hunting 
 being unique. If, for instance, game, as deer 
 or bear, was wanted, several started off 
 through the air with ten or twelve small 
 dynamite bombs weighing perhaps one pound 
 each. These hunters flew off right into the 
 heart of the game country and circled about 
 five or six hundred feet high, in search of the 
 game. When it was sighted the chase be- 
 gan, and it was sometimes very difficult to 
 get in the right position for dropping the 
 bomb. The finest shot was he who could, 
 more often than the others, drop his bomb 
 upon the animal's head, thus insuring instant 
 death without mutilation of the body. You 
 can imagine the excitement of flying through 
 
Theories in Operation 185 
 
 the air, like an express train, after a deer 
 which is running from rock to rock, in order 
 to get in a position to give it the death 
 blow. The excitement comes from the dif- 
 ficulty of handling the machine, not from the 
 danger of contact with the animal, and the 
 fiercest animals may be thus attacked and 
 defeated by women and children, provided 
 only they have the requisite skill in handling 
 their aerodromes. This method of attack 
 was common to birds of prey, except that 
 they themselves dropped upon their victims, 
 while with us a small quantity of dynamite 
 settles the affair. 
 
 " Over these little settlements there was 
 some one on duty all the time. All the men 
 between the ages of twenty and twenty-five 
 years were subject to this duty, and no person 
 had to do patrol duty for more than six hours 
 at a time. Each patrolman had a bugle with 
 which he called the people to arms if he saw 
 the need. In this way all the fighting force 
 could be concentrated on one spot, within a 
 hundred miles of the settlement, in less than 
 three hours, even over mountainous or wooded 
 country ; so you see invasions or uprisings were 
 out of the question, as they were stopped 
 before they had gained sufficient strength to 
 enter the country in force. 
 
i86 The Great Awakening 
 
 " Some time next week I want you to take 
 a flying trip with me to a point west of 
 Hudson's Bay, where we can enjoy the scenery. 
 I will teach you the use of the aerodrome, 
 and we will each hire one and have some 
 sport." 
 
 "That will be fine, professor. But tell me, 
 supposing the enemy has flying machines, 
 what happens.''" 
 
 "Both contestants, when they meet in the 
 skies, come to their senses and settle the case 
 by arbitration. When, fighting on the ground, 
 one is wounded, he has a chance of recovering ; 
 but in the air, if anything goes wrong, it is a 
 fall of one or two thousand feet and certain 
 death to all, whether wounded or not, whether 
 general or private. In the warfare of your 
 time those who instigated it and managed it 
 never bore the brunt of it ; they were always 
 in a safe place, and therefore warfare was 
 often instigated by those who gained person- 
 ally. But the flying machine makes every 
 part of the battlefield the hottest part. There 
 is no safe place ; one is as liable to get killed 
 in one place as in another, although the 
 two places may be one hundred miles apart. 
 There is no telling where the next bomb will 
 strike. For this reason there has never been 
 
Theories in Operation 187 
 
 a battle carried on in the air ; before that point 
 was reached arbitration always stepped in. 
 There have been, however, single combats be- 
 tween patrolmen and outlaws. The patrolman 
 almost invariably wins, especially if he is near 
 his station, as his bugle call for help is quickly 
 answered. There are, however, recorded 
 cases where a patrolman has been caught by 
 an outlaw far out of hearing, and the duel 
 which followed is very interesting. It is like 
 the. duel of the falcon and its prey. Each 
 man tries to get above the other in order to 
 drop his bomb. Round and round they fly in 
 great circles, rising higher and higher, every 
 now and then firing their revolvers at each 
 other. To an observer on the earth they soon 
 appear as two dots on the sky, and finally they 
 are lost entirely. If, however, the observer 
 be patient, he may see the tragic end. A dull 
 boom floats down to his listening ears, his 
 peering eyes at last catch sight of the two 
 dots, one still slowly sailing in large circles, and 
 the other growing larger and larger every sec- 
 ond. Who has triumphed.'' Down come the 
 body and the fragments with a tremendous 
 shriek and rush of wind. By the time the ob- 
 serv'er reaches the spot the body is crushed 
 out of all semblance to a human being, and 
 
1 88 The Great Awakenino- 
 
 & 
 
 parts of the machine are strewn in profusion 
 on every side. It is generally impossible to 
 recognize anything in the remains, and unless 
 the other duelist deigns to show himself, the 
 observer can never answer the question, which? 
 "These duels are very rare. The danger of 
 a combat in the air is so great that a man will 
 submit to almost anything rather than that ; so 
 generally, if an outlaw sees a patrolman, he 
 gets out of sight as quickly as possible. Of 
 course, we have no outlaws or criminals in our 
 country now, but they still exist in some parts 
 of South America, Asia, and Africa where 
 the people are slow in progressing." 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 CONTAINS A DESCRIPTION OF THE MODERN 
 COLLEGE GAME. 
 
 It was almost a week after my visit to the 
 store that I had occasion to talk with the 
 professor again. He was very busy arranging 
 our trip, and although I saw him at meals, I 
 was left to myself most of the tine, and spent 
 my leisure hours in riding about the city, en- 
 joying the sights, and talking with many of 
 the professor's friends to whom I had been 
 introduced. 
 
 I took several trips down the harbor in the 
 swift boats, all of which were driven by an 
 electric motor and used oil for fuel, while 
 the products of combustion were forced out 
 of the stern of the vessel, thus doing away 
 entirely with the dirt, noise, and all the dis- 
 agreeable features which were present on the 
 steamboat of my time. There was also no 
 vibration, caused presumably by the lack of 
 reciprocating parts in the engine ; and the 
 whole space of deck was given over to the 
 
190 The Great Awakening 
 
 passengers, instead of being occupied by the 
 house co\'ering the boilers and engine as in 
 my day. I must remark here that I had not 
 yet become accustomed to seeing the air full 
 of men, and the sight was very novel and in- 
 teresting to me, for many times some fellow 
 would come close to us, looking like a great 
 albatross, and circle around or dash hither 
 and thither, his small propellers whirring or 
 his long wings flapping ; and upon more than 
 one occasion these gigantic birds landed upon 
 our decks. 
 
 I had, therefore, more than one opportunity 
 to examine the machines and to watch the 
 art of soaring, which on certain days, when 
 the wind was right, could be seen everywhere. 
 Most of these machines were built so that on 
 occasion the propellers or wings could be re- 
 moved, leaving only the supporting surfaces ; 
 and in this condition they were used for soar- 
 ing, as they were very light — weighing about 
 twenty pounds, I believe — and easily handled. 
 I was, as you may well imagine, very much 
 surprised to see so many women in the air, 
 and could not but admire the skill they showed 
 in handling the machines. 
 
 During this week it was my good fortune 
 to witness a game played in the air by two 
 
A Game in the Air 191 
 
 college teams. The grounds were very ex- 
 tensive, with small artificial mounds built in 
 various spots, and there were also small trees 
 placed so as to cut the wind into small and 
 baffling currents ; for the game was played by 
 men in soaring machines. At one end of the 
 field there was a large grand stand and raised 
 platform from which the flyers started. 
 There were nine plots marked off by flags, 
 located in different parts of the grounds, each 
 plot being only one yard in diameter. Each 
 college entered seven men, who used simple 
 soaring machines, no motors being allowed ; 
 and the surfaces of the different machines 
 were, in the game I saw, crimson or blue silk, 
 according to the college to which the man 
 belonged. They also had twenty-seven darts 
 or arrows apiece, which had at one end a 
 blunt point, while the other held a red or blue 
 flag. 
 
 The game started as follows : at a given 
 signal all fourteen men left the platform and 
 started for the first plot, or base, as it was 
 called, and the object of each man was to 
 drop his arrows so that they would stick up- 
 right within the confines of the circle of little 
 flags which marked the plot. Each man had 
 to deposit three arrows on first base before 
 
192 The Great Awakening 
 
 he could go to second base ; or if he could not 
 succeed in doing this and left first for second, 
 he forfeited all the arrows he dropped at first 
 either inside or outside of the prescribed area. 
 A man could interfere with another by getting 
 below his adversary and stopping the fall of 
 the arrow ; but if in doing this he got so close 
 to the ground as to be unable to rise again 
 and was forced to land, he was out of the 
 game, and his side lost the twenty-seven arrows 
 he started with. The game ends when all 
 the arrows have been dropped, and that side 
 wins which has the greatest number of arrows 
 sticking on the bases. 
 
 The game at which I was present was wit- 
 nessed by many thousand people, most of 
 them crowding around the different bases, for 
 it was at these spots that the skill was shown. 
 Each college had its quota of enthusiastic fol- 
 lowers, with their flags and their class yells ; 
 and the noise around a base, when each man 
 was striving to drop his arrows to the best ad- 
 vantage and each was interfering with the 
 other, reminded me of the college football 
 games of my time when somebody's goal was 
 in danger. 
 
 The day was fine and the wind, a very im- 
 portant factor, was satisfactory. I rode in 
 
A Game in the Air 193 
 
 the professor's carriage to the starting point, 
 and saw the different college athletes and 
 coachers giving their last bits of advice and 
 examining attentively the different parts of 
 the machines, that no mishap might occur. 
 
 At ten o'clock the signal was given, and 
 the men went on to the platform, one after 
 the other, and made their last preparations. 
 When the pistol was fired, they dropped off 
 and began to circle and get altitude, in order 
 to run clear and fast to first base. With so 
 many men in the air, each striving to get over 
 a certain small spot of ground before the 
 other, the difficulty of steering and the danger 
 of collision brought out very quickly the skill 
 of the various contestants and caused the 
 game to be very exciting. After the men 
 had left the platform most of the spectators 
 rushed off on bicycles or in carriages for first 
 base, to see the fun ; and it is needless to say 
 that I went along with the rest and took up a 
 position as near the ropes as I could. This 
 base was about a mile from the grand stand, 
 and most of the crowd reached it before the con- 
 testants did. The first man to get there was 
 a little fellow in a red machine, and he came 
 along swiftly, flying low. He was greeted 
 immediately by a great chorus of yells, toots, 
 
1 94 The Great Awakening 
 
 and waving of handkerchiefs by his side, 
 which must have made him feel very grand 
 indeed. He had to drop six arrows, however, 
 before three went on to the base, but he got 
 away before the crowd came swooping along, 
 and sailed off for second with many of his 
 friends running after him, yelling themselves 
 hoarse. After he left, the crowd around first 
 base became frantic, for all thirteen men were 
 rushing through in the air, and arrows were 
 falling fast. I got very uneasy and was ex- 
 pecting a collision and death at any moment, 
 but the air cleared gradually, and one by one 
 they made off for second, either being success- 
 ful or else giving it up for a bad job. 
 
 The count at this point was twenty-one 
 arrows on the base out of thirty-nine dropped 
 by the reds, while the blues had twenty-one 
 out of thirty-two. As the blues had lost 
 fewer arrows, while their count was the equal of 
 the reds', their enthusiam knew no bounds, 
 and cheer after cheer arose from their side. 
 The crowd then moved off in a body to second 
 base, and the same scene was enacted there. 
 At the fifth base the contestants numbered 
 only nine, three having dropped all their arrows, 
 and the other two having been forced to land 
 on the ground because of some baffling and un- 
 
A Game in the Air 195 
 
 expected current. When the contest here 
 was over, I returned to the grand stand to 
 watch the players come in, which they did 
 after covering sevens bases. On the final 
 count, with all deductions, the reds won by 
 five arrows, or points, as they were called, 
 and the shouting began immediately at the 
 announcement of the score. The college boys 
 rushed in a body to the platform and carried 
 off their victorious athletes to the dressing 
 rooms ; while the vanquished, surrounded by 
 their loyal, but exceedingly downcast brethren, 
 proceeded to explain why they had failed 
 and vowed vengeance at the next meeting. 
 As for myself, I was exceedingly happy, not 
 because the reds had won, but because no one 
 was kUled, and turned homeward, thinking of 
 the times many years ago — indeed, many gen- 
 erations ago — when I had bought a flag and a 
 horn and yelled myself hoarse in the midst of 
 ten thousand people, all mterested in the 
 actions of twenty-two men and a ball on a 
 field covered with white lines. 
 
 In talking with the professor that night, I 
 told him of my fear of collision ; but he said 
 the number of accidents in such a contest was 
 very small, and he did not doubt there were 
 more men hurt in our old game of football 
 
196 The Great Awakening 
 
 than in this new game which had taken its 
 place. 
 
 "You have seen how skilfully the aero- 
 dromes can be managed, and now you will 
 have a chance to try one for yourself, for we 
 start to-morrow morning on our trip. I have 
 everything arranged, the aerodrome is hired, 
 our camping kit and heavy pistols are packed, 
 for I think as long as you are familiar with 
 this weapon we may as well take it." 
 
 "How is it, professor, that you can get 
 time for this trip ? ' ' 
 
 "Why, I am taking a year's vacation. I 
 economized on purpose to spend a year in 
 scientific research and sport, and am now liv- 
 ing on the money I have saved. I do not 
 have any money issued to me until I reg- 
 ister my name as a laborer again ; but I 
 can get no interest for my money, for there 
 are no borrowers, and my vacation is, there- 
 fore, limited to the exact amount of money I 
 have saved, which is as it should be. We 
 start in the morning for the north, and I ex- 
 pect to be in the heart of the hunting grounds 
 in about a day and a half. We will camp 
 near or under a raised platform and keep our 
 dromes upon it where they will be handy. 
 You know that these platforms are almost 
 
A Game in the Air 197 
 
 everywhere now. They are simply constructed, 
 trees standing near are often used, and the 
 elevator is generally worked by hand, espe- 
 cially where the platform is far from civili- 
 zation. Our small dromes we will hire at 
 Hudson's Bay, and from there we will 
 continue our journey in separate machines." 
 
 "What do you give for these machines .-*" 
 
 "Why, Canadian paper money, which is 
 just like our money, and which I shall buy 
 with our money." 
 
 "But, professor, I have never managed an 
 aerodrome in my life. As soon as I get in the 
 air I shall probably begin to turn somersaults." 
 
 "That is impossible. We have an auto- 
 matic arrangement of the wings and tail which 
 positively limits the amount of oscillation. 
 Within that limit you can alter the angle the 
 machine flies at, but it is impossible for you to 
 overturn it. You will have a chance in the 
 flight north to manage the large machine, 
 where you will be constantly under the eye of 
 the engineer, and by the time we arrive at our 
 destination on the Bay you will be able to 
 handle a separate machine. My plan is to 
 stop for a day or so at a place called Albany, 
 pick out the necessary provisions, and pack 
 them with the kit into our aerodromes; we 
 
198 The Great Awakening 
 
 will not need to carry many stores, for we are 
 going only about three hours' fly, a distance 
 of perhaps 150 miles west in a straight line. 
 You see, if there is anything we need, six 
 hours' journey will procure it, although that 
 journey will take us over impenetrable forests, 
 swollen streams, and rugged mountains." 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 A THOUSAND MILE TRIP IN A FLYING 
 
 MACHINE. 
 
 The next morning the professor and I rode 
 in the buggy to the aerial elevator, where we 
 found our drome and engineer waiting for 
 us. The boat-like structure was packed with 
 a small tent, camp stove and cooking outfit, 
 and some extra clothing, with the bedding. 
 Our arms were in a rack at one side, and 
 consisted of two heavy pistols apiece. These 
 weapons were unique and worthy a descrip- 
 tion. They had a 32-calibre barrel, about 
 eighteen inches long, under which near the 
 breech was another cylinder of the finest 
 steel, which contained liquid air held at a tre- 
 mendous pressure. The bullets were of 
 steel and fitted in little packets of seven 
 under the breech. The arm was self-cock- 
 ing. A pull on the trigger brought a bullet 
 into the barrel, closed the breech, and liber- 
 ated a drop of liquid air which expanded with 
 tremendous force. 
 
200 The Great Awakening 
 
 The initial velocity was very high, and for 
 a short distance the arm was very accurate. 
 The advantage of using air was that there 
 was no noise as with powder, no smoke, and 
 absolutely no fouling of the barrel. 
 
 I was introduced to our engineer, Herbert 
 Olsen by name, and as the machine was all 
 ready for the start we did not delay, but, jump- 
 ing in, we were rolled on to the elevator, and 
 were soon rising in the tower. 
 
 As we went over the edge and took that 
 awful fall, I must say that I experienced the 
 same terrible feeling I had in my first at- 
 tempt, but I held firmly to the rail, and made 
 up my mind to overcome it. Some time after- 
 wards, when I had become familiar with the 
 use of the drome, I found that I could posi- 
 tively enjoy the falling sensation. This is 
 distressing to us only because in our baby- 
 hood a fall generally meant pain, and the 
 association of the two phenomena is carried to 
 the grave. With people that travel on the 
 earth a fall generally means an injury, but 
 when traveling in the air in such a perfect 
 machine as the one I was now in, to fall be- 
 comes a delightful sensation, simply because 
 in time it becomes dissociated with the phe- 
 nomenon of pain. 
 
An Aerial Excursion 201 
 
 We were now travelling northward at about 
 forty or fifty miles an hour, at an altitude of a 
 thousand feet. The boat-like structure in 
 which we sat was decked over in front, and 
 presented an easy shape to the wind, in order 
 to diminish the resistance to progress, while 
 the rear was covered with a light but tough 
 glass, so that we could see the country below 
 us. The engineer sat in the middle, just 
 behind the electric generator, with his right 
 hand on a lever which controlled the move- 
 ment of the boat to different parts of the 
 frame, so that one could easily and quickly 
 change the line of flight ; and forward of this 
 were two bunks and some small arrangements 
 for cooking by electricity. The whole struc- 
 ture, however, was very lightly buUt and 
 would not stand hard usage ; but, then, it 
 never would receive hard usage unless the 
 engineer was exceptionally clumsy in making 
 a landing. 
 
 The country looked very beautiful from 
 where we were. It was still early in the 
 morning, about six o'clock, I believe ; and we 
 were now over districts more thinly settled. 
 The sunlight reflected from the little streams 
 and ponds, from the rich green woods and the 
 open, velvety pasture lands, bathed everything 
 
202 The Great Awakening 
 
 in a beautiful rosy tint, and was a most re- 
 freshing sight. 
 
 " Professor, in your thickly settled districts, 
 what is the proportion of population to area ? " 
 
 " Oh, at most perhaps ten to the acre. 
 With our dromes, carriages, and electric roads, 
 that is not too far to be from your neighbors, 
 while such a ratio is too low to cause any filth 
 or disease. You see our business does not 
 drive us nearer, so the density of our popula- 
 tion depends wholly upon the rules of health, 
 as it should. Of course, in your time, even 
 with a radical change in finance, you would 
 still have to live closer than we do, from lack 
 of efficient methods of long distance transpor- 
 tation ; but your wisest men did not see that 
 with material growth comes mental growth, 
 and that the two together will inevitably de- 
 stroy cities. 
 
 " It was often the case that men in your 
 time affirmed over and over again that the 
 evils which humanity endured were the direct 
 results of human nature, which never could 
 be changed. Some of your best writers, in 
 giving their idea of a millennium, always 
 assumed in the first place a change in human 
 nature, bringing about true brotherly love. 
 Now, to speak correctly, such a thing as a 
 
An Aerial Excursion 203 
 
 millennium does not and cannot exist. It is 
 a state of evolution beyond which no prog- 
 ress can be made, which is manifestly as 
 absurd as to say that there is a line which 
 marks the end of the universe, beyond which 
 there is nothing. MutabiHty is an immutable 
 law of nature. What is meant by a millen- 
 nium is simply a condition than which, in the 
 mind of the author, nothing better exists ; but 
 when that state arrives in the natural course 
 of events, there will be found plenty of men 
 brought up in the supposed millennium, who 
 will still have millenniums to propose." 
 
 " Are there still men who think things 
 should be different .-' " 
 
 " Of course there are, and there always 
 will be. The improvement which they want 
 is not so radical as was needed in your time. 
 We all realize now that society is at last 
 founded upon a just basis, since all men and 
 women, no matter what their parentage, have 
 equal industrial opportunities. Our reforms 
 deal with other things which you, with your 
 nineteenth-century brain, could not under- 
 stand. But concerning human nature there 
 is a great deal to be said. In your time 
 those two words were used very loosely as a 
 sort of general cause for every evil which 
 
204 The Great Awakening 
 
 could not be explained in any other way. 
 The meaning of the words was not properly 
 understood. There are only two human in- 
 stincts to which we can apply the term human 
 nature. The first is that of self-preservation, 
 and the other that of the propagation of kind. 
 These are primary forces moulding man's 
 actions ; and as long as he remains physically 
 as he now exists, we may be pretty sure that 
 those forces will always have to be considered. 
 No other forces can properly be termed human 
 nature. The phenomena of action which we 
 see in man represent simply the way in which 
 these great instincts show themselves in social 
 life. Now man in social life is affected by 
 thousands of forces acting upon him through 
 his senses. He is completely metamorphosed 
 by the civilization in which he resides. The 
 manner in which a civilized man's primary 
 instincts show themselves is distinctly and 
 totally different from the same in savagery. 
 Ambition, industry, frugality, greed, alertness, 
 cunning, — all are but ways in which the first 
 great human instinct, as moulded by con- 
 ditions, shows itself. Sympathy, pity, gener- 
 osity, watchfulness, and lastly — the greatest 
 of all — love, are but the ways in which the 
 instinct of the propagation of kind appears to 
 
An Aerial Excursion 205 
 
 us. Move a people from the temperate to the 
 torrid zone, and you change riot their nature, 
 but the way in vyhich that nature manifests 
 itself in social life. The harder you make the 
 earning of an honest living, the more the first 
 instinct shows itself and breeds misers, crim- 
 inals, and thieves. The easier you make the 
 work of a man born with nothing but the 
 ability to labor, the more will the second in- 
 stinct rise above the first. The instinct of 
 self-preservation saves the individual, and this 
 instinct will prevail over all others in those 
 civilizations in which economic conditions 
 make it hard to earn a living. If economic 
 conditions could be brought about whereby 
 man had nothing to fear from his fellow men, 
 the first mstinct would give way to the second, 
 and then would follow that brotherly love so 
 much preached in your day. The human 
 characteristics which are so elevating to the 
 race are sympathy, pity, and love, and they 
 will never show themselves beyond the family 
 and immediate friends so long as the first in- 
 stinct dominates men's actions ; and this in- 
 stinct of self-preservation will dominate men's 
 actions just so long as the issue of money is 
 limited to one commodity and land and capital 
 are treated as private property, for while this 
 
2o6 The Great Awakening 
 
 is so, some will be born poor and some rich, 
 and for the poor man life means a hard and 
 long fight against tyrants. Do away with 
 your barbarous laws and social system, and 
 then, no longer having to fight to be allowed 
 to live, man's nature will grow soft, sym- 
 pathetic, and kind under the influence of his 
 second great instinct, love. With this social 
 change a man's love will extend to all, for 
 none will wish evil to any man. All progress 
 towards this depends upon the increase of our 
 knowledge ; and of the sciences, political 
 economy, which is the greatest of them all, 
 has done the most to cause an increase of 
 brotherly love. 
 
 " We have learned much in this science, 
 and we have discovered four laws, only one 
 of which was believed in in your time. These 
 four relate to the production of wealth, and 
 are as follows : — 
 
 "I. Stability of government is necessary 
 for the greatest production of wealth. 
 
 " 2. A condition in which industry is ab- 
 solutely free from all governmental interfer- 
 ence is necessary for the greatest produc- 
 tion of wealth. 
 
 " 3. Private ownership of any necessity 
 tends to diminish the production of wealth, 
 
An Aerial Excursion 207 
 
 in proportion as that ownership becomes a 
 monopoly. 
 
 "4. Equal distribution of wealth is nec- 
 essary for the greatest production of wealth. 
 
 " Of these laws the first was believed in 
 your time by the least unciviHzed nations, the 
 second had a large number of believers, but 
 the other two laws were not known or be- 
 lieved by any considerable number. 
 
 " The South American repubhcs, so called, 
 of the nineteenth century, serve as a good 
 example of the folly of disobedience to the 
 first law. In spite of their natural resources, 
 not recognizing this law, the production of 
 wealth was very slow and uncertain, since the 
 government was liable at any minute to be 
 overturned and property confiscated. 
 
 " The truth of the second law is nowhere 
 better shown than in the tremendous growth 
 of wealth of the English nation after it had 
 entered on the policy of free trade. 
 
 " The third law had no expression in the 
 politics of your time, although one of the 
 ablest economists of the nineteenth century 
 had pointed out very clearly and forcibly the 
 evils of private property in land, one, but only 
 one, of the necessities of production. 
 
 " The fourth law had no champion able 
 
2o8 The Great Awakening* 
 
 enough to convince the pubHc of its truth, 
 though many had complained of the unequal 
 distribution of wealth. 
 
 " The first law was recognized before po- 
 litical economy was studied to any great ex- 
 tent ; the second was discovered by Adam 
 Smith, and his book, " The Wealth of 
 Nations," was so convincing on this point 
 that it started the first political movement 
 towards free trade. He was followed by such 
 able writers as Henry Thomas Buckle, John 
 Stuart Mill, Ricardo, Henry George, and a 
 host of others of lesser worth, all of whose 
 writings did much to convince men of the 
 truth of this law. 
 
 " Socialistic writers have, with few excep- 
 tions, recognized the truth of the third law, 
 without, however, being able to state it con- 
 vincingly ; but they have always suggested, as 
 a remedy for the evils of private property in 
 land and capital, government control of the 
 same, which is a direct violation of the second 
 law ; and this shows us that the socialists, if 
 given full power, would force a country intci 
 one evil while trying to save it from another. 
 On the other hand, destructionists, realizing 
 the evil caused by a violation of the second 
 law, endeavor in all cases to overthrow exist- 
 
An Aerial Excursion 209 
 
 ing governments, thereby violating the first 
 law. Now the sensible man is the one who 
 can suggest a remedy for existing evils with- 
 out violating any of these laws, and neither 
 the destructionist nor the socialist can or has 
 done this. A sensible man, living in a South 
 American republic, would be justified in 
 violating the second law to enforce the first, 
 since government interference is not such an 
 evil as instability of government. In the 
 same way a violation of the third is not such 
 an evil as a violation of the second law, the 
 order of importance being as I have stated it 
 to you, stability of government being the most 
 important of all. Now in different countries 
 different laws are violated, and that is why 
 political opposition in different countries takes 
 such different stands. One remedy may be 
 needed in one country, while another is needed 
 elsewhere. In South America the violation 
 of the first law was the greatest evil ; in the 
 United States the violation of the second law 
 was the greatest evil, and the free traders 
 formed the greatest political opposition ; while 
 in England these two laws were understood 
 and believed, and the endeavor there was to 
 remedy the evils caused by the violation of 
 the third law. As to the fourth law, since 
 
2IO The Great Awakening 
 
 nobody believed in it, its violation was not 
 considered an evil, and it was not until after 
 the birth of the Money Republic that this 
 law was understood. 
 
 " With a thorough knowledge of history 
 and an understanding of these laws, one can 
 find a nation's place in the order of civiliza- 
 tion by finding how many of these laws were 
 recognized ; and in your time England was the 
 farthest advanced, since she more than any 
 other nation understood and believed the first 
 two great laws of political economy. 
 
 " But, my friend, we are losing the beauties 
 of the scenery. Do you see the river over 
 there on the left ? How pretty the farms 
 look beneath us ! I am going to get the en- 
 gineer to give you a treat. You see that 
 heavy white cloud ahead ,'' Well, we will rise 
 and go through it." 
 
 The professor then spoke to Olsen, and our 
 course was turned upward. 
 
 " Now," said the professor, " take a look 
 below. See how clear the atmosphere is. 
 For a few minutes after we strike the cloud 
 we shall be able to see nothing, and everything 
 will be drenched, but when we rise above it, 
 the view will, I assure you, amply repay any 
 inconvenience we may have suffered." 
 
An Aerial Excursion 2 1 1 
 
 We were rising on an incline, and when 
 we were about a mile away the engineer 
 began to whistle. 
 
 " That is to warn any drome that may be 
 in the cloud. What 's that ? An answering 
 whistle, I '11 be bound. You can't go in yet, 
 Olsen." 
 
 The professor was right. From out of the 
 dense mass of vapor came the faint notes of a 
 whistle, and our course was turned to the left 
 as we began to circle and watch. 
 
 " If we went in there now, there would be 
 great danger of collision, so we will circle 
 around until the other fellow comes out." 
 
 We pursued this course for some time. 
 The other fellow evidently was enjoying him- 
 self, and was in no hurry to move. From 
 where we were I could watch the farmers 
 going to work, and see just below me the 
 patrolmen circling gracefully over their re- 
 spective districts. 
 
 From the south a small drome came flying 
 towards us, and passed about two hundred 
 feet below and to the left at a tremendous 
 speed. 
 
 " There goes the morning's news," said the 
 professor. " That fellow has some printed 
 sheets which will be photographed and re- 
 
2 1 2 The Great Awakening 
 
 printed in the next district. We do not have 
 to carry thousands of papers from city to town 
 as you did. One paper only is carried at top- 
 most speed, and the press in the next district 
 prints the papers, which are distributed in 
 horseless carriages. Very soon you will see 
 others in all parts of the sky, carrying news 
 from everywhere to everywhere. The carry- 
 ing of news has indeed almost reached perfec- 
 tion. Each district designates to certain 
 citizens the task of acting as newsboys for a 
 certain length of time, just as every one, male 
 or female, has to patrol the skies for a certain 
 number of hours during the year. Neither 
 of these tasks is hard ; indeed, they are just 
 the opposite, and are performed with great 
 pleasure. A dash through the air for twenty 
 miles and back is, I assure you, a very great 
 pleasure that few are willing to forego, and so 
 it is with patrol duty. Six hours of circling 
 above one's station is a delight, and is per- 
 formed as well by women as men, by old as 
 well as by young ; no effort is required save 
 to balance, the little motor doing all the 
 work." 
 
 The stranger's whistle meanwhile was 
 heard nearer and nearer, and we eagerly 
 scanned the cloud for the appearance of the 
 
An Aerial Excursion 213 
 
 drome. Suddenly, with a tremendous screech, 
 it burst upon our sight. We had no time to 
 examine it as it flew over us, but I could see 
 that it was a little larger than ours and was 
 built somewhat differently. 
 
 " A war-drome," said the professor. " I 
 don't know what it is doing here, do you, 
 Olsen ? " 
 
 " I think it has been over Lake Ontario 
 blowing up some wrecks that are a menace to 
 navigation," said the engineer, as he turned 
 to watch the disappearing machine. After 
 this disturbance we made our way into the 
 cloud without further delay. 
 
 I do not think I have ever seen such thick 
 fog. I could not see the wings of the ma- 
 chine at all, and the little motors had to work 
 at full speed to drive us through it. Behind 
 me the invisible propellers were revolving at a 
 tremendous rate, and from the way in which 
 the rain seemed to strike the windows, I 
 judged the velocity of the machine had been 
 increased. It was only for a minute, how- 
 ever, for very soon we arose from the cloud 
 into the sunshine, and then in truth was I 
 amply repaid. The earth was no longer visi- 
 ble. The cloud seemed to extend from us in 
 all directions to the horizon ; we seemed to be 
 
2 14 The Great Awakening 
 
 in a boat in mid-ocean. Our engineer turned 
 us this way and that, dodging one billow, 
 going through the next, riding over a third. 
 Verily we seemed to be a monstrous fish play- 
 ing with the surf. Finally, as if tired of play, 
 we gave one final jump up and away from the 
 water, and with a swoop, like a royal salmon, 
 plunged in again with terrific speed. In less 
 than a minute we were through the cloud and 
 sailing along on our journey again. 
 
 " Good heavens, professor, what an experi- 
 ence ! I don't know whether I am beast, 
 bird, or fish." 
 
 The professor laughed, took off his coat, 
 and began to pump out the boat, which had 
 shipped quite a little water. The wings and 
 framework dried very quickly from the swift 
 motion through the air, and soon everything 
 was as before. 
 
 " You see our flying machines cannot carry 
 much weight, and never will be able to. They 
 are excellent news-carriers, never depending 
 upon roads or rivers, but taking a straight 
 course over even the wildest countries. 
 Storms do not deter them. They either go 
 around or above them ; it is only very heavy 
 rains or mists which hamper them. They 
 give to man a greater power to enforce laws in 
 
An Aerial Excursion 2 1 5 
 
 wild and untravelled countries than any other 
 invention the world has ever seen, not except- 
 ing gunpowder ; and the use of these machines 
 was the main cause of the downfall of the 
 moneyed aristocracy, as years before gunpow- 
 der caused the overthrow of chivalry. In 
 your day money hired an armed force to pro- 
 tect it, but when flying machines came into 
 use numbers did not count ; no man was safe 
 from the bomb of the assassin. This terrible 
 power put into the hands of the fanatic 
 brought about that condition of affairs which 
 led to the Chaotic Era. 
 
 " In looking at the history of those times, I 
 do not see how society could have undergone 
 the radical change needed without a terrible 
 slaughter of the upper classes. It is sad to 
 think of, but it is a fact, that if these upper 
 classes had been allowed to exist, their inborn 
 tendency to manage and control the lives of 
 other men, coming from the fact that they 
 had become so used to controlling capital that 
 it was second nature to them, would have 
 been a constant menace to a just social organ- 
 ization, and would in great part have modified 
 the change that was deemed absolutely essen- 
 tial. ' Alas, that life must forever feed its 
 growth on death ! ' Without a tremendous 
 
2 1 6 The Great Awakening 
 
 reign of terror, such as France had in 1798, I 
 do not beHeve it would have been possible for 
 society to readjust itself to the basis of true 
 equality." 
 
 Over Lake Champlain, at noon, we encoun- 
 tered a wind from the southeast which helped 
 us a great deal, so that by night we were well 
 up in British North America, with the river 
 Severn under us and Lake Winnipeg on our 
 left, about two hundred miles away. At six 
 o'clock the professor cooked some chops and 
 potatoes on a little electric stove, and while 
 he was preparing the meal, Olsen gave me my 
 first lesson in handling a flying machine. 
 
 "This lever manages the whole affair," 
 said the engineer, as he pointed to a long rod 
 which stood in a vertical position at his side. 
 " You grasp it here and thereby release a 
 catch, so that the lever is free to move in 
 any direction. If you move it to the right, 
 our boat travels to the right of the centre of 
 the frame ; if you move it forward, we go to 
 the front, and so on. No matter in what di- 
 rection the lever is moved, the boat follows the 
 motion. It is similar to the electric steering 
 gear which we use in our vessels, except that 
 we have a lever instead of a wheel. Now if 
 you will take my place and handle the lever, 
 
An Aerial Excursion 217 
 
 I will stand beside you and see that you do 
 not overturn us." 
 
 I took my seat with much trepidation and 
 said to myself, "If a puff comes, the first 
 the professor knows, he and his chops will 
 come flying out of the door." 
 
 " Now," said Olsen, " a puff is coming ; I 
 can tell by the feeling of the machine. Bring 
 her horizontal." 
 
 I pulled the lever back, and, sure enough, 
 a strong gust took us underneath at quite a 
 large angle ; and if my guide had not thrown 
 the lever forward immediately something seri- 
 ous would have happened. As it was, all the 
 weight was thrown forward, the machine was 
 balanced, and the puff simply raised us five 
 or ten feet vertically. 
 
 " You must look out for that. Throw the 
 lever back in order to catch the wind under- 
 neath the sails, but as soon as you feel it 
 there, you must throw the weight forward, as 
 otherwise .the wind will turn us over back- 
 wards." 
 
 My lesson continued for half an hour, and 
 by that time, much to my astonishment, 
 I found I could control the machine per- 
 fectly 
 
 " Marvellous ! " said I. " It cannot be that 
 
2i8 The Great Awakening 
 
 I am extraordinarily skillful to learn in so 
 short a time." 
 
 "Well, there is very little to learn, the 
 machine is so perfect. A bird has an appar- 
 atus perfectly designed for its purpose, there- 
 fore it learns easily, and our machines are 
 nearly perfect. Years ago, when the flying 
 machine was crude, it took a great deal of 
 skill to handle one, and only a few could man- 
 age it in very heavy winds, but now it almost 
 handles itself. It is to a great extent auto- 
 matic." 
 
 The professor now called me to dinner, and 
 I left Olsen, to partake of some electrocuted 
 chops, so to speak. 
 
 "In my day, professor, we were in such a 
 hurry in everything we did that our methods 
 of cooking even were influenced by it." 
 
 " I know it. A man had to hustle so to 
 get a living that he could at most give but 
 fifteen or twenty minutes to his meals. This 
 led inventors to produce different foods and 
 preparations which could be cooked instan- 
 taneously — that is, in the very worst pos- 
 sible way. Now, with us we almost invariably 
 use a slow, even heat of a low degree. It 
 takes a longer time to cook things, but they 
 are more digestible." 
 
An Aerial Excursion 219 
 
 "When do the watches go on to-night?" 
 
 " Well, you and I will sit up till midnight, 
 so that we can see the moon, and then Olsen 
 will take charge." 
 
 " Suppose it is cloudy ? " 
 
 " Ha, ha ! That is pretty good. Do you 
 forget where we are .-' We never mind clouds, 
 — we are superior beings, we rise above 
 them." 
 
 On deck again, I called Olsen to dinner 
 and took his place until, one hour later, the 
 professor turned out. He then took the 
 lever, and after putting on a thick coat, for 
 it was growing colder, I stretched myself 
 along the gunwale with my back against the 
 little cabin, lit my pipe, and prepared to enjoy 
 the sunset. 
 
 For the first time during the trip I came 
 to a realization of the stillness about me. 
 As the currents were favorable, the motors 
 ceased to work, and we commenced soaring 
 flight, circling at slow speed and drifting 
 slowly northward with the wind. Below us 
 and for miles on either side was the beautiful 
 country forming the bed of the Severn, with 
 all the numerous lakes and little streams 
 glistening in the waning sunlight. We were 
 just twenty-two hundred feet up and had the 
 
2 20 The Great Awakening 
 
 sun some time after it had set to those on 
 the earth. 
 
 The sunset was not as pretty as I had pre- 
 viously seen, owing to a lack of clouds, but 
 still the west was one grand blaze of a glori- 
 ous red, shading off through pink to yellows 
 and greens. The professor played several 
 tricks with the machine, rising higher and 
 higher and giving me three distinct sunsets. 
 Finally the sun disappeared for good, and the 
 light faded out. 
 
 All was in darkness save for two spots — ■ 
 camp fires, the professor said they were, on 
 the border of a lake — and the little points 
 of light flickered and twinkled like two stars. 
 Soon in the east the moon — a glorious orb — 
 rushed into view and, rising higher and higher, 
 cast a beautifully mellow light over the whole 
 landscape. The scene was simply heavenly. 
 Not a sound was to be heard save the gentle 
 sighing of the breeze as the air rushed past 
 the machine. Below us the rivers and lakes 
 shone out in all their splendor, reflecting the 
 silvery moonbeams ; while on either side fleecy 
 clouds chased each other as if in play — dumb 
 monsters, as it were, cavorting through the 
 air, and to our eyes they assumed a thousand 
 shapes, hiding the moon and then suddenly 
 rushing away out of sight. 
 
An Aerial Excursion 221 
 
 The air was cold, the breeze light, and the 
 moon enchanting. The calmness, the peace, 
 the sense of loneliness were a lullaby, and 
 soon I was asleep. 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 I LEARN TO FLY. 
 
 The next morning the horizon was eagerly 
 scanned as we were nearing our destination. 
 We were closer to the earth, about eight hun- 
 dred feet high I should say, and we flew over 
 clearings, farms, and lumber camps, every- 
 thing being as distinct as possible. The pa- 
 trolmen were above, below, and on either side 
 of us, slowly circling and guarding their coun- 
 try; and as we passed we saluted them with 
 our whistle, and I said to the professor, " Is 
 there any danger from invasions or raids 
 here ? " 
 
 " No. The patrolmen act only as police 
 and have but little to do. A policeman's lot 
 is a happy one. 
 
 •' Olsen, do we not stop soon ? You see 
 there on the starboard bow is the Bay." 
 
 Sure enough, there was Hudson's Bay about 
 ten miles off. 
 
 " I can land you almost anywhere along 
 here," said the engineer. 
 
The Art of Flying 223 
 
 "Well," said the professor, " call a patrol- 
 man and let me talk to him a minute." 
 
 The signal was given, a small drome was 
 headed our way, and when the patrolman was 
 within thirty feet he turned, and travelling 
 aside of us, answered our call. 
 
 " Where can we get two small dromes .'' " 
 said the professor, opening a window and put- 
 ting his head out. " A friend and myself wish 
 to take a trip west, and we need two ma- 
 chines." 
 
 "Go to Station 10, in this district, and I 
 guess they can fit you out. That is over here 
 to the left." And he pointed out the direc- 
 tion. We thanked him and steered for the 
 platform. Down we dropped in circles, like a 
 big vulture, and made a very easy landing. 
 Fourteen hundred miles from where we 
 started, we had been in the air but twenty- 
 eight hours. We lowered the machine on the 
 elevator, ran it into a yard, and then the pro- 
 fessor and I started off to see the place, leav- 
 ing Olsen in charge. 
 
 The station had but a few houses near it, 
 but there were some stores on the main street 
 and one hotel. We wandered up and down 
 for a while — perhaps for exercise as much as 
 for anything else, as our quarters in the 
 
2 24 The Great Awakening 
 
 drome had been rather cramped and I felt the 
 need of a httle motion — and then went into 
 the hotel, where we got two rooms. We were 
 not long in finding a pair of dromes just 
 suited to our purpose, but it seems that we 
 had to change our plans somewhat. We 
 learned at the hotel that there was no pros- 
 pect of good hunting nearer than the Rocky- 
 Mountains, and this influenced the professor 
 to change his program. We had intended to 
 camp in one place for perhaps a month ; but 
 now my friend thought it might be best to 
 take a journey to the mountains, from there 
 south into the United States, and from the 
 State of Colorado we could made the east- 
 ward trip home. This necessitated buying 
 two dromes especially made for travelling in 
 wild countries. 
 
 In the morning, after our landing, we went 
 to our machine and had our baggage carried 
 to the hotel ; we then said good-by to Olsen, 
 who started to fly back soon after we left 
 him, and the professor took me to look at our 
 new machines, which, I must say, were as 
 finely made as any I had ever seen. Only 
 the finest steel, the best silk, and the tough- 
 est wood were used, and the surfaces were in 
 three tiers, spreading fourteen feet from tip 
 
The Art of Flying 225 
 
 to tip ; while at the rear were two very small 
 motors, driving screws, and the boat-like struc- 
 ture was so made that the bottom would, 
 upon touching a spring, drop, permitting a 
 landing on the feet. Each machine was built 
 so that at night, when in camp, the boat be- 
 came a bed, and the man slept with the protec- 
 tion of the surfaces instead of a tent. The 
 whole affair when packed with our kit 
 weighed seventy-five pounds. The balancing 
 was controlled by one lever which moved the 
 boat and tail, and after explaining the ma- 
 chine, we were taken into a large 'field and 
 taught how to manage it. 
 
 I got into the boat ; the machine was lifted 
 so that the straps rested on - my shoulders 
 which supported the weight, and I was then 
 standing with the boat on a level with my 
 waist, the bottom, of course, hanging vertically. 
 
 "Now," said our friend, "turn into the 
 wind, start your motors, and when you get 
 going at a pretty good pace just raise the 
 front edge of the wing a little." 
 
 I felt nervous. It was the first time I had 
 ever been harnessed into such a mess of 
 machinery, and I must say I was frightened. 
 With others in a large machine it was different, 
 but now everything, perhaps my life, depended 
 
226 The Great Awakening 
 
 upon my skill in moving the lever. However, 
 I mustered my courage, turned on the elec- 
 tricity, and started to run. The moment I 
 moved, the weight seemed gone from my 
 shoulders ; the air did all the supporting, and 
 as I began to go faster and faster I was lifted 
 higher and higher until only my toes touched. 
 Raising my wings then and turning on the 
 current, I arose with a burst of speed and soon 
 was sailing fifty feet above the houses. I 
 drew in my legs, pulled up the bottom of the 
 boat, and then looked about me. My con- 
 fidence was now completely restored, for the 
 machine answered the touch so quickly and I 
 felt such support that I had no fear whatso- 
 ever ; and turning in a great circle I came 
 back and landed near the professor, coming 
 down slowly until within a few feet of the 
 ground, when, checking the momentum, I 
 tripped the bottom of the boat and landed on 
 my feet. 
 
 "Well," I said, "I am sure any one can 
 manage that ; it is simple enough, and the 
 sensation is delightful." 
 
 "Yes, it will be very easy until you get into 
 the mountains, where you will meet cross 
 currents and gusts ; then, I tell you, it takes 
 as much skill as it does to sail a catboat on a 
 
The Art of Flying 227 
 
 lake full of islands. You cannot tell when 
 the next gust will come, and this will intro- 
 duce an element of danger which will call 
 forth all your ability." 
 
 Our dromes were so satisfactory that the 
 professor bought them outright ; and our friend 
 said he would have them examined to see that 
 everything was in perfect order, the machinery 
 well oiled, and our kit packed snugly away. 
 We then went back to the hotel and spent 
 the rest of the day in studying maps. 
 
 " I shall carry only a small stock of pro- 
 visions, mostly canned goods," said the pro- 
 fessor. " We will depend upon our own skill 
 for fresh meat, and it will be very strange 
 indeed if we cannot get a deer or two, or 
 perhaps a bear." 
 
 " How long a time will our journey take 
 us .'' " 
 
 " Well, that will depend on circumstances. 
 I am in no hurry, and we can take things 
 leisurely." 
 
 " Shall we camp by ourselves or near some 
 station ? " 
 
 " I was just now trying to find on this map 
 what were the best plan for us to pursue. I 
 think we will stop at this station first, and then 
 we will go direct to the mountains and camp 
 
228 The Great Awakening 
 
 wherever we happen to be. That will be 
 freer and in many ways more pleasant." I, 
 of course, was willing to leave everything to 
 the professor, and all was prepared for the 
 start on the morrow. 
 
 I was up bright and early on that beautiful 
 September morning, and was sitting on the 
 piazza when the professor came down. " A 
 fine morning for us, is it not .'' I tell you, a 
 day's fly in such weather as this braces a man 
 up in great style. Come in and have break- 
 fast. I have settled the bill, and as soon as 
 we can we must get into the air." 
 
 We ate a hearty meal, and taking a light 
 lunch the cook had prepared for us, which we 
 would eat while flying, we hurried to our 
 machines, where we found everything ready. 
 The canned provisions with the cooking uten- 
 sils were stowed away in the boats, also some 
 extra clothing, medicines, and other necessities. 
 
 " Your kerosene will last a month," said 
 our friend, " and if you can manage to soar 
 most of the time it will last much longer ; but 
 you must be careful not to run out of it, for 
 if you did, and landed on level ground, you 
 would be as stranded as a dismantled ship." 
 We made our final preparations, stepped into 
 the harness, and raised our machines. The 
 
The Art of Flying 229 
 
 professor started first and with a short run 
 rose gently from the ground, and flying higher 
 and higher went off towards the west. I 
 soon followed, and caught him about eight 
 hundred feet up. " The air is fine, professor." 
 " Yes, very exhilarating. We must make 
 good time, for I want to be at our destination 
 before night." 
 
 Our trip was now very similar to the one 
 from the States. The little silvery lakes below 
 us, cosily nestling in the deep valleys heavily 
 wooded with tall, stately pines, shone like 
 jewels in the morning sunlight. On some of 
 the hillsides the foliage had begun to change, 
 and from our position the whole earth seemed 
 one grand oriental rug of fantastic design, 
 but full of beautifully rich and soft colors. I 
 was lost in the contemplation of these natural 
 beauties. 
 
 The professor kept about one hundred yards 
 ahead, and I could see by the revolution of the 
 screws that he was going pretty fast. How- 
 ever, I had no trouble in keeping up with him. 
 We passed one or two patrolmen and a few 
 private dromes, and on one occasion the pro- 
 fessor called my attention to a chase which 
 was going on between a hunter and an eagle. 
 The man was in a small drome and was about 
 
230 The Great Awakening 
 
 two hundred yards behind an enormous eagle, 
 which was flying as hard as it could for the 
 shelter of a thick wood about a mile away. 
 The man gained slowly, and the chase grew 
 very exciting. I judged the range was too far 
 to use the pistol, although through my glass I 
 could see that the man held it in his hand, every 
 now and then aimed, but apparently thought 
 better of it, for I heard no report. Just as 
 the eagle reached the woods the man aimed 
 again, and this time the feathers flew, but still 
 the eagle kept on, and before the man could 
 fire again the noble bird settled down into the 
 thick branches, hid himself in the depths of 
 the forest, and the man rose and flew away, 
 apparently not caring to wait until the bird 
 showed himself again. 
 
 " Chasing eagles is great sport, " said the 
 professor. "You cannot possibly catch one, 
 you know, for they turn so quickly that they 
 will always elude the grasp; but you can, 
 however, shoot them on the wing. I fre- 
 quently chase them to within fifty feet and 
 then fire." 
 
 "Did that man fire ? I heard no noise." 
 
 "Of course you didn't. He uses liquified 
 air. We never use powder." 
 
 At noon we ate our lunches, and before 
 
The Art of Flying 23 1 
 
 sunset the police station came into view. 
 Nothing happened during the rest of the 
 afternoon, and we came to a landing about 
 five o'clock. This station was settled only by 
 hunters and trappers, and there were only a 
 few cabins near by. We set our machines 
 down in a vacant field, and after pegging 
 down the guide ropes to hold them firmly in 
 case of wind, we went up to a large cabin 
 which the professor said belonged to a hunting 
 club of which he was a member, and arranged 
 for dinner. The cabin was a two-story affair 
 and very large. On the first floor were 
 kitchen, dining room, and parlor, with an 
 enormous open fireplace ; and on the second 
 floor were bunks to accommodate members 
 and their guests. As we had an hour to our- 
 selves before dinner, we wandered out into 
 the country to look round. 
 
 "Does the same system of finance prevail 
 here as in the States .'' " 
 
 "Why, of course. If any man here shows 
 that he has increased the wealth of the 
 country, necessarily he is entitled to his share 
 of the money issued on that increase." 
 
 " It is all very well to say that he is entitled 
 to it, but how is the increase determined in 
 this barren country, where there is but little 
 manufacturing .'' " 
 
232 The Great Awakening 
 
 " Why I thought you understood that per- 
 fectly. Let me make it clear once more. If 
 the sum of the prices of all salable goods 
 at one time is 1,000 units and a month later 
 is 1,020 units, it is evident that the increase 
 has been twenty units. Don't get confused 
 at our word unit. It is equivalent to your 
 word dollar, except that it stands for no 
 special commodity. Reports are sent east from 
 this station as from all others, and, if after a 
 certain time the wealth represented does not 
 increase, there is naturally an investigation, as 
 this lack of increase means that every one 
 gets less money monthly than he otherwise 
 would. If the cause of this condition is in 
 nature it is accepted ; if it comes from idle- 
 ness or a desire of the residents of one station 
 to live on the wealth produced by the other 
 stations the issue of money to that particular 
 station is discontinued, generally by a popular 
 vote. Of course the amount of money issued 
 to any one station is dependent upon the 
 number of workers, male and female, over 
 twenty-one years of age, in that station. This 
 number is determined by popular vote, and 
 any man who by any act brought himself 
 into popular disfavor would be very liable to 
 have his name erased from the lists for a 
 
The Art of Flying 233 
 
 period. As our population is spread over the 
 country, we have a pure democracy. A repre- 
 sentative government is necessary only when 
 population concentrates itself in cities." 
 
 " But your national government is surely 
 representative ? " 
 
 " Not as you understand that form of gov- 
 ernment. There are very few acts our gov- 
 ernment is called upon to perform. If there 
 should be any act which is of such impor- 
 tance as to need national attention, then it 
 would be put to a popular vote and decided 
 in. that way." 
 
 " But the expenses and duties of the 
 government .'' Who attends to the appropria- 
 tions .'' How is it decided what shall be 
 spent to deepen this river, to improve that 
 harbor, to build up a navy, to care for light- 
 houses, and so on.-*" 
 
 " Well, it is strange that you cannot under- 
 stand. I suppose it is excusable, however, 
 since you were born in the nineteenth cen- 
 tury. To do that which you mention only 
 two things are necessary — labor and material. 
 Do you follow .? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Well, since no one by ownership can 
 monopolize material, it is evident that can 
 
234 The Great Awakening 
 
 be obtained without any trouble ; and the only 
 other question is, Will the laborer be willing 
 to work ? Now, what was it that set labor at 
 work in your day ? " 
 
 " Why, money, of course. The laborers 
 worked for their pay." 
 
 " Exactly. The same is true now. If to 
 deepen a river, improve a harbor, build up a 
 navy, and keep a lighthouse service will aid in 
 any way to produce more wealth, either di- 
 rectly or indirectly, that is, by improving the 
 methods of transportation, then to do that 
 work will, evidently, increase the periodical 
 issue of money ; and since every one profits 
 by that increase, those works, if necessary to 
 the public good, will be undertaken without 
 any national action, and, if not necessary, in- 
 dustry will stay in more productive channels. 
 A very strong example of the reverse condi- 
 tion existed in the States in your time, when 
 industry was forced into unproductive chan- 
 nels. The doctrine of protection prevailed 
 then. Protective tariffs, by preventing for- 
 eign trade, raised the price of American goods 
 by just the amount of tariff levied. This 
 raise was an extra profit to the manufacturer, 
 so that the strongest force behind the doc- 
 trine of protection was the selfish interest of 
 the manufacturers. 
 
The Art of Flying 235 
 
 " But there was a condition of affairs 
 brought about partly by protection, especially 
 in the days when the country was young, and 
 partly by the scarcity of population and 
 natural productiveness of the soil, which gave 
 protection a popular following. This was the 
 more equable distribution of wealth and the 
 higher wages paid to American labor than 
 was paid to foreign labor in Europe. The 
 exact cause of these two facts was not clearly 
 understood, and therefore, the latter condition 
 existing with protection, this doctrine was 
 assumed to be the cause of it. 
 
 " Now, the fundamental effect of the doc- 
 trine of protection is to prevent the growth 
 of trade." 
 
 "It only affects foreign trade, professor." 
 
 " That is not so. It hampers home trade. 
 If the people on the border of a country are 
 allowed to increase their trade with their 
 neighbors who live over the line, it means 
 they must increase it with their own country- 
 men, as otherwise what will they do with the 
 extra wealth derived from this increase of 
 trade .'' The absurdity of the proposition 
 that a protective tariff is necessary to stimu- 
 late home industries ought to be evident on 
 its face, it seems to me. Just think a mo- 
 
236 The Great Awakening 
 
 ment Suppose I live half a mile south of 
 the frontier. North of me a foreigner lives, 
 a mile away. To the east, south, and west 
 live my countrymen, each a mile from me. 
 Now, from the proposition I just stated to 
 you, I assume — and of course no one will 
 deny — that it is a good thing to increase 
 home industries. Now, suppose that I trade 
 with my friend in the east so much that in 
 order to get rid of the goods I receive from 
 him for some I need more I have to trade 
 with my friend in the south. There is a case 
 where an increase of trade with one man 
 brings about an increase of trade with an- 
 other man. And this always happens when 
 trade increases anywhere. Is there, now, 
 any man in his senses who will deny that if 
 I choose to increase trade by trading with my 
 friend in the north instead of trading with 
 my friend in the east, neither of my friends 
 in the east, south, or west will profit thereby .-* 
 What difference does it make where a man 
 lives .'' Individuals, not nations, are traders. 
 No, protection has hampered, not stimulated, 
 industry ; but if you hamper industry and 
 prevent its growth, you will keep wealth more 
 equally divided and limit the foundation of 
 class distinctions, because when industry is 
 
The Art of Flying 237 
 
 young, the amount of circulating medium is 
 very large in proportion. This means that 
 the dollar is easy to get, therefore it cannot 
 be controlled by the few, therefore there is 
 no monied aristocracy ; for a monied aristoc- 
 racy means a class of beings who live by 
 lending that which is absolutely essential to 
 life and of which they have a monopoly — 
 that is, money. 
 
 " There is, however, a limit to this. With 
 an increasing population trade must increase, 
 so it is only when a country is young that the 
 force caused by protection acts ; and we see 
 that at the end of the nineteenth century this 
 force was dead, class distinctions existed, and 
 the popular following of protection was grow- 
 ing less and less. Wages in your country 
 were sinking to the level of those in Europe 
 during that decade, and early in the twentieth 
 century it became evident to the popular mind 
 that protection protected nobody but the mo- 
 nopolist manufacturer. Of course then it was 
 immediately overthrown. The protectionists 
 up to that time had always deluded the people 
 with the belief that if you pay a manufacturer 
 a big profit, he will, out of the kindness of 
 his heart, pay big wages. When your coun- 
 try was young and men scarce, he paid big 
 
238 The Great Awakening 
 
 wages, but it was not from the kindness of 
 his heart, — a protectionist is not that sort of 
 a man ; it was because he had to. When 
 the population increased he could get men 
 easier, and wages fell, which was natural in 
 a civilization where labor was treated as a 
 commodity to be bought and sold by the capi- 
 talist." 
 
 " Well, professor, you mentioned a condi- 
 tion in which the dollar was easy to get, and 
 which you say is a beneficial one. Do you 
 mean to say that high prices are a good 
 thing .-" " 
 
 " That depends upon what causes the high 
 prices." 
 
 " Explain." 
 
 " Why, price — or rather, market value, 
 which is a better term to use — depends upon 
 the ratio between the quantity of goods of- 
 fered for sale and the quantity of money 
 offered to buy. Mind you, the amount of 
 money in existence, or in circulation, as it was 
 erroneously called in your day, has little to do 
 with this. I might own a million dollars and 
 have it stowed away somewhere so that it 
 could not possibly affect market values, but it 
 would be in circulation, as you understood the 
 word. Now, decrease the quantity of goods 
 
The Art of Flying 239 
 
 and, other things being equal, market value 
 will go up. The same will happen if, instead 
 of the latter, you increase the quantity of 
 money. The former is the way the protec- 
 tionists would keep prices up, the latter the 
 way the bimetallists would do the same. Be- 
 tween the two it is easy to choose. As popu- 
 lation increases trade must increase, therefore 
 we cannot decrease the quantity of goods of- 
 fered ; the other is the right way." 
 
 " But are high prices, even from this cause, 
 a desirable thing, professor ,■' " 
 
 " Yes, the more money, the weaker the 
 syndicates that try to control it. It is like 
 everything else — a little may be controlled, 
 but not a large amount." 
 
 " But how are people to get this money ? 
 Of course I understand how your system 
 works ; but in my time, when the people were 
 not prepared for such a radical change, how 
 would the masses gain by an increase in the 
 amount of circulating medium ? If the own- 
 ers of silver mines were allowed to have all 
 their silver coined free, as gold was, how would 
 it benefit any one but those owners .'' Why 
 could you not say of them, as of the protec- 
 tionists. They could pay higher wages, but they 
 will not .''" 
 
240 The Great Awakening 
 
 " Well, let us examine for a moment. 
 When the United States refused to coin silver 
 free and in unlimited amounts, the largest 
 buyer of silver in the country refused to pay 
 one dollar for 4 1 2 grains of silver, and there- 
 fore the price to other buyers — that is, the 
 market value — fell. The price of anything 
 in your day generally fluctuated around that 
 of the heaviest buyer. Silver declined to fifty 
 cents per 412 grains. Now, supposing an 
 owner of bullion gets from his mines 100 
 pounds a day, just for the sake of an example, 
 and supposing, at fifty cents per 4 1 2 grains, it 
 costs him 90 pounds of silver to get out the 
 100 pounds. If he could get from the 
 United States one dollar for 412 grains, it is 
 evident it would cost him only 45 pounds of 
 silver to get out the 100 pounds. Now, after 
 he has sold the extra 45 pounds, what is he 
 going to do with the money ? He will cer- 
 tainly use it, he is not a fool. He will invest 
 it in some other business to make it pay him 
 interest. Now, if he does not pay his men 
 more — and he will not do so — he cannot 
 help but increase wages, for by starting other 
 businesses he will create a demand for labor 
 which will raise the price ; and in fact, any 
 increase of legal tender money will always 
 
The Art of Flying 241 
 
 raise wages by increasing the demand for 
 labor." 
 
 " But a protectionist, with his extra profits, 
 would do the same." 
 
 " He cannot increase wages ; he can only 
 divert wages from some people to other 
 people, for the money which he got was in 
 existence before he got it. But the free and 
 unrestricted coinage of silver would have 
 caused the same result in your country as 
 would come from a great inundation of foreign 
 capital seeking investment. The gold men of 
 your time were very glad when foreign capital 
 was invested in their country, and spoke of 
 the prosperity which would follow a condition 
 where foreign capital was not afraid to invest ; 
 how much better then to have the investors 
 in one's own country, then interest stays at 
 home. This could easily have been brought 
 about by free silver. 
 
 " Early in the twentieth century the United 
 States became very similar to the tributary 
 states of the Roman Empire. Having the 
 gold standard, the capital used in your coun- 
 try was owned abroad, which would not have 
 been the case if you had been on a silver 
 basis ; and Europe constantly drained the 
 United States as the city of Rome drained 
 
242 The Great Awakening 
 
 the outlying districts. This is our main 
 reason for calhng the nineteenth and twentieth 
 centuries the Era of Degeneration. It was 
 the era when the older civilizations led a life 
 of profligacy, living on the interest drawn from 
 the younger ; and, as in Rome this decay led 
 to the downfall of the Roman civilization, so 
 this Era of Degeneration led to the Chaotic 
 Era — the downfall of the western civilization 
 in which the rights of property was the abiding 
 watchword. Then followed our civilization 
 with our scientific scheme of finance, giving 
 to each, no matter what his birth, equal oppor- 
 tunities. I suppose our civilization will have 
 its rise and fall just as others have. There is 
 nothing perfect — everything is constantly 
 undergoing a change. Mutability is an im- 
 mutable law of nature. But here," said the 
 professor, " we must stop talking and get 
 back to dinner." 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 THE MYSTERIES OF FINANXE UNRAVELLED. 
 
 After dinner we were entertained with hunt- 
 ing stories; and seated, smoking, around the 
 fire, it was very enjoyable listening to the 
 anecdotes of the various members, who, in a 
 gathering like this, always delight in talking 
 over old experiences ; and many interesting 
 stories of hairbreadth escapes and difficult 
 manoeuvres accomplished in the flying machine 
 were told. These men did all their hunting 
 in the flying machine, and I gained from them 
 much valuable information concerning the 
 management of the apparatus. 
 
 Early next morning we were in the air. 
 The day was windy, and numerous hea\y 
 clouds floated by ; I found some difficulty 
 with the machine during this day's journey, 
 for the counter currents up and down made 
 it extremely difficult to keep a straight course. 
 But early in the afternoon we rose into an 
 easterly wind and had the satisfaction of travel- 
 ling towards the Rockies at the tremendous 
 243 
 
244 The Great Awakening 
 
 speed of one hundred and fifty miles an hour. 
 We were very high — about 3,300 feet above 
 the ground, I should say — and the air was very 
 cold. At about five o'clock we crossed the 
 Saskatchawan River and reached the range 
 where we were to camp that night. We 
 dropped nearer the earth, circled round to find 
 a convenient spot ; and after crossing one or 
 two valleys, the professor found one to his 
 liking, and we finally landed on a small cliff 
 which jutted out from the side of a mountain. 
 The descent of this cliff was precipitous for 
 about fifty feet, which afforded us a fine 
 tower from which to get under way. Upon 
 landing, the professor guyed the machine 
 firmly to the ground and got out the cooking 
 utensils to prepare dinner. 
 
 " I intend to take my rod and see if I can 
 get something out of the stream below us. 
 It looks as if it might hold trout or even sal- 
 mon. If you wish, you may get some wood 
 and build a camp fire and make the coffee." 
 
 The professor then got out his rod and 
 flies and went off through the woods to work 
 his way down into the valley. I took the 
 hatchet and soon had a good wood pile. 
 I then set to work and made a roaring fire 
 on the top of the cliff, some way from the 
 
Mysteries Unravelled 245 
 
 machines. While the logs were burning them- 
 selves to embers, I sauntered off with my 
 glass to view the surrounding country. The 
 scenery was grand and impressive, but rugged 
 and with little vegetation, and I cannot de- 
 scribe exactly the sensations I felt while stand- 
 ing alone on this cliff, hundreds of miles from 
 any habitation ; for had I been without my 
 aerodrome, I should have realized my loneli- 
 ness, I should have felt the weakness of man. 
 But how could I have those thoughts when I 
 knew that the height of these giant cliffs was 
 as nothing to the height to which I could soar ? 
 I could not hold these mountains, these works 
 of nature, in awe because of their size ; had I 
 not just come from the skies far above them.-* 
 Surely the works of man are greater by far 
 than any that nature ever made. When in 
 my time poor man had to struggle over 
 rocks, through thickets, and toil wearily for 
 hours to reach the summit of these mountains, 
 the view then to him was magnificent. It 
 filled him with awe and reverence for nature ; 
 it strengthened his belief in God. Why was 
 this ? Simply because of the toil necessary 
 to attain the end. If we toil earnestly to 
 reach the goal, how much sweeter is the 
 attainment ! The more laborious the effort, 
 
246 The Great Awakening 
 
 the sweeter the final pleasure. But in the 
 twenty-second century this feeling of awe and 
 reverence for nature's works has died out. 
 It does not exist. No difficulty which nature 
 can make is so great that man cannot over- 
 come it. The commonplace is not reverenced ; 
 so now these beauties are seen so often and 
 by so many people that they are accepted as 
 a matter of course and are rarely commented 
 upon. The guide, who, during his whole life, 
 has travelled one mountain accepts its beauties, 
 for to him they are part of the everyday con- 
 ditions of life ; it is only those to whom the 
 view is novel who comment, admire, and 
 revere. 
 
 The professor came back with half a dozen 
 trout, and soon they were sizzling in the pan. 
 After a hearty meal we built a roaring fire, 
 and, lying on our blankets, lighted our pipes. 
 
 " Professor," I said, " in what way does 
 your civilization change the life of women .-'" 
 
 " Well, in the first place, the inventions 
 and improvements in the conveniences and 
 methods of domestic life lighten their work 
 tremendously, and with us no woman is de- 
 pendent upon a man for support, and, there- 
 fore her right of bestowing her love freely is 
 not questioned. Of course you must realize 
 
Mysteries Unravelled 247 
 
 that these conditions can only exist where the 
 act of birth gives the right of life. In your 
 time this was not so. To be born did not 
 necessarily mean that you would be allowed to 
 live. If you were smart enough you might 
 get on, especially in a new country where pop- 
 ulation was scanty ; but if born in an old coun- 
 try you would have to fight, tooth and nail, 
 for existence. The rights of birth were pe- 
 culiar in your day. You did not charge the 
 son with the moral sins of the father, but you 
 did charge him with the industrial sins. You 
 could not see that one was as great a wrong 
 as the other." 
 
 " Just what do you mean by industrial 
 sins .'' " 
 
 " Why, if the father was lazy or extrava- 
 gant, that sin was felt by the son, for lazy or 
 extravagant people could not keep much 
 money, and, as a consequence, the child suf- 
 fered in home environment and from lack of 
 education. Now, in your day no one would 
 deny that a lazy man deserved less than an 
 industrious one ; but why, in God's name, 
 should the lazy man's" son be made to suffer 
 for the father's fault .-* You see, your system 
 caused class distinctions to grow wider and 
 wider apart every day, so that in old countries 
 
248 The Great Awakening 
 
 the child born in the lower classes must re- 
 main there, unless by some freak of nature he 
 had sufficient genius to force his way to the 
 front. The early years of a child's life, say 
 from five to twenty, are of such tremendous 
 importance that home environment almost in- 
 variably moulds his character in those fifteen 
 years. Now, the ease with which money can 
 be obtained at that period is of vast impor- 
 tance, for the reason that if the father can 
 with little work procure sufficient to clothe 
 and nourish his family, the remaining result 
 of his labor can be spent on education and the 
 satisfaction of the mental appetites ; but if 
 to barely live takes all the father's energy, 
 then the children have no sort of bringing up, 
 and if they follow in their father's footsteps, 
 it is not from heredity, but because their early 
 environment has so directed them. The lower 
 classes of society increase very rapidly for the 
 reason that men and women who by their po- 
 sition in life are denied the benefits of an edu- 
 cation, and are, therefore, denied the host of 
 intellectual pleasures given to many, have re- 
 course to the pleasures of the animal feelings, 
 which in their class are strongly developed. 
 On the other hand, an intellectual, cultured 
 woman, because she cares less for the physical 
 
Mysteries Unravelled 249 
 
 and sensual, and more for the mental pleas- 
 ures, is less prolific than her uncultured sister. 
 The difference in culture was caused by the 
 financial system. In your day it was thought 
 that the dearest money was the very best 
 money, and the reason for that idea was evi- 
 dent. There was a large class of people who 
 existed by lending this money ; and as they 
 existed by lending and not working they had 
 leisure, and as they had leisure they had time 
 for culture. They knew, of course, that if 
 any steps were taken whereby a man could 
 procure from the government legal tender 
 money without working for it, they would no 
 longer find borrowers of their money, and, 
 therefore, they could not live by lending, for 
 no one would pay interest. Of course, there 
 were, undoubtedly, many widows and old peo- 
 ple who deserved an income without working 
 for it, and, under your system, the only way 
 to get that was to lend a necessity and charge 
 interest. But with us they are given pen- 
 sions direct from the government." 
 
 " Well, what is the difference ? With us, 
 we owned stocks and bonds and got interest, 
 and with you, we own the right to a pension. 
 In both cases, we have the privilege of making 
 people work for us." 
 
250 The Great Awakening 
 
 " Why, there is a vast difference. Any 
 one could own stocks and bonds in your time, 
 no matter whether or not he was young and 
 able to earn his own living ; so that a large 
 number of energetic men spent their energies, 
 not in earning, that is, producing, but in 
 spending, and this spending was almost invari- 
 ably along useless and wasteful channels, 
 forcing labor into industries that catered 
 to the few, but which produced nothing of 
 value to the real worker. With us no one 
 can live by lending, for we take good care 
 that no one has a monopoly of any essential 
 thing. The only people who have the right 
 to live on the rest of us are the aged, who have 
 worked hard in their day and now deserve a 
 happy old age, free from the cares and worries 
 of life. There are two periods in the life 
 of every human being when the simple fact of 
 his existence gives him the right to demand 
 care and kindness from his fellow creatures. 
 These two periods are infancy and old age. 
 But the greatest evil in your time came not 
 from the fact that to own money was to live 
 on interest, but that to own money was to con- 
 trol industry. It was not so great an evil 
 that one man should have a large income and 
 do nothing, as that that man should be able to 
 
Mysteries Unravelled 251 
 
 control the lives of the thousands of men, and 
 therefore the lives of their families, m his em- 
 ploy, and divert industry into any channel, 
 regardless of whether it produced a permanent 
 or a useless form of wealth. And this state of 
 affairs was based upon the rights of property. 
 Why, do you imagine, did you have periodic 
 panics in your time ? Do you suppose it was 
 because the workers had got tired of earning 
 their living ? Because they enjoyed starving .? 
 No, a thousand times, no ! It was because 
 the controllers of the business were afraid of 
 losses to their own pockets. No one can ob- 
 ject to a man's making strenuous efforts to 
 avert personal loss; but when these efforts 
 affect the lives of thousands, they must be 
 considered." 
 
 " But a personal loss to the capitalist means 
 a loss to the laborer too, for labor cannot 
 work to advantage without capital." 
 
 " Very true ; but labor can get on most 
 beautifully without the capitalist, although it 
 needs capital. Of course the action of one 
 man does not help things much, and in times 
 of panic the generosity of one man and the 
 confidence of one man can do but little to stem 
 the torrent ; but the error was in having such 
 a system that panics could occur. Such a 
 
252 The Great Awakening 
 
 system belongs only to savages, and has no 
 place among civilized nations. Your credit 
 system I am speaking of now — a system 
 where the amount of legal tender money is 
 limited, with a result of the expansion of the 
 amount of credit money, entirely under the 
 control of those who own the legal tender 
 money, to meet the demands of trade. This 
 credit money is handled and controlled by the 
 bankers for their own profit, and of course 
 there comes a time when its extension must 
 cease ; discounts are stopped, down goes the 
 whole fabric, and the bankers, if any do, get 
 out without loss. As I look back at it now, 
 the whole system seems ridiculously absurd 
 and unjust ; but we must understand that its 
 existence had a place in evolution, and that so 
 long as people thought it a just system, just 
 so long were those people entirely unfit to 
 live in a better civilization. The era which 
 we call the Era of Degeneration, and which 
 embraces the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twen- 
 tieth centuries, was of tremendous value on 
 account of the material progress made. The 
 number of profit-making, generally called labor- 
 saving, inventions in your time was enormous, 
 the progress in the arts and sciences was 
 wonderful, and it is of course not to be won- 
 
Mysteries Unravelled 253 
 
 dered at that your social progress could not 
 keep abreast of the material progress. This 
 material progress meant great riches, but it 
 did not mean happiness. The reverse was 
 true, for unequal distribution always produces 
 unhappiness, as it starts the next generation 
 with wider and wider distinctions as regards 
 heredity, and especially as regards that envi- 
 ronment which is necessary to produce a good 
 citizen." 
 
 " I see, professor ; you state these problems 
 very clearly, I realize, as you do, the great 
 effect our financial system had upon the 
 younger generation. Why, even in my time 
 people began to realize that every day it was 
 growing harder and harder to earn an honest 
 living." 
 
 " Yes, that fact was the cause of the dis- 
 content, the strikes, and all the labor troubles ; 
 it led to the formation of socialistic, nihilistic, 
 and labor organizations all over the world. 
 See how beautifully this whole scheme works 
 into the evolution of the race. This divine 
 right of property so called, whereby man 
 could own land and capital, acted as a tremen- 
 dous spur upon the race. It gave men leisure, 
 for they lived by lending ; it held out the 
 hope of leisure to all men, for all could hope 
 
254 The Great Awakening 
 
 to own. You see, in this it is a step ahead of 
 the divine right of kings. This divine right 
 of property was bound to exist up to a certain 
 time, namely, to such a time when social con- 
 ditions in every part of the world were approxi- 
 mately alike ; when there were no more unex- 
 plored portions of the globe ; when emigration 
 to new countries had decreased simply because 
 there were no new countries where the laborer's 
 lot was any better ; then the poor man was 
 brought to bay. So long as he could have a 
 chance of owning land or capital by going to 
 a new country he supported the system ; but 
 there came a time when there was no place 
 to go to, and then he faced the music. 
 
 " The flying machine was a tremendous aid 
 to discovery and travel, so that early in the 
 twentieth century the whole globe was accu- 
 rately known. I tell you, my friend, the man 
 who does not see the part that material prog- 
 ress plays in social progress does not have 
 any conception of the meaning of things." 
 
 It was now getting late, and fixing the fire 
 for the night, we both turned in. 
 
CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 CONTAINS A DISCUSSION ON REPUDIATION 
 WHICH MAY REPAY THE READER OF IT. 
 
 The next morning I was up bright and 
 early to get the sunrise, and a beautiful sight 
 it was. In the valleys the heavy mist was 
 hanging low; a few clouds were hurrying 
 westward with the tidings of the coming 
 dawn. Royal heralds they were, proclaiming 
 the coming of the king. 
 
 Upon the horizon appeared a light ; gradu- 
 ally right and left it spread, giving a pale 
 glow to all the heavens. A gentle breeze 
 sprang up, rustling the trees, waking the birds 
 and bringing forth their joyful song, and then 
 a beam of light suddenly shot forth high in 
 the heavens, tinging all the clouds a rosy 
 color, which, falling on the earth wet with 
 dew, was reflected to the eye by myriads of 
 diamond dewdrops on every leaf. To the 
 right another beam and still a third appeared ; 
 and then, with a burst of splendor, the glorious 
 
256 The Great Awakening 
 
 orb itself rose majestically to its throne in the 
 heavens. 
 
 As I walked back to the camp I found my 
 friend fixing the fire and preparing breakfast, 
 and after we had taken a refreshing bath in 
 the clear, cold water of a little brook back of 
 the camp, we sat down to table with ap- 
 petites which made us very willing to overlook 
 any faults in the cooking. 
 
 "What is the program after breakfast, 
 professor ? " 
 
 " Oh, I do not know ; suppose we try to 
 see if we can do some soaring. It will be 
 great sport ; and if the wind increases I think 
 we shall have no trouble, for, you see, these 
 mountains will give us plenty of upward 
 currents." 
 
 " Are those necessary, professor } " 
 
 " Yes. In an absolutely horizontal wind I 
 do not believe we could do anything. What 
 you must try to do is to get over an upward 
 current so that it will not only support you, 
 but will pull you forward. Of course you 
 begin by dropping from this cliff, and when 
 you have sufficient speed, turn into the wind 
 and rise as high as you can, but before you 
 lose your speed entirely, you must turn one 
 way or another and drop across the wind to 
 
What is Repudiation? 257 
 
 regain velocity ; but a trial will help you more 
 than all I can tell you." 
 
 Just as soon as breakfast was finished we 
 went to our machines and prepared them for 
 flight, leaving every unnecessary article behind 
 and making everything trim and snug, in order 
 to present as little resistance to the wind as 
 possible. The professor, who started first, 
 took a quick run, disappeared over the cliff, 
 and a minute later I saw him shooting across 
 the valley to get in a position to use the up- 
 ward current which was rising over a high 
 precipice on the other side, and I watched 
 him for several minutes making some very 
 interesting manoemTes, until suddenly, to my 
 great astonishment, he remained absolutely 
 still in the air at a height of perhaps thirty 
 feet above a ridge, and, save for a slight rock- 
 ing motion, no movement was perceptible. 
 This excited my curiosity so much that I 
 hurried to investigate, and getting into my 
 machine, took a short run and launched myself 
 over the cliff. My motor was still on the 
 drome, and as I wanted to get to the professor 
 while he was still miraculously suspended in 
 mid-air, I set it at work as soon as I had attained 
 a horizontal course and reached the ridge 
 in a very few minutes, to find the professor 
 
258 The Great Awakening 
 
 still quietly resting on nothing. As I went 
 over the ridge the cause of all this was made 
 plain to me, for I was suddenly lifted vertically 
 about fifty feet. 
 
 " Turn around, come down lower, and stop 
 your motor ! I think you can manage it all 
 right." 
 
 Try as I could, however, I was not skillful 
 enough to stay in one place, and after several 
 attempts, in one of which I came very near 
 striking the cliff, I gave it up, darted off down 
 the valley, then circled, and turning on the 
 electricity, mounted high in the heavens and 
 spent all the morning in the air, enjoying every 
 moment and feeling glad that I was alive. 
 The temperature was low, but I was dressed 
 for it, and the beautiful view, the stillness, the 
 delightful motion, and the gentle rush of the 
 wind past the wires gave me a sense of pleas- 
 ure and rest greater than anything I had 
 before experienced, so that although I had to 
 come down to dinner, I was in the air again 
 and spent all the afternoon until sunset flying 
 over beautiful valleys, rugged mountains, and 
 swollen, rushing rivers. 
 
 Indeed, most of our time in camp was spent 
 above the earth ; either we soared for pleasure 
 or we hunted for food, and during our two 
 
What is Repudiation ? 259 
 
 weeks of camping we were in the air every- 
 day. 
 
 After our work was done, one night, and we 
 were lounging around a glorious fire with our 
 pipes lighted, I began to discuss with the pro- 
 fessor the money question as it had appeared 
 to me during my former life on earth, and 
 happened to bring up the idea of repudi- 
 ation. 
 
 "Repudiation!" said the professor, "what 
 a lot of talk there was about it during the 
 fight for silver just before the close of the 
 nineteenth century. The word was used by 
 the gold men as an epithet. National 
 honor was at stake, the gold men said, 
 and the wholesale repudiation of debts, such 
 as they claimed free silver meant, would 
 bring the nation into disgrace. Let us see 
 just what repudiation means. Let us suppose 
 that I owe you ;^ 1,000, and that when the 
 debt is due I cannot pay. You force me 
 into bankruptcy, and a settlement is made at 
 fifty cents on the dollar. That is called a 
 failure and means perhaps the loss of a liveli- 
 hood to me. Now if, just before I fail and 
 when I can perhaps pay more than fifty cents 
 on the dollar, I can bring force to bear so 
 that my creditor shall have to be satisfied 
 
26o The Great Awakening 
 
 with the fifty cents, I can then keep on with 
 the business and not be forced to assign. 
 Now it is here that the free coinage of silver 
 comes upon the scene. If by any means the 
 amount of money in circulation should be 
 doubled, the dollar will be easier to get, and 
 therefore, other things being equal, will pur- 
 chase less, so that if I pay my creditor in these 
 dollars, legally the debt will be paid ; but in this 
 case the creditor will claim repudiation, since 
 each dollar will not purchase what it did 
 before the increase came, and this is true 
 whether the increase is in gold or silver. 
 Now the creditor forgets that this dollar will 
 still pay his own debts, although he cannot 
 buy as much with it ; that is, supposing he 
 owes ^i,ooo to some one, he can cancel his 
 debt legally with the same dollars he receives 
 from me, so that on that score he is no loser ; 
 but if he is a creditor to a great extent and 
 his credits are large compared to his debits, 
 he loses because, although he pays what debts 
 he has with the money he received from me, 
 he finds the purchasing power of his surplus 
 funds cut down, and he therefore cries repu- 
 diation. Now this class is in numbers very 
 small, and the value of their services to the 
 community is still smaller. They are not pro- 
 
What is Repudiation? 261 
 
 ducers, they are not even aids to the distribu- 
 tion of wealth ; they are but extravagant con- 
 sumers, and their existence as a class is a 
 hindrance to the progress of mankind." 
 
 " Are you not rather hard upon them, 
 professor ? " I said. 
 
 " No. One cannot be too hard upon a class 
 living in idle luxury and exerting all its 
 energies in promoting a condition of affairs 
 in which it prospers at the expense of the 
 masses." 
 
 " But, surely, all of those who supported 
 the gold standard did not belong to this 
 class." 
 
 " No. The majority of . the supporters 
 were so either because they were ignorant of 
 the real meaning of the policy, or because, be- 
 ing in the employ of some gold man or in 
 some business which they feared would not 
 live except under a monometallic policy, they 
 had to regard their own income first. Let me 
 explain my reasons for speaking as strongly 
 as I do. A man is valuable to a community 
 only from what he does, what he gives back 
 to the community. Now, if I am a millionaire 
 of your time, I can hire a man to look after 
 my estate, and m return for the income on my 
 capital I need not give to the community one 
 
262 The Great Awakening 
 
 minute of my time. In this case I would be 
 worse than useless to the community, for, 
 while giving nothing, I would be receiving 
 much." 
 
 " You forget, professor, you are giving 
 your capital which benefits others, without 
 which industry could not proceed." 
 
 " You are here admitting my point, which 
 is that capital, and not the capitalist, is the 
 necessary thing." 
 
 " But, professor, how can there be capital 
 without the capitalist .'' " 
 
 " Now we are in deep water, and if we do 
 not look out we will have to swim. Suppos- 
 ing there is a business having $ 10,000,000 cap- 
 ital — that is, a business having a plant and 
 other assets which could not be duplicated 
 short of that figure — and suppose that plant is 
 owned by forty million stockholders, each own- 
 ing twenty-five cents' worth of the stock and 
 no more, would you then call these stock- 
 holders capitalists ? If there were only these 
 forty millions of people in the country, could 
 any one of them lay claim to the term cap- 
 italist ? " 
 
 " Well, no, we would not call a man own- 
 ing twenty-five cents' worth of stock a cap- 
 italist." 
 
What is Repudiation ? 263 
 
 " Of course not, but whom would you call a 
 capitalist ? " 
 
 " Well, a capitalist is one who controls a 
 large amount of capital ; he is very much 
 wealthier than his neighbors." 
 
 " Exactly. There could be no such thing 
 as a capitalist if there were no such thing as a 
 poor man, could there .-• " 
 
 "Well, no, I guess that is right." 
 
 " Then the term capitalist is not necessarily 
 connected with the term capital, is it .-* " 
 
 " That is hard for me to understand in spite 
 of your explanation, for it seems to me that 
 the owner of capital must always be a capi- 
 talist." 
 
 " But how about the owner of twenty-five 
 cents' worth of stock in the midst of the 
 other forty million owners, is he a capitalist .-' 
 Are they all capitalists ? " 
 
 "No, we should not consider them so, 
 although perhaps, speaking literally, they 
 were so." 
 
 " Perhaps ; but in your day the term was 
 restricted to mean the very few who owned 
 and controlled the world's capital, so it is in 
 this sense that I use the term ; and I wish to 
 impress upon you the fact that the capital- 
 ist, in this sense, was not at all necessary, 
 
264 The Great Awakening 
 
 although his capital was. If all the wealth 
 in your country had been equally divided, not 
 a cent's worth of capital would have disap- 
 peared, but would there have been any capi- 
 talists ? A man may be worth a dollar or a 
 million, but the amount of capital he owns 
 does not give him the name of capitalist, 
 since, if he owned a million and everybody 
 else in the country owned as much he could 
 not control any more capital than his neigh- 
 bor, and therefore he would not be considered 
 a capitalist. That name only appears when 
 a difference of wealth appears, and lasts 
 only as long as that difference lasts. I have 
 explained this at some length, in order to 
 show you that capital may exist without cap- 
 italists. 
 
 " Now, when I say capitalists are not neces- 
 sary, I mean that in the evolution of society 
 there comes a time when people, understand- 
 ing these things more fully, see the absurdities 
 of the capitalistic system, and having clearly 
 before them a better and juster system, bring 
 about the change ; but until the mass of 
 people do realize this, capitalists are necessary 
 and will exist. The death of the power of 
 the priest in the affairs of this world, the 
 overthrow of the one-man power in the gov- 
 
What is Repudiation ? 265 
 
 ernment of nations, and the downfall of the 
 domination of the capitalist are three great 
 steps taken by mankind which mark dis- 
 tinctly three epochs in the advance of human 
 knowledge. 
 
 " In your time the progress in science and 
 art, the increase of knowledge in every direc- 
 tion, even along the line of political economy, 
 which in the nineteenth century was the 
 most undeveloped, yet the greatest of all 
 sciences- — -this progress was, I say, gradually 
 bringing the human race to the stage in evo- 
 lution when the monstrous capitalistic system' 
 was seen in its true guise; and then, the lead- 
 ers appearing, the stand was taken, the fight 
 made and won, and humanity passed on over 
 the bodies of the dead, sadder and wiser than 
 it was, and ushered in a system in which 
 equality of opportunity and the freedom of 
 the individual had a greater and grander 
 meaning than ever before in the history of 
 the human race. The last part of the nine- 
 teenth century will give you plenty of ex- 
 amples of this growth. Take, for instance, 
 the growth of the power of the socialists in 
 Germany and France, of the populists in 
 America ; and consider the spread of the 
 single-tax idea. All these things show what 
 
266 The Great Awakening 
 
 was going on; and when the next century- 
 dawned and the Money RepubHc was born 
 the growth was very fast, too fast indeed, 
 since it is evident from the blood shed during 
 the change and the Chaotic Era, that there 
 were very many not ready for, and therefore 
 opposed to, this progress, Looking at it 
 from the standpoint of to-day, we can under- 
 stand easily why the capitalistic system ex- 
 isted. We know that had the wealth been 
 equally divided it would have been again con- 
 centrated, for with the ideas which were com- 
 mon at that time this was bound to happen. 
 That system fitted that age, and any other 
 system could not exist. The capitalist had it 
 in his power to do the world a great deal of 
 good by hastening the advance along the right 
 lines ; but, like every class to which power has 
 been delegated, he abused it and sought to 
 keep things as they were, that he might profit 
 thereby. 
 
 "As Charles the Fifth and his son Philip 
 forced the inquisition upon Spain, with the 
 view of keeping all the sheep in the fold 
 where they could be easily shorn, so the nine- 
 teenth-century capitalist, as typified in the 
 great bankers, forced upon the world the gold 
 standard, that all who trade must first pay 
 
What is Repudiation ? 267 
 
 them tribute. Verily was it a ' crucifixion of 
 mankind upon a cross of gold.' " 
 
 It was late that night when we turned in, 
 and as we were going to start for home early 
 the next morning, I lost no time in getting to 
 sleep. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 CONTAINS MUCH RAPID TRANSIT AND SOME 
 ECONOMICS. 
 
 We landed, after a trip of six hours, in the 
 heart of Salt Lake City, and from here the 
 professor said he would make the trip east 
 in the cars. Our dromes were boxed and 
 shipped, and we put up at a first-class hotel 
 for the few days we were in the city. 
 
 I call it city because it is called city on the 
 maps, but to me there is nothing here to sug- 
 gest the city as I knew it. In my time that 
 term was associated with narrow, crooked 
 streets congested with traffic ; high buildings, 
 crowded sidewalks, foul air, dark and dingy 
 offices, immense department stores crowded 
 with clerks, their aisles packed with buyers ; 
 immense warehouses stocked with the prod- 
 ucts of home and foreign lands ; and last of 
 all, when I spoke of a city I meant a gathering 
 of hundreds of thousands of men, women, and 
 children, of all ages, of all degrees of intelli- 
 gence, on a small tract of ground, on which 
 368 
 
Rapid Transit 269 
 
 they fought in direct competition with each 
 other, and on which they erected churches 
 where was taught a doctrine which, during six 
 sevenths of the whole year, was totally disre- 
 garded. And I had once believed these 
 people civilized ! 
 
 Salt Lake City is a beautiful place, but not 
 differing much from many of your modern 
 cities so I shall not describe it. 
 
 The professor and I started east on the 
 morning of October 10, and as this was my 
 first ride on a railroad it interested me greatly. 
 The engine was very much smaller than the 
 engine of my time, and consisted simply of an 
 electric generator of about 2,000 horse power, 
 mounted on a four-wheeled truck. The 
 power was carried to each car by wires which 
 where coupled in much the same manner as 
 the air-brakes were, and there was a motor on 
 each truck. In this way great speed and 
 great control over the train were obtained, so 
 that we ordinarily travelled at the rate of 
 eighty miles an hour ; but I must say, how- 
 ever, that the roadbed is much improved and 
 must be a large factor in reaching this speed. 
 
 "You must see now," said the professor, 
 " the gain we have made over your time. 
 Our progress in the applied arts has been as 
 
270 The Great Awakening 
 
 great as yours was in the nineteenth century, 
 while in the sciences, especially that of econ- 
 omy, we have done everything where you had 
 done nothing. The majority of your works 
 upon economy were trash — simply trash, and 
 nothing more. Why, out of all the books 
 written on this subject I do not believe you 
 will find any two which give the same defi- 
 nition of wealth ; and what must you think then 
 of a science in which the chief factor is not 
 known ? Can you call the economics of your 
 time a science, when one writer says this is 
 wealth, another that is wealth ; when one says 
 an evidence of debt is wealth, while another 
 denies it ; when one says money is wealth, and 
 another that it only represents wealth, and so 
 on .-* Can you truthfully say that in the year 
 nineteen hundred there was a science of eco- 
 nomics ? No, you cannot ! 
 
 " At that time economics was as far from 
 being a science as the alchemy of the Egyp- 
 tians, hundreds of years before Christ, was 
 from being the science of chemistry. You 
 had no science of economy, nor could have, 
 for you knew not the first principles of the 
 science. You did not know what wealth was, 
 you did not understand the method of build- 
 ing the science of economy j you were working 
 
Rapid Transit 271 
 
 as the alchemists did, yes, as those ignorant 
 people worked. 
 
 " They assumed gold to be the only ele- 
 ment, and considered what we now know as 
 elements to be compounds, and their endeavor 
 to turn everything into gold was the active 
 principle of their work. Good has come from 
 their labor, but no science could ever result 
 from it as long as they held that assumption, 
 for it is false. Now the economists of your 
 time had an assumption. It was that the 
 science of economics is based upon moral 
 right ; and, clinging to this idea, they wrote 
 volume after volume of the silliest trash, try- 
 ing to prove that this or that was right or 
 just, and attacked furiously all those who had 
 different ideas of right. One might as well 
 expect a science of astronomy made up of 
 opinions as to what the different laws should 
 be, based upon ideas of right, as to expect a 
 science of economics based upon Tom, Dick, 
 or Harry's idea of justice. 
 
 " My dear friend, do not delude yourself. 
 There was no science of economics in your 
 day. You had a great quantity of men, on 
 one side, who were paid to teach the justice of 
 existing conditions, while, on the other side, 
 there were those who taught the injustice of 
 
272 The Great Awakening 
 
 existing conditions, and in no way could these 
 two sets meet to discuss without fighting. 
 How could you expect anything else when 
 the question of right came in ? That is the 
 assumption that prevented you from having a 
 science of political economy ; the assumption 
 that moral right entered the case. You can- 
 not take up any of the old volumes which 
 treat of this subject without finding this idea 
 of right constantly before you, especially in 
 that part of the work concerning the division 
 of wealth. The orthodox economist would 
 divide wealth into three parts : rent, interest, 
 and wages, and consider that this division was 
 just ; but the single taxer came along and 
 said, * No, this is unjust.' He divided wealth 
 into two parts : interest and wages ; rent, or 
 economic rent, as it is called, he gave to the 
 State. Still a third man would say. This is 
 wrong. Wealth must go only to those who 
 labor in the present, and no matter what the 
 laborer saves, he is entitled to no idleness ex- 
 cept such as may come by the spending of 
 his capital ; interest was not just, they said. 
 
 "If you were rich you were orthodox, if in 
 the middle class you might be a single taxer, 
 while if you were very poor you were often 
 ready to join the third man. With this con- 
 
Rapid Transit 273 
 
 dition of affairs, do you imagine you' could 
 have a science of political economy? Cer- 
 tainly not ! You had none until you excluded 
 the idea of justice and right." 
 
 "With what, then, does the science deal ? " 
 I said. 
 
 " Simply with the production of wealth, and 
 that alone. No idea of right or justice can 
 enter for a moment as the aim of this science 
 any more than it can be considered in the 
 other sciences. Science can never deal with 
 sentiment. 
 
 " In your time it was good political economy 
 to allow the noblemen (so called) of Ireland to 
 starve out their tenants, because your political 
 economy, being based on right, stated dis- 
 tinctly that the landowner by rights should 
 have the first division of wealth, and that it 
 was right for him to ask as much as he could 
 for the use of his land ; yet, in spite of this 
 fact, your people often looked in horror at 
 conditions this state of affairs brought about, 
 although your economy taught the justice of 
 them, and looked in horror because they 
 realized that the condition, while being just to 
 the landowner — according to their economy — 
 was unjust to the tenant — according to their 
 feelings — and thus they were at sea. Poor 
 
2 74 The Great Awakening 
 
 fools, they thought they had a science of 
 pohtical economy ! 
 
 " Now, with us, conditions such as existed 
 in Ireland in the nineteenth century could 
 not exist ; and this is not because we have 
 pity for the tenant, not at all. We do not go 
 on the basis of justice, but our economy 
 teaches us that that distribution of wealth 
 which will cause the most wealth to be pro- 
 duced is the proper one, and any one can see 
 that if a man is turned out of house and home 
 the chances are against his being a producer ; 
 that is enough, he stays. There is not one 
 atom of sentiment in our economy ; the word 
 justice does not enter any more than it does 
 in our astronomy. As producers we are 
 machines, bodies, working in close proximity 
 to each other and subject to certain laws ; and 
 our economy teaches us these laws which 
 govern our actions, so that from it we are 
 able to judge of the best methods of produc- 
 ing wealth. Thus eliminating the question of 
 right, we get a science which is understood 
 by all. 
 
 "If it could be shown that to kill some 
 people would tend to increase the production 
 of wealth, that would be considered good 
 economy by us, although in your time it would 
 
Rapid Transit 275 
 
 be thought bad economy. Mind you, econ- 
 omy has nothing to do with happiness ; and 
 the moment you let ideas of happiness enter 
 into this science you ruin it, for every man 
 has his own idea of happiness, and no two 
 ideas are ahke. Moreover, one man cannot 
 prove he is any happier than another ; but a 
 man can prove that one scheme of distribution 
 produces more wealth than another. That 
 can be demonstrated by fact ; that lies beyond 
 personal feelings ; that can be shown to be 
 based upon nature's laws, forever unchange- 
 able ; whereas ideas of right and justice are 
 constantly changing from age to age. There- 
 fore it is that the science of political economy 
 treats simply of the production of wealth, with 
 a view of showing the greatest possible pro- 
 duction thereof ; and therefore it is that the 
 distribution of wealth is treated only as a 
 factor in the production of wealth, albeit the 
 greatest one. The first law of economy has 
 been found inductively, although it has been 
 proved by the deductive method also. It is, 
 as I have told you before, ' Stability of govern- 
 ment is necessary for the greatest production 
 of wealth,' — and by government we mean the 
 ideas which govern a people, not the men who 
 govern. 
 
276 The Great Awakening 
 
 " This law teaches us that so long as these 
 ideas are varied and unsettled, so long will 
 the production of wealth be interfered with, 
 which indeed was understood even in your un- 
 civilized times, for an unsettled condition of 
 ideas produced a lack of confidence in trade 
 and brought business to a standstill. 
 
 " With regard to the other three laws I 
 have told you something already, and will 
 perhaps go further in the future ; but I would 
 say here that the first law is the most im- 
 portant one, and is the one which every great 
 statesman must know. Disregarding his 
 views as to the other three laws, to be great, 
 he must at least understand the first one ; 
 but the philosopher, in whose field political 
 economy lies, must know and appreciate all 
 four laws. It lies with the philosopher to tell 
 what steps to take, and with the statesman 
 when to take them. Neither can encroach 
 on the other's territory. The philosopher 
 must teach all four laws, the statesman must 
 enforce the first one ; the one deals with the 
 abstract, the other with the concrete ; the 
 one looks into the future, the other must see 
 but the present ; the one need know nothing 
 of present conditions, the other must know 
 everything, The philosopher teaches the 
 
Rapid Transit 277 
 
 people, and the statesman, when the time is 
 ripe, promotes them. The two must work 
 together, and in any country where one is 
 missing the fact is evident." 
 
 "I presume, then," I said to the professor, 
 " that the America of my time had no phi- 
 losophers." 
 
 " True, nor any statesmen either. You 
 had nothing but politicians. ' Vetat cest 
 ntoi ' — that is, the politician, and that is all 
 you had in your country. It was always a case 
 of legislating for one's own pocket, and no 
 greater proof that this was the fact can be 
 found, nor is there need of a greater one, than 
 the absurd civil-service system existing in 
 your day. The very fact that civil-service 
 reform made no progress was a proof that 
 politicians, not statesmen, were in power." 
 
 As a digression from this topic, the profes- 
 sor led me to the end of the train, to a plat- 
 form enclosed in glass, from which we could 
 view the surrounding country. We were pass- 
 ing through farming districts, and this brought 
 the professor to the discussion of a point 
 which, in my own time, had interested me 
 greatly. I had often reflected upon the fact 
 that, of all industries, farming had changed 
 not at all in its methods. That is to say, 
 
278 The Great Awakening 
 
 while every other inckistry had gained by the 
 increased specialization of labor, farming alone 
 had remained unchanged. With the excep- 
 tion of the introduction of a few new and im- 
 proved tools, the farm of my day was identical 
 with the farm of my grandfather's time. I 
 mentioned this to the professor, and he ex- 
 plained it thus. 
 
 He said that farming as a business required 
 the use of large and unoccupied tracts of land 
 capable of production ; this, of course, necessi- 
 tated that farming districts must be thinly 
 populated, or to put it another way, that dis- 
 tricts thickly populated would be unsuited to 
 farming. Since the farm produced wealth 
 which could be consumed immediately by the 
 farmer, active and close trading was not neces- 
 sary to existence. Also, with crude methods 
 of communication, improvements originating 
 in cities were slow in reaching the farms, so 
 the first of these causes worked against the 
 need of improvements, while the second pre- 
 vented, to a great extent, their introduction, 
 and therefore progress was slow. 
 
 "With us," said the professor, " increase of 
 knowledge has led to improved methods, while 
 increase in the facilities of communication has 
 caused the increased adoption of these meth- 
 
Rapid Transit 279 
 
 ods. As Herbert Spencer has well said, prog- 
 ress is but the change from 'an indefinite 
 incoherent homogeneity to a definite coherent 
 heterogeneity,' and the farmers were the last 
 to feel this progress. But now they have felt 
 it. The immediate cause of this is the need 
 of increased wealth, but the main cause of it 
 is the force deep down below all this, which is 
 as unchangeable as gravitation and which ex- 
 plains all social progress, so well defined by 
 Herbert Spencer. This force has always 
 acted, will always act ; and its tendency is to 
 so alter and improve the social community 
 that the greatest amount of wealth possible 
 may be produced. This is one of the primary 
 forces which we study. It is called the law 
 of progress, and is the basis of all political 
 economy, with which happiness or justice have 
 no more to do than they have to do with the 
 law of gravitation. It is perfectly conceivable 
 that men may be as happy in a state of civili- 
 zation wherein little wealth is produced as in 
 one wherein great wealth is produced ; for 
 happiness depends in great measure on con- 
 tentment, and contentment is dependent 
 largely on personal ambition ; so that so far 
 from happiness being the groundwork of polit- 
 ical economy, in itself it militates against the 
 
28o The Great Awakening 
 
 growth of political economy and against prog- 
 ress. Progress means change, and if all were 
 happy there would be no change. Witness 
 the Chinese Empire from very early times, in 
 which religion and custom, with the help of 
 nature, fastened upon the people a mode of 
 life and thought which stifled ambition and 
 gave birth to contentment and happiness. 
 
 " In this nation for many centuries there 
 was no change ; and, considering the natural 
 resources and population, but little wealth 
 was produced. Now, if to provide happiness 
 is the aim of political economy, why did not 
 your economists study China — its system of 
 government, its methods of trading, its policy 
 of exclusion, its religion which stifled all am- 
 bition, and thus tended to produce happiness ? 
 All of these things tended to promote happi- 
 ness ; and so far as we know, China never suf- 
 fered from such great internal revolutions as 
 convulsed Europe, and therefore its people 
 must have been happier. But your writers 
 considered China a dead nation, from which 
 nothing could be learned in this line, and so 
 they showed their inconsistency. There can 
 be no greater fallacy in the world than to 
 connect happiness with the aim of political 
 economy." 
 
Rapid Transit 281 
 
 "Do you mean to tell me, professor, that 
 although you have solved the social questions 
 that puzzled us, you have not reached a state 
 of happiness ? " 
 
 " Yes, nor can a nation ever reach that 
 state unless all personal ambition dies. True 
 it is that the evils which we have are not the 
 evils which existed in your day, but with the 
 new generation come new ambitions, new 
 ideals ; and as these must necessarily, in a 
 great many cases, be unsatisfied, many are 
 unhappy. 
 
 " This is the reason why your economists 
 were in the dark. They declared eternal 
 happiness to be the aim of political economy, 
 and that any economy which did not procure 
 this was false ; but great philosophers, recog- 
 nizing the truth of the theory of evolution, 
 stated boldly that such a condition of univer- 
 sal happiness could not exist, from the very 
 nature of the conditions ; for with the increase 
 of knowledge comes the increase of aspira- 
 tion, and this growth will never die until the 
 human race becomes extinct. Many men, 
 recognizing the fact that there would always 
 be some to grumble, — grumblers, by the way, 
 are the salvation of the race, the cause of all 
 progress, — have been opposed to social change, 
 
282 The Great Awakening 
 
 since leaders of that change claimed happi- 
 ness would follow, while their opponents knew 
 the contrary. But if economists had come 
 forward, attacked the problem from an im- 
 personal standpoint, as every scientific prob- 
 lem should be attacked, and said, ' This change 
 will increase the total wealth,' then the result 
 would have been different. They, however, 
 contented themselves with crying out about 
 justice and happiness, so that of all the books 
 written on this subject there was not one 
 generally accepted. 
 
 "The economy of your day was in a state 
 similar to astronomy at the time of Galileo. 
 The astronomy then taught was based, not 
 upon facts gathered from the heavenly bodies 
 themselves, but upon ideas which had their 
 origin in the teachings of religious fanatics. 
 A system of astronomy was believed, not 
 because it conformed to facts, but because it 
 agreed with accepted religious ideas. That 
 was in Galileo's time ; and because he dared 
 to raise astronomy to the rank of a science 
 by examining and discussing facts and not 
 opinions, he was persecuted. Now your eco- 
 nomics were in a similar plight. Every writer 
 who discussed the distribution of wealth in 
 your day based his conclusions upon opinions 
 
Rapid Transit 283 
 
 as to what was a just distribution, and not 
 upon facts as to which distribution would 
 cause the most wealth to be produced ; and 
 when, finally, an able man came forward and, 
 by eliminating all opinions as to justice or 
 happiness, attacked the problem from an im- 
 personal standpoint, he raised it to a science 
 as Galileo had done with astronomy, and 
 his reward was — persecution. Are you not 
 proud of your countrymen ? Do you at the 
 present time fail to see that they were but 
 very little ahead of the people they spoke of 
 as barbarians ? Truly you were an ignorant 
 people, and did not know it." 
 
CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 IN WHICH I AM INTRODUCED TO MANY MORE 
 MARVELLOUS INVENTIONS. 
 
 From the rear platform of the car where 
 we were I had a chance to watch the shining 
 rails as they fell away from us. Every second 
 as I stood there one hundred and twenty feet 
 of track flew by under me, for we were going 
 over eighty miles an hour, and this without 
 any jar or vibration. In turning curves I 
 noticed a V-shaped rail in the centre of the 
 track, about a foot high, which engaged wheels 
 in the truck and prevented the light train 
 from leaving the track while turning curves 
 at high speeds. This train was very much 
 lighter than the trains of my day, and the 
 professor said it was made so that it might be 
 started or stopped quickly, which of course 
 played an important part in rapid suburban 
 traffic. 
 
 From the rear we went forward and, with 
 the guard's permission, went into the engine 
 room. The engine was much like a very 
 284 
 
More Marvellous Inventions 285 
 
 small caboose, and could be entered from the 
 platform of the first car ; it had windows on 
 all sides, and the front was built out into a 
 nose, lessening the resistance of the air, which 
 at the speed we were going was nearly 
 twenty-five pounds per square foot. Taking 
 into account the size of the train, this resist- 
 ance would have been more than a ton if not 
 reduced by the shape of the nose and train, 
 which was of course vestibuled. In the 
 engine room stands the httle upright genera- 
 tor, which bums naphtha, ' vaporized in a 
 heater, and twenty-five hundred horse power 
 is distributed to fourteen motors under the 
 different cars. The firing of the boiler is 
 automatic and there is no fireman, one man 
 having entire control. He sits forward, hav- 
 ing a full and unobstructed view of the track, 
 and upon either hand are switches, levers, and 
 buttons, with which the engineer controls the 
 train. Besides the connections between the 
 cars for the air-brakes and the electric cur- 
 rent, there is a telephone which connects 
 with every car, and various dials by which the 
 engineer knows the power consumed by every 
 motor, the pressure of air in every brake, the 
 temperature of every bearing. But the en- 
 gineer knows more. 
 
286 The Great Awakening 
 
 By the aid of a small camera and electrical 
 connections he can look at every truck under 
 the train to see that everything is in a sound 
 condition. He can do this at night even, 
 since he has only to press a button and every 
 truck is lighted by lamps under the floor of 
 the car. This machine is wonderful in itself 
 and very interesting to me, for in my time 
 the instantaneous transmission of pictures 
 over a wire was being experimented with as 
 one of the possibilities. Here I saw it per- 
 fected. I put my eye to a small hole in a 
 box, the engineer turned a switch, and presto ! 
 I was under the train, and there was the 
 truck with its buzzing motor, its whirling 
 wheels, and its swinging brake beams. It is 
 wonderful, and the engineer told me that this 
 little machine had saved many a bad accident, 
 which I do not doubt in the least. 
 
 I had, during my trip, noticed an absence 
 of those tall poles that one saw at the side of 
 every railway in my day ; I refer to the block 
 signals, not to the telegraph poles, but by 
 this road there were no poles whatever. 
 Telegraphing without wires was possible, I 
 knew ; but I did not see how it was possible 
 to do this from a moving train, so that only 
 a train on the same track would receive the 
 
More Marvellous Inventions 287 
 
 message. The engineer, however, soon ex- 
 plained it. It seems that two brushes touched 
 the rails, one on either side of the cab, and 
 that these brushes were so connected that, 
 whenever it was possible, a current of elec- 
 tricity from one brush would run along the 
 rail, cross to the other, and come back to the 
 cab. Whenever the circuit was thus closed, 
 a signal was made in the cab by a bell. The 
 rails, however, were insulated from each other, 
 and there was no way for the current to pass 
 from rail to rail unless there was another 
 train on the track. 
 
 This is certainly an infallible block system, 
 and by increasing the strength of the current 
 the length of the block of safety may be in- 
 creased. In this system it is impossible for one 
 train to approach another on the same track 
 to within one mile without each engineer being 
 aware of the fact. This certainly is ingenious 
 and simple, and I wondered why the inventors 
 of my time had not thought of it. 
 
 As we were standing in the cab and I was 
 looking at the simple little boiler, a bell rang 
 out loudly. It sounded like a telephone bell, 
 and the engineer immediately threw open a 
 switch, when the handle in the small dials 
 moved, showing that the power had been shut 
 
2 88 The Great Awakening- 
 
 off ; then the whistle was sounded. The 
 train was gradually going slower and slower, 
 until the speed dial marked fifteen miles to the 
 hour, when, on rounding a curve, we came 
 upon a freight train standing an eighth of a 
 mile ahead of us. Our train was stopped in 
 its own length, and the professor and I jumped 
 down and went forward with the conductor 
 and a few passengers who had by this time 
 come up, to find out the trouble. 
 
 The freight, it seems, had broken in two on 
 the top of a grade, and as the train came 
 down, the rear had smashed into the front 
 portion, damaging the trucks so much that it 
 required two hours to get them in condition 
 again. This accident attracted a large crowd, 
 and I saw many men circling round in flying 
 machines, looking interested. 
 
 This was the one thing I could hardly get 
 over. To see the air filled with men was 
 always a strange sight, and I was more inter- 
 ested in watching them than in the repairing of 
 the truck. After we had been kept waiting 
 forty minutes — the freight had been stalled 
 an hour before we came up — the two trains 
 started, and ours followed the freight a mile and 
 a half, when it turned into a siding and let us 
 pass. We were now over forty minutes late, 
 
More Marvellous Inventions 289 
 
 and we simply flew over the rails to make up 
 time. I remember that on one straight 
 stretch of abovit five miles the speed dial 
 registered one hundred and sixty-five miles an 
 hour. It made me rather nervous to stand in 
 the cab and look ahead at the rails, which the 
 engine seemed to swallow at the rate of two 
 hundred and forty feet a second, so we re- 
 turned to our seats in the coach. 
 
 We arrived at Denver ten minutes behind 
 time and only waited there for an hour and a 
 half, which time we employed in taking dinner 
 at one of the hotels. Denver is a beautiful 
 city, but to me it is like all your cities ; I 
 suppose because in my time difference in 
 wealth showed itself everywhere, while with 
 you there are none of these differences. The 
 buildings seem to me to be small ; but all 
 your buildings are. I do not remember seeing 
 one over three stories high except the towers for 
 flying machines, while in my time eleven and 
 twelve storied buildings were ordinary affairs, 
 and New York boasted of its twenty-seven 
 story structure. I remember it well, for I 
 had been to its top many times and enjoyed 
 the view over the bay. And to think that 
 that mammoth building was destroyed by 
 a mob ! What terrible scenes must have 
 
290 The Great Awakening 
 
 been enacted in that city during the Chaotic 
 Era! 
 
 At eight o'clock we left Denver in a sleep- 
 ing car for Kansas City, a distance on this 
 line of seven hundred and fifty miles, which 
 we were to cover before breakfast the next 
 morning. The sleeper was built much like 
 those of my time, though it was not so heavy, 
 and each compartment was separated from 
 the rest by a wooden partition which was 
 movable. Each berth, or bed, had an electric 
 light for reading, and as there were no upper 
 berths, plenty of head room was secured. 
 The ventilation was artificial and perfect ; no 
 windows were opened, the air — coming in 
 from the top of the car, heated or cooled by an 
 electrical apparatus as the season required — 
 was distributed to the berths by fans. At 
 the side of each bed was a small tube shaped 
 like a megaphone, and all these tubes were 
 connected with a phonograph at the end of 
 the car, so that one could listen while a pho- 
 nograph breathed soft, enchanting music, or 
 one could arrange to be awakened by music 
 at any hour he might wish. I went to sleep 
 that night, listening to a Beethoven sym- 
 phony ; and if I remember correctly, I was 
 awakened by Flotow's " Stradella " overture. 
 
More Marvellous Inventions 291 
 
 Its lively movement caused me to open my 
 eyes, and it took some time to collect my 
 thoughts and to realize that I was not in 
 my native Boston, listening to the Symphony 
 Orchestra, so beautiful was the performance. 
 When I looked out I was astonished to find 
 that we were in the station at Kansas City. 
 I dressed hurriedly and went out on the plat- 
 form, where I found the professor, who had 
 been up some time, and we went to the res- 
 taurant for breakfast. We staid here but a 
 short time, and then hurried on to St. Louis, 
 which we reached at half past ten in the 
 morning. Here we remained two days, that 
 I might see one or two of the art galleries 
 and some fine public buildings, and soon we 
 were on our way to Chicago. This was to be 
 our last stop in the West, and we were then to 
 make the rest of the trip to New York in 
 our aerodromes, which had been sent ahead 
 of us. 
 
 We arrived in the city at eight o'clock in 
 the evening and took an electric cab to the 
 Hotel St. James, which is but three stories 
 high, but occupies over an acre of ground. 
 Here we were given rooms on the second 
 floor, and in spite of the comforts of travel- 
 ling in modern trains, I was so tired that I 
 
292 The Great Awakening 
 
 was glad to go to bed early. The same pho- 
 nographic arrangement was used in the hotel 
 as on the train, and after turning the switch I 
 got into bed and almost immediately went to 
 sleep. Now, unless set to stop at a certain 
 time, the phonograph will go on forever ; and 
 as I was too sleepy to stop it, it played its 
 whole repertory and then began over again, 
 until an exceptionally loud passage from one 
 of Berlioz's symphonies, which I think is 
 scored for a battery of cannon as well as for 
 a full orchestra, woke me with a start, and I 
 jumped for the switch. But I suppose I was 
 charged in my bill for the five hours of music 
 which I did not hear. 
 
 The next morning we took breakfast in the 
 large dining room, which is finished in white 
 with fine tracings of gold in scroll work and 
 flowers on the ceiling and walls. Most of 
 the tables are set endwise against the walls, 
 which are covered with mirrors beautifully 
 framed. The ceiling is supported by eight 
 massive pillars decorated in the same manner 
 as the walls, and the whole is flooded with 
 light at night by an electric current which 
 plays in tubes of tinted glass. These tubes 
 hang from the ceiling and take the form of a 
 creeping vine, and here and there are clus- 
 
More Marvellous Inventions 293 
 
 ters representing buds and flowers ; the pil- 
 lars are surrounded by vines, which start from 
 their bases and grow upwards, radiating in all 
 directions to meet the tubes on the ceiling. 
 By varying the intensity of the current, the 
 color of the lights is changed, and the differ- 
 ent tints of the tubes increase the effect, 
 making them appear like a living vine bud- 
 ding overhead and on every side with beau- 
 tiful flowers. 
 
 As we entered, a waiter conducted us to an 
 unoccupied table near a pillar, and stood with 
 a tablet awaiting our order. This he wrote 
 on a slip of paper, and opening a little door in 
 the pillar, he placed the paper inside on a slab. 
 The professor explained to me that that was 
 an electric camera, and that as soon as the 
 paper was placed on the slab a bell rang be- 
 low, and a servant, looking into the machine, 
 read our order. This camera was the same 
 sort of a machine that was used on the 
 train to enable the engineer to see the trucks 
 when the cars were moving. The orders were 
 quickly filled and sent from the kitchen up to 
 the dining room on a dumb waiter within the 
 massive pillar, so that the service was quicker 
 than any I had been used to in the great 
 hotels of my day. 
 
294 The Great Awakening 
 
 During our meal the professor called my 
 attention to a gentleman at another table, 
 saying: "That is Professor Sedgwick, the great 
 biologist. The result of his study possibly 
 has done more for the good of humanity than 
 any other one thing ; for it is he who first 
 perfected the cure of consumption. In ex- 
 perimenting with etheric waves and their ef- 
 fect on microbes, he discovered a wave which 
 is fatal to the tuberculosis germ, and after a 
 long course of study and experiment, covering 
 twenty years of hard work, he has perfected 
 the process so that it is now used universally 
 as a cure for that disease. 
 
 "The patient is subjected to the rays from 
 his instrument for short periods of time until 
 all the germs, in whatever part of the body, 
 are killed ; but these rays, being detrimental 
 to the cellular tissues, have to be handled with 
 great care, and the patient often has to undergo 
 another treatment to overcome those bad ef- 
 fects. The operation is successful, however, 
 and the patient is always safe until the germ, 
 which is present in food and even in the air, 
 affects another lodgment, when the operation 
 must be repeated. 
 
 " We know now that this disease is not trans- 
 mitted by heredity proper, although the germ 
 
More Marvellous Inventions 295 
 
 may find lodgment in the young during preg- 
 nancy ; but we find that the proper use of this 
 cure has decreased the number of cases so 
 much, and the race is so free from the disease, 
 that even those tendencies to consumption, 
 such as narrow chests and poor blood, which 
 existed to such a large extent in your day, are 
 no longer present, and the disease has, in fact, 
 lost all its terrors." 
 
 I could only express my admiration for this 
 great discovery and say, " Your generation 
 has everything to make it happy, professor." 
 
 " I do not know about that. The modern 
 generation, never having seen the disease, can- 
 not, of course, realize what it has gained by 
 the cure, and so it naturally does not feel the 
 gratitude which that generation in whose life 
 the cure was effected felt. The modern gen- 
 eration accepts its own conditions as a matter 
 of course, and has still higher ideals which, in 
 the majority of cases being unsatisfied, lead 
 to unhappiness. It must be ever thus unless 
 we find that there is a limit to ambition, which, 
 by the way, is considered by our greatest phi- 
 losophers as inconceivable, so that a state of 
 eternal happiness can never exist." 
 
 " Which reminds me, professor, of a point 
 in economy about which I wanted to ask you. 
 
296 The Great Awakening 
 
 If happiness is not the aim of poHtical econ- 
 omy, what part, if any, does it play in that 
 science? " 
 
 " It is one of the factors which affect the 
 first law. The stability of any form of gov- 
 ernment, or the stability of any idea, depends 
 in a very large measure upon the happiness of 
 the people living under that government or 
 holding to that idea. If a large portion of 
 the population of any country are not happy 
 under a system the stability of that system 
 will be threatened, and therefore it must be 
 changed, or the people must be kept in sub- 
 jection by force. This was recognized in 
 your day, and there were examples of both 
 methods of regaining stability, as in England 
 and Russia, 
 
 " Now when, as in England, laws were 
 changed to suit the majority, it was done not 
 to bring happiness, but to bring about that 
 stable condition of affairs in which alone great 
 wealth could be produced ; on the other hand, 
 in Russia force was used to prevent the 
 spread of ideas which, causing unhappiness or 
 discontent with existing conditions, would 
 have led to instability and thus diminished the 
 production of wealth. The difference between 
 these two methods was that while in England 
 
More Marvellous Inventions 297 
 
 change followed change, and stability was ob- 
 tained, there was also a great progress towards 
 the fulfillment of the other three laws govern- 
 ing the production of wealth, and therefore 
 great wealth was produced. On the other 
 hand, in Russia the method of force, while it 
 produced stability, prevented progress in any 
 other direction, since force could not be used 
 unless there were governmental interference, 
 large monopolies, and great inequality in the 
 distribution of wealth ; therefore the first law 
 was satisfied at the expense of the other three, 
 so that Russia was poor in everything except 
 natural resources. The extreme folly of this 
 course was made plainly evident when the 
 great struggle between England and Russia 
 took place in Asia. The Russian, because of 
 this condition, was four centuries behind the 
 times, and the downfall of the Russian Empire 
 came soon after this struggle. You see that 
 it is the nation which produces the most 
 wealth from the labor of its own people that 
 must win in the long run, and that nation was 
 England ; this is so because the people of 
 such a nation are always more intelligent, 
 more energetic, and understand the laws of 
 nature better than any other peoples. 
 
 " For an example. Let us suppose you 
 
298 The Great Awakening 
 
 and I are cast away on two islands — one very 
 productive, upon which I am placed, and one 
 barren, which you occupy. Now all I have to 
 do to get a living is to pluck the fruit near at 
 hand, or shoot the game, or catch the fish 
 with which the rivers teem, while you are put 
 to your wit's end to live. In considering the 
 islands, mine produces more than yours, but 
 it is absurd to say that I produce more than 
 you do. Everything is produced for me ; you 
 have to produce everything, and the effect on 
 us is to make me indolent and luxurious, to 
 make you intelligent and energetic, so that in 
 course of time you will come over and drive 
 me off my island. It is thus with nations. 
 Up to a certain limit, the harder the struggle 
 the sharper grows the intellect ; but beyond 
 that limit, if nature is too strong, man must 
 succumb. This is why the peoples of the 
 temperate zone have attained the highest 
 state of civilization, for the struggle against 
 nature has urged them forward, while nature 
 was not powerful enough to inspire them with 
 awe and thus check their progress. Of all 
 the feelings which man has ever cherished, 
 those of reverence and awe have stopped his 
 progress more than any others. 
 
 " Your writers, in speaking of wealth, would 
 
More Marvellous Inventions 299 
 
 often confound wealth of natural resources with 
 wealth of productive labor, when there can be 
 nothing more absurd than to do this in speak- 
 ing of national wealth. The natural wealth 
 of a country — that is, its natural resources — 
 is no criterion of that country's condition ; for 
 those resources are entirely independent of 
 race, creed, or form of government, which 
 latter can only be determined by the produc- 
 tive wealth of the nation, for this depends 
 upon the degree with which the system con- 
 forms to the four laws governing the pro- 
 duction of wealth. Thus the Spain of your 
 day, although full of natural resources, was, 
 economically speaking, poor for the same 
 reason that Russia was, although in Spain a 
 priesthood and not military force was the 
 cause." 
 
 The professor stopped speaking at this 
 point, and having finished our breakfast, we 
 left the hotel to see the city. 
 
CHAPTER XX. 
 
 THE LAST STAND OF THE EIGHTEENTH REGU- 
 LAR INFANTRY OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE. 
 
 "Professor," I said, as we strolled down 
 the avenue, " it seems to me, as I begin to 
 understand your system of economy, that in 
 order that the first law may be obeyed there 
 must exist often conditions which are contrary 
 to the other laws, and that, as civilization pro- 
 gresses and men gain in knowledge, that gain 
 will be shown by such a change in social con- 
 ditions that the system, while still satisfying 
 the first law, will satisfy also the other three 
 laws." 
 
 " Very true, and any change, to be beneficial, 
 must come from an increase of knowledge 
 among the masses, since without this any 
 change is apt to violate the first law. Thus 
 if a people believe thoroughly in a protective 
 tariff it would be folly to force them into free 
 trade, as it would tend to make business 
 unstable, since a large body of men would 
 always be clamoring for protection ; and this 
 
The Fall of an Empire 301 
 
 is so in spite of the fact that free trade as a 
 pohcy will cause a great increase of wealth. 
 And, therefore, while the philosopher says 
 truthfully that protection prevents the in- 
 crease of wealth while free trade tends to the 
 reverse, the statesman says as truthfully. So 
 long as people hold that protection is better 
 than free trade, it is better not to give them 
 free trade, for the first law of economy is more 
 important than the second. 
 
 "The philosopher must not consider peo- 
 ple's opinions, but that is just what the states- 
 man must do ; and the only way to bring 
 about free trade is to show the people that it 
 would be better for them than protection, 
 which was done early in the twentieth 
 century." 
 
 We took a cab from the St. James and 
 started north up the Lake-Side Drive. I had 
 known the Chicago of my day pretty well, but 
 your Chicago is an entirely new city. I rec- 
 ognized nothing, and few of the old buildings 
 are in existence. 
 
 As I looked upon this city and compared 
 it to the one I had known, I began to realize 
 the magnitude of the change the Chaotic Era 
 had brought about ; and I was both amazed 
 and puzzled, for I could not understand how it 
 
302 The Great Awakening 
 
 was possible in a democracy that such injustice 
 should be dealt out as to cause an uprising of 
 the masses ; for my contemporaries had always 
 claimed that the right of suffrage was a safety 
 valve, and so long as that was given to 
 every man, battles would be fought with votes 
 and not with muskets. The professor sur- 
 prised me again by reading my thoughts ; he 
 certainly is very expert at this art. " The 
 right of suffrage is a safety valve, ' ' said he, con- 
 tinuing in speech the line of thought I had 
 been following for some minutes, " but it did 
 not exist at the time of the Chaotic Era. It 
 had been withdrawn some fifty or seventy- 
 five years previous to that date, and that is 
 the reason why the battle was fought with 
 bullets and not with ballots." 
 
 I turned to him in astonishment and could 
 not conceal my amazement at this fact, which 
 was news to me. 
 
 "Do you mean to tell me, professor, that 
 the right of suffrage was limited ? That the 
 great republic of Washington and Jefferson 
 reached a stage where it threw over its prin- 
 ciples of democracy to aid and protect the 
 upper classes ? " 
 
 " That is just what it did." 
 
 ** Alas ! I weep for my country. That is 
 
The Fall of an Empire 303 
 
 the saddest of all news. How did it happen ? 
 What was the cause of it ? " 
 
 " It was the result of the policy of imperial- 
 ism which followed the Spanish-American 
 war of 1898. At the end of this war the 
 United States found herself with Cuba, Porto 
 Rico, and the Philippines on her hands. 
 These islands contained many millions of un- 
 civilized people, and it was utterly impossible 
 to give them the right of suffrage and have a 
 stable government. I may say here that 
 economic science, in dealing with forms of 
 government as a corollary of the first law, 
 shows us that democracy is not always the 
 best form of government from the economic 
 standpoint. It shows us that democracy is 
 best suited to that nation which is most civi- 
 lized and which is the most ' definite hetero- 
 geneity ' of all nations ; whereas, for an un- 
 civilized nation, nothing is more conducive to 
 the greatest production of wealth, than to be 
 governed by a representative of a highly civi- 
 lized nation, provided, of course, that this 
 representative is not corrupt. In this condi- 
 tion the uncivilized peoples may not be as 
 happy as they were, but there will be a 
 tremendous gain in the production of wealth, 
 so that in dealing with two different peoples, 
 
304 The Great Awakening 
 
 it is often necessary that, to get the same re- 
 sult, /. c, stability, two diametrically opposite 
 methods of government must be used. 
 
 " Now from limiting the suffrage in Cuba 
 to limiting it in the United States was but 
 a step, and soon after imperialism had become 
 the policy of your country, a property and 
 educational qualification was put upon the 
 right of suffrage. The immediate results of 
 this were beneficial, and most men of your 
 time could see only immediate results, for a 
 large majority of the Americans of your day 
 did not know enough about the principles of 
 government to use their votes intelligently ; 
 but the later results were disastrous, for dis- 
 content, not being allowed to show itself at 
 the voting booths, grew silently, and finally 
 attained such proportions that it was satisfied 
 only with blood, and thus was the Chaotic 
 Era brought about." 
 
 Going up the avenue, the professor pointed 
 out several spots as the scenes of bloodshed 
 during the early part of the revolution, and 
 he described to me the last stand made by 
 the regulars against the mob. Undoubtedly 
 you are all more familiar with the history of 
 these times than I am, so I will not weary you 
 with a description of them, except perhaps 
 
The Fall of an Empire 305 
 
 this last fight, which I will tell in the profes- 
 sor's own words. 
 
 " You must know that the uprising, coming 
 so quickly and unexpectedly after Blackburn's 
 speech in the Senate, took the government 
 by surprise, and it soon became evident that 
 the means were not sufficient to handle the 
 case. A large force of regulars was called 
 to Chicago from the West and was reinforced 
 by that part of the state militia which was 
 still loyal to the government, and a large force 
 of flying police was added also. However, 
 before this mixed body could be concentrated 
 in order to do effective work, the mob had 
 grown to tremendous proportions. It gath- 
 ered force from all ranks in life and was 
 officered by many able men, so it happened 
 that the few thousand regulars accomphshed 
 nothing, but were shot down without mercy 
 at every street corner. The flying police 
 were effective until the mob, obtaining flying 
 machines for themselves, met their enemies 
 in the air, where numbers and the passion of 
 uneducated men fighting for a great principle 
 won over trained but disheartened soldiers. 
 Indeed, over a third of the regulars joined the 
 mob when they became aware of the extent 
 and fury of the movement, wishing to be on 
 
3o6 The Great Awakening 
 
 the right side of the fence, as it were. At 
 last, after two weeks of fire, pillage, and hard 
 fighting, three companies of regulars com- 
 posed of about one hundred trained soldiers 
 remained entrenched at this spot, awaiting the 
 pleasure of the mob." 
 
 We had stopped the carriage, and the pro- 
 fessor was pointing to a place in the street 
 marked with a cross of stone. 
 
 " Here these men awaited death behind 
 such protection as the walls of buildings which 
 had fallen from either side afforded, and upon 
 a morning in June they gave up their lives in 
 the endeavor to check the fury of a mob one 
 hundred times more powerful than that which 
 set up the guillotine in Paris years before. It 
 was a tragedy similar to the annihilation of the 
 Swiss Guards in France, in 1792. 
 
 " The barricades extended from one side of 
 the street to the other, so that, owing to the 
 condition of the buildings on either side, 
 attack could only be made from the street 
 proper, and here the regulars were well pro- 
 tected. Early on the morning of June 8 the 
 mob appeared, coming from both directions in 
 fair order and under good leadership. It 
 stopped a hundred yards away, and under a 
 flag of truce a man walked forward to parley 
 
The Fall of an Empire 307 
 
 with Captain Harding of the regulars. He 
 was offered a position as a leader in the new 
 movement, and his men were offered their 
 lives if they would throw down their arms, but 
 Harding refused. Standing on top of a pile 
 of rough stones, his head hatless, bloody, and 
 bandaged, leaning on his sword and with his 
 revolver in his hand, his uniform torn and 
 mud-bespattered, he still looked the gallant 
 soldier and brave man that he was, and com- 
 manded the respect of even the mob which 
 stood ready to crush him. His answer to the 
 spokesman was as follows : ' To your question 
 I answer no ; your demands I emphatically 
 refuse ; go, return to the beasts you have left, 
 and tell them that I serve my country, not a 
 mob of howling anarchists ; tell them that my 
 orders were to do what I could to save my 
 country from ruin, and that in my endeavor 
 to do this I will, if necessary, shed the last 
 drop of my blood. I know your numbers and 
 your power, but I am content to die fighting 
 to preserve the American Empire from destruc- 
 tion. I do not know who you are nor what 
 you are ; but I say to you, as the representative 
 of all those elements which are most vile and 
 dangerous to the safety of society, that I, 
 Thomas Harding, Captain of Company H, i8th 
 
3o8 The Great Awakening 
 
 Regular Infantry of the American Empire, 
 abhor all that you and your kind stand for. 
 I have nothing further to say, and hope you 
 will now retire, that this little affair may be 
 the sooner over.' Then the leader of the mob 
 making a gesture of withdrawal, Harding said : 
 ' Sir, since next we shall meet as leaders in 
 battle, I salute you,' and making the salute 
 with his sword, he raised an American flag 
 above the stones and disappeared behind the 
 barricade. The charge followed quickly, and 
 soon all was over. Not a regular remained to 
 tell of it. 
 
 " This was one of the many heartrending 
 scenes with which that bloody era was full. 
 Harding was partly right. The mob were 
 beasts, because they were the result of the 
 barbarous scheme of finance current at that 
 time, yet great good came from the doings of 
 that same mob ; and it must ever be thus. A 
 great revolution always means a change of 
 ideas for the better, and this rarely comes 
 without bloodshed and long periods of fighting, 
 in which man's passion and brutality rise 
 above all else. Some must suffer that many 
 may gain. ' Alas, that life must forever feed 
 its growth on death, and human progress 
 advance only over the ruins of the perfect.' " 
 
The Fall of an Empire 309 
 
 As we rolled along the avenue I found my- 
 self thinking deeply of this great revolution. 
 I could see the tremendous good it had done 
 in spite of the brutality of the doing ; I could 
 appreciate the feelings of the mob ; I could 
 even understand Harding's attitude, and I 
 could see how the restriction of suffrage had 
 led up to this state of affairs. But what I 
 could not understand was why these things 
 should be. Why, if there is a kind Provi- 
 dence above us, should such useless bloodshed 
 be allowed } 
 
 "Professor," I said, "is there at this time 
 sufficient knowledge of the history of man to 
 explain all of these things to me ? I have 
 been taught to believe in a God, one who is 
 wise and just ; I have been taught that the 
 universe was created with a definite design ; 
 can you help me in these matters .'' Can you 
 explain to me the reason for all this suffer- 
 
 ing 
 
 ?" 
 
 " Not so long as you hold to the idea of a 
 God. A man holding this idea gets but one 
 consolation, which is, ' After all, how can we 
 judge an infinite power without infinite wis- 
 dom } The useless suffering seems terrible to 
 us, but may it not be all for the best .-' Must 
 we judge when our knowledge is so limited ? ' 
 
3IO The Great Awakening 
 
 This thought has given consolation to thou- 
 sands." 
 
 " Yes, but does it satisfy you, professor ? 
 I must tell you that there are times when it 
 does not satisfy me." 
 
 " Now what you want, evidently, is my 
 views on religion, and although I never force 
 my opinions, I am glad of an opportunity of 
 talking with you upon this question since you 
 have introduced it. To me this is no conso- 
 lation at all. In fact, I am not in need of 
 any consolation. I am not a mental cripple, 
 and do not need a belief in a future life to 
 help me in this one. But to examine the 
 case. You will of course see that there is 
 no argument set forth here ; the man simply 
 says that suffering may be for the best, and 
 considers that he has reasoned soundly in 
 suspending judgment until more knowledge 
 is obtained, which is all very well in itself, 
 but the man never thinks that it might be 
 wise to suspend judgment as to whether there 
 is a God to cause this suffering. Believing in 
 a God, he finds many conditions which perplex 
 him, and, being at sea, as it were, he seeks 
 consolation in the supposition of a possibility ; 
 that is all it is ; but if he did not believe in a 
 God he would not need this consolation." 
 
The Fall of an Empire 3 1 1 
 
 " But, professor, what is the use of this life 
 if all is to end here ? Why should all of these 
 things exist if nothing is to come of it in the 
 future ? " 
 
 " Things are not made for a future, but 
 from a past. Do you understand me? In 
 any cycle of phenomena the middle term 
 does not exist because there must be a last 
 term, but because there was a first term. 
 We know that there may be a last term if 
 there is a second term, but to say that the 
 middle term was created that there might be 
 a third term — which is the same as saying 
 that the world was created with a certain de- 
 sign — is to ignore the first term. If God 
 created the universe, who or what created 
 God .-* It is similar to the ancient tradition 
 as to how the world was supported. If for 
 one moment you admit the possibility of 
 something being created out of nothing, then 
 there is no end to the backward reasoning 
 you can follow logically ; if you say that mat- 
 ter — or rather the luminiferous ether, for 
 matter is only ether in a condition of motion 
 — was created, then one has a good reason for 
 asking what created that which created mat- 
 ter, and so on backwards, indefinitely. Upon 
 the hypothesis of a Creator there is no evi- 
 
312 The Great Awakening 
 
 dence in fact for stopping at this point and 
 claiming He ahvays existed. The evidence 
 plainly says ether always existed. 
 
 " This ether manifests itself in different 
 ways, and these conditions of ether may be 
 created ; that is, a condition distinct in itself 
 may exist to-day and not exist to-morrow, but 
 the ether has always existed, so far as there is 
 any evidence. 
 
 " As a conscious being, man is constantly 
 exercising what he terms will-power and pro- 
 ducing certain definite results which he calls 
 the results of design, and from this he gets 
 his idea of a design in nature matured in the 
 brain of a God. But in this he is wrong ; 
 first, because this apparent use of the will- 
 power is only apparent, and secondly, because 
 there is nothing in nature, outside of nervous 
 organisms considered alone, that does not 
 show the reverse of design, as Darwin proved 
 most conclusively. We understand now the 
 phenomena of nervous organisms, and they 
 present to us the same great truth that 
 ' Things are not made for a future, but from a 
 past,' whereas in your time the ignorance on 
 this subject was vast, and therefore this dis- 
 tinction was drawn between the two classes, 
 to wit, that nervous organisms possessed ex- 
 
The Fall of an Empire 313 
 
 traordinary characteristics not common to the 
 other class." 
 
 " But, professor, if we are only machines, 
 what is the use of living ? " 
 
 " Well, between you and me, if you can see 
 no use of living I see no reason why you need 
 live. The trouble with you is that you have 
 become so imbued with ancient beliefs that 
 to eradicate them would deprive you of half 
 of the pleasures of life. Now, it is not so 
 with me. I was not consulted about my birth, 
 but was forced into this world not because of 
 the future necessity of the existence of a man, 
 but because of the past necessity for the 
 gratification of the appetites of my parents. 
 Very good ! Here I am placed as the direct 
 result of past actions, and I am given certain 
 appetites, mental and physical, also the direct 
 results of past actions. Now one of these ap- 
 petites is the appetite to live, which I have to 
 a very great extent ; indeed, I enjoy the grati- 
 fication of that appetite more than any other, 
 and questions relating to a future life would 
 never make me lose that appetite. Now, with 
 you, anything which tends to demolish your 
 ancient beliefs makes you lose your appetite 
 for life, otherwise you would not ask me 
 * What is the use of living ? ' 
 
314 The Great Awakening 
 
 " The majority of people have always suf- 
 fered from mental dyspepsia, and to tone up 
 the system and preserve the appetite for 
 living, have taken doses of theology in large 
 or small quantities, according to their nature. 
 As for myself, I never had the disease. 
 
 " But enough of this. Let me call your 
 attention to this spot." Our motor wagon 
 had stopped at the corner of a street, where 
 there was a library. "Here," said the pro- 
 fessor, pointing to the building, " stood an old 
 armory, in which was stored about five hun- 
 dred million dollars' worth of bonds and 
 stocks at the time mob law was at its height. 
 These papers had been hurriedly placed here 
 at the first outbreak, and were protected by 
 five hundred regular soldiers. The garrison 
 held out until the first of June, and when the 
 armory was taken, the bonds and stocks 
 went up in smoke. Of course you under- 
 stand that the burning of these bonds did not 
 mean the destruction of the wealth repre- 
 sented by them, but only the destruction of 
 all records of ownership. There were many 
 other strongholds like this which were de- 
 stroyed earlier and easier ; indeed, with flying 
 machines and dynamite bombs, the mob prac- 
 tically had it their own way. Considering the 
 
The Fall of an Empire 3 1 5 
 
 damage done and the condition of the mob 
 during the Chaotic Era, it is quite astonishing 
 that a nation such as you find now arose from 
 the ruins ; but the causes of this are to be 
 found in the fact that for years public opinion 
 had been changing to certain definite ideas, 
 that the best philosophers and statesmen of 
 the Money Republic had influenced public 
 feeling in the right direction, and that before 
 many months of mob law had passed, able 
 and conscientious men stepped forward, and, 
 assuming control, steered the ship of state 
 through the dangerous channels into the calm 
 and sheltered harbor of Equality. 
 
 " After a stormy and dangerous voyage of 
 more than four thousand years we lie at rest 
 in safety, and the science of political econ- 
 omy, like a massive and impenetrable wall, pro- 
 tects us from the fury of the sea of ignorance." 
 
CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 CONTAINS A LITTLE MATTER TOUCHING 
 TRUSTS. 
 
 We spent the forenoon and most of the 
 afternoon in viewing parts of the city ; and 
 while the trip was interesting, I found that I 
 missed something in the atmosphere of busi- 
 ness — I could hardly tell what. The absence 
 of the poorer districts, which we called 
 "slums," was also very evident to me, and I 
 have hardly got used to it even now. As I 
 viewed the different wholesale and retail stores 
 and saw how the manufacturing and distribut- 
 ing was concentrated even in large districts, 
 and also how this method facilitated trade and 
 therefore aided production, it puzzled me to 
 know how this fact could be reconciled with 
 the third law of economy, which claimed that 
 monopoly, or, in other words, the concentra- 
 tion of business interests, tends to diminish 
 the production of wealth. This puzzled me 
 so much that it occupied my mind for the 
 rest of the afternoon, and at dinner that night 
 
 31(5 
 
Trusts 317 
 
 I questioned the professor concerning it. As 
 we were sipping our coffee and smoking our 
 cigars in the little cafe adjoining the large 
 dining room of the hotel, I explained to the 
 professor my difficulty in this matter, and he 
 answered, I am glad to say, entirely to my 
 satisfaction. 
 
 The concentration of interests facilitates 
 trade because it specializes labor, but this 
 specialization of labor in itself means a dim- 
 inution of the number of laborers, so that the 
 total number of wealth producers is dimin- 
 ished. It often happened, however, as in my 
 day, that improved methods used by the trust 
 would allow of more wealth being produced 
 by ten laborers than would otherwise be pro- 
 duced by twenty, so that the immediate result 
 of discharging the other ten was not shown 
 by any diminution of weahh ; but in the long 
 run, and if these other ten had no means of 
 getting work, it was shown, for a continued 
 progress towards trusts caused a continued 
 growth in the number of unemployed, which 
 in its turn caused an increased tax on the 
 working ten to support the idle ten. This 
 also diminished the production of wealth in 
 another way, since it cut down the effective 
 demand for goods. No matter how much the 
 
3i8 The Great Awakening 
 
 actual demand for goods may be, it is only 
 the effective demand which acts on trade and 
 therefore stimulates production ; for since a 
 manufacturer produces only what he thinks 
 he can sell, the number of buyers affects the 
 production of goods. But to throw men out 
 of work means a decrease in the number of 
 buyers, hence it means a diminution in the 
 production of wealth. And this is true even 
 if there is not actual idleness, for any diminu- 
 tion in the ability to earn diminishes the 
 effective demand, and hence diminishes pro- 
 duction ; and, indeed, it seems to me clear on 
 the face of it that anything which tends to 
 diminish the number of workers tends to 
 diminish the amount of wealth produced, 
 since wealth is only produced by work. 
 
 However, the trusts must not carry all 
 the blame. The monopoly of money was still 
 more to blame, for had our financial system 
 been similar to the one now in existence men 
 would not have been idle. With us, money 
 being restricted to gold and a percentage of 
 credit, industry was restricted ; therefore the 
 demand for labor was restricted, therefore 
 men were idle. The specialization of labor is 
 beneficial to the production of wealth, but 
 these benefits will not be lasting unless the 
 
Trusts 3 1 9 
 
 financial system is so regulated as to care for 
 those thrown out by this specialization, which 
 ours was not. Also, as capital and land were 
 treated as private property in the nineteenth 
 century, industry was often diverted into un- 
 productive and wasteful channels, so that mo- 
 nopolies only exaggerated the waste. Nothing 
 of this sort can happen now. 
 
 The specialization of labor simply means 
 the putting of the laborer in that position 
 wherein he can produce the most wealth with 
 the least labor, and from this point of view it 
 is easy to understand your system, wherein 
 different kinds of labor are performed by all 
 men at different ages. In my time this could 
 not be carried out because of the marked dif- 
 ference in mental ability ; but now, with the 
 immense amount of wealth produced and the 
 stupendous educational opportunities which 
 every one has, these differences have disap- 
 peared. And indeed, they had to disappear 
 under such a scientific and just financial 
 system. 
 
 This, then, is the vindication of the third 
 law. The monopoly of industry tends to divert 
 it into wasteful channels, while the monopoly 
 of money tends to keep idle all those thrown 
 out by the monopoly of industry. This is 
 
320 The Great Awakening 
 
 worth thinking over. In my day the benefits 
 from the speciahzation of labor caused the 
 formation of trusts, while the evils coming 
 from the concentration of power and the 
 increase of the number of unemployed caused 
 the formation of anti-trust legislation. Many 
 men were on each side, but few saw that the 
 money question was below all. 
 
 The rest of the time was spent in enjoying 
 the pleasures of the city ; the concerts, the 
 theatres, the art galleries, and the museums. 
 It was an enjoyable week, and one I shall not 
 forget. 
 
 Early on Monday we started for home in a 
 large aerodrome. We had decided to do this 
 rather than use our own machines, as we could 
 make better time and I felt safer than if I were 
 by myself. The drome that we hired was 
 much like the one that we had taken for our 
 trip to Hudson's Bay, the only difference of 
 any importance being that, while the latter 
 was driven by two propellers, this one had 
 four long, narrow wings — two placed in front 
 of the sustaining" surface, one on either side, and 
 two behind — which were flapped vigorously 
 up and down by an electric motor, the flexi- 
 bility of the construction causing the feather- 
 ing and thus giving the push to the machine. 
 
Trusts 321 
 
 This drome was not quite as steady as the 
 other, the flapping of the wings giving a sHght 
 rocking motion to the car, but it was better 
 suited to soaring, which feat we performed as 
 often as the upward currents would allow us. 
 
 A little way out of Chicago we had a diver- 
 sion in the shape of a fire. We first perceived 
 it at a height of twelve hundred feet when it 
 was just starting in a barn connected with a 
 large and handsome residence in what I should 
 call the suburbs of Chicago, although your 
 city is practically all suburbs. As I was much 
 interested in the workings of the fire depart- 
 ment, we dropped to a lower altitude. Fast 
 though we went, about twenty-five patrolmen 
 in flying machines got there before us, and the 
 one in whose district the fire was, assuming 
 control, all but three or four landed and, with 
 hose and ladders, which by this time had 
 arrived on the scene, went to work. I was 
 puzzled to see no engines, but the professor 
 explained that at every hydrant there was an 
 electric pump below the surface of the street, 
 in a manhole, which perfonned the service 
 much more effectively than any steam fire 
 engine could do it ; and, with half a dozen well- 
 directed and powerful streams, the fire was 
 soon out. 
 
322 The Great Awakening 
 
 " I am astonished," said the professor, " you 
 did not have electric pumps in your hydrants. 
 In your thickly settled wholesale districts 
 they would have been more effective than 
 a big, heavy engine that had to be drawn 
 sometimes half a mile, and, with so many 
 electric wires underground, it would have been 
 easy to tap one or more circuits." 
 
 I could only smile and say, " What could 
 you expect from nineteenth-century people ? 
 What could you expect from barbarians .-' " 
 
 After this incident we rose to three thou- 
 sand feet, and striking favorable conditions 
 over Lake Michigan, soared all day. At 
 about six o'clock we ran into a bank of clouds 
 which had come up suddenly from the east, 
 and I was glad to turn in and dine with the 
 professor in the tiny cabin forward. When 
 we came on deck again I found, to my delight, 
 that the engineer had taken the drome above 
 the clouds, which were very dense and were 
 swirling along five hundred feet below us. As 
 it was quite cold I put on my warmest outside 
 clothing, and, lighting a cigar, settled myself 
 on the gunwale with my back against the 
 cabin. This machine looked very like a small 
 cat boat. It had a tiny cabin forward and a 
 cockpit with seats aft, where the steering gear 
 
Trusts 323 
 
 was also placed ; and had it not been for the 
 great spread of silken surfaces overhead and 
 off on either side, and the movement of the 
 long narrow wings, it would have taken but 
 little effort to imagine oneself sailing on a 
 tranquil sea. 
 
 Later in the evening the full moon rose 
 through the clouds, lighting them with a pale, 
 clear light, and making of the depths below 
 us a vast sea of silent, but rolling, surging, 
 and tossing billows. 
 
 " If one watches the course of the moon," 
 said the professor, " it is impossible to see or 
 realize that it has any effect upon our move- 
 ment. It seems so small to us, and is ac- 
 tually so small in comparison with the other 
 bodies of our system, that it would seem ab- 
 surd that it should move us in any way. 
 Yet we know it does, and from this we learn 
 a lesson. There is no force so small but it 
 produces some effect. At the present time 
 we understand these things better than you 
 do, and therefore do not draw erroneous con- 
 clusions." 
 
 " To what do you refer ?" I asked. 
 
 " Why, it was common in your time to deny 
 the existence of a force if its full effect was 
 not visible ; your contemporaries were not able 
 
324 The Great Awakening 
 
 to analyze conditions. In economics, for in- 
 stance, men denied the truth of a theory be- 
 cause in practice results were different from 
 what the theory would lead one to expect. 
 One could as sensibly deny that the mutual 
 attraction of earth and moon is such as to 
 cause them to revolve about their common 
 centre of gravity because in practice they do 
 not do this. The cause of the error was that 
 in practice forces existed with which the the- 
 ory, from the very nature of the case, had 
 nothing to do. In a country like yours, for 
 instance, where the doctrine of protection 
 held sway for sixty years, and where wealth 
 was constantly increasing, a man who claimed 
 that protection diminished the production of 
 wealth was considered a fool simply because 
 with protection the country grew richer. The 
 moon pulls the earth this way and that in its 
 movement around its orbit, yet in spite of this 
 the earth moves steadily on its path around 
 the sun ; and so your country grew rich, not 
 because of, but in spite of, protection, for the 
 forces which tend to increase wealth, such as 
 immense natural resources, a virgin soil, and 
 hardy, intelligent, and energetic laborers, were 
 greater than the force of protection. The 
 sun is greater than the moon, and therefore 
 
Trusts 325 
 
 the moon's effect is not apparent. Do you 
 understand the simile ? When these forces 
 weakened, that is, when the soil became old, 
 and when the laborer became less intelligent, 
 then the effect of protection became more 
 evident, until a time came when its ill effects 
 were apparent to every one, which happened 
 early in the twentieth century, and then a 
 change of policy was made. In England, be- 
 cause of peculiar conditions of soil and dense 
 population, this lesson was learned in 1846, so 
 that the English were nearly a century ahead 
 of every other nation in this respect." 
 
 " It seems to me, professor, that the 
 English were ahead in everything. Many 
 men of my day considered their constitutional 
 monarchy better than our democracy with its 
 gross corruption." 
 
 "It is true that the Enghsh people were 
 probably the best governed people in the 
 world in your day, but that does not mean 
 that a constitutional monarchy is better than 
 a democracy. Here you are again jumping 
 at conclusions, just like all the men of your 
 time. The English were the best governed 
 people because they were the least uncivilized 
 and had practised the art of government the 
 longest time without foreign interruptions, 
 
326 The Great Awakening 
 
 which was due chiefly to their being a dense 
 population, all of one blood, and living on an 
 island away from the influence of continental 
 powers. As to a constitutional monarchy, do 
 you suppose your country, made up as it was 
 of foreigners of all kinds and classes, would 
 have existed a day with a king, no matter how 
 limited his power ? What king could have 
 reigned over such a mixture of foreign blood 
 as existed in the United States in nineteen 
 hundred ? Think of the people, the size of 
 the country, the difference in racial customs, 
 peculiarities and modes of thought which ex- 
 isted side by side, and then tell me what form 
 of government could have handled this stu- 
 pendous question as well as a democracy, in 
 spite of its shortcomings. You may have the 
 rest of your lifetime to answer this question, 
 for you will need it. No ! Democracy is not 
 a failure. Neither was the democracy of the 
 United States of America a failure. It 
 taught the world one of the greatest truths 
 man has ever understood, which is the second 
 law of economy. 
 
 " This law does not refer only to the doc- 
 trine of protection, which is but a side issue, 
 as it were, but has to do with all governmental 
 interference shown in the constantly increas- 
 
Trusts 327 
 
 ing laws and statutes aiming to regulate those 
 matters which would naturally regulate them- 
 selves. As the great EngHsh historian, 
 Henry Thomas Buckle, has well said, ' The 
 most valuable additions to legislation have 
 been enactments destructive of previous legis- 
 lation,' or, in other words, legislators have 
 helped the world only by repealing the acts of 
 previous legislators. 
 
 " Your countrymen thought the only way 
 to benefit a country was to increase its laws, 
 when the very opposite is the truth, so that 
 anarchy, in this respect, is nearer the truth 
 than socialism. The great advantage the 
 English had over the Americans was that the 
 constitutional monarchy was for them a stable 
 government, and change in ministry did not 
 mean that the stability of any policy would be 
 so threatened as to interfere with trade, while 
 democracy did not do this for the Americans. 
 This was not the fault of democracy, however, 
 but it was because this mixed race called 
 Americans was determined to change its pol- 
 icy, regardless of trade, until it got what it 
 wanted. The lesson learned was not what 
 was anticipated ; quite the contrary ; for while 
 people were trying to benefit themselves by 
 getting the government to legislate for this or 
 
328 The Great Awakening 
 
 for that, they finally awoke to the fact that 
 the less the government legislated the better 
 they would be ; in other words, they discovered 
 the second law of economy, and this great 
 truth never would have been known without 
 that era of superfluous and rank legislation 
 which existed in the nineteenth and twentieth 
 centuries in your country. Especially is this 
 applicable to the tariff, which was constantly 
 being changed to suit private parties. 
 
 " Everything must run its course- — a policy 
 must be carried to its extreme before its evil 
 results will be evident to most men, and those 
 who can see the truth before the rest are 
 ahead of their day and will suffer accordingly, 
 
 " This, then, was the mission of the United 
 States, as the mission of England had been to 
 prove the first law, and as the mission of the 
 Money Republic was to prove the third and 
 fourth laws." 
 
 The professor stopped speaking to light a 
 fresh cigar, and for a while we smoked in 
 silence. 
 
 " I think, professor, that I shall be exceed- 
 ingly contented in my new life." 
 
 " You ought to be ; but as for me, I wish I 
 had been born a hundred years later. Just 
 think how much better things will be then ! " 
 
Trusts 329 
 
 "Ah, yes, I suppose so." Nevertheless, I 
 could not understand the professor, for to me 
 the present scheme is an ideal one and no 
 improvement possible. But after all, every- 
 thing depends on the point of view, and per- 
 sonal ambition is the basis of contentment. 
 Mutability is an immutable law of nature. I 
 am positive, however, that in the politics of 
 to-day I shall be a conservative and the pro- 
 fessor a radical, because I am contented and 
 he is not. 
 
CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 IN WHI.CH THE RELATION BETWEEN THE IN- 
 CREASE OF POPULATION AND INDUSTRY IS 
 TREATED FROM THE MALTHUSIAN STAND- 
 POINT. 
 
 We travelled eastward all night, making 
 good time, and at about ten o'clock the next 
 morning sighted the city of New York. As 
 I had previously expressed to the professor a 
 wish to examine modern shipping, he had ar- 
 ranged to stop at New York and continue the 
 journey to Boston by boat. We accordingly 
 landed from the drome, and put up at a hotel 
 until arrangements could be made for secur- 
 ing a passage on one of the lines of magnifi- 
 cent vessels which ply between New York 
 and Boston. 
 
 New York is such an entirely different city 
 from the one I had known that I did not 
 recognize it. There are absolutely no high 
 buildings, except, of course, the towers for 
 aerodromes, no narrow streets, and no con- 
 gested tenement districts. The population 
 
Population and Industry 331 
 
 seemed to me so small — and, indeed, this was 
 true of other cities — that I wondered what 
 had been the actual increase, if any, and 
 whether we could find here a vindication or a 
 denial of the law concerning the increase of 
 population as stated by Malthus. The pro- 
 fessor, to whom I naturally went for informa- 
 tion, was as ready with an answer to this ques- 
 tion as he had been to others I had asked 
 him. 
 
 " Is your generation, then, a believer in 
 Malthus?" I asked. 
 
 " We believe the law which he laid down ; 
 that is, we know that, unchecked, population 
 will always increase faster than the means of 
 substance. The mistake that Malthus made 
 was in supposing that the check which oper- 
 ated in his time must always operate. In 
 this he was wrong, but it does not detract 
 from the great value of his work, which shows 
 more clearly than any other the relation be- 
 tween the increase of population and physical 
 happiness. If it were not for the fact of the 
 tremendous power of the human species to 
 multiply, the race could never have survived 
 the struggle for existence. Now, when the 
 Money Republic was formed, the principles 
 for which it stood were considered by the 
 
332 The Great Awakening 
 
 greatest thinkers to be those best suited to 
 bring about the greatest production of wealth ; 
 and since one of these principles was, as you 
 know, the equal distribution of wealth, they 
 thought that this would also bring human 
 happiness. But in this they were wrong, and 
 they realized it very shortly alter the Repub- 
 lic was started. 
 
 " At first, with a virgin soil, strong and 
 able workers, and a scientific system of dis- 
 tribution, a tremendous amount of food prod- 
 ucts was raised, and the population doubled 
 itself in ten years, mainly by births, but 
 partly by immigration. At this point the 
 force of Malthus' argument was seen, and it 
 dawned upon the people that their political 
 economy would not give them physical happi- 
 ness, or, in other words, prevent all physical 
 suffering so long as the population increased 
 at such a rapid rate. A great many people 
 of your time could not or would not see this 
 fact ; but it is undeniable that, unchecked, 
 population will always increase faster than 
 the means of subsistence. Seeing so great 
 an increase in the wealth of different coun- 
 tries during the nineteenth century, many of 
 your contemporaries considered that there 
 was practically, no limit to the production 
 
Population and Industry 333 
 
 of wealth ; and therefore many ascribed all 
 misery, not to increase of population, but to 
 bad government, which, by the way, was 
 more than half the truth ; but what they 
 failed to see was that population depends on 
 the amount of one form of wealth, and, re- 
 gardless of any increase in all other forms, 
 the quantity of this one form alone deter- 
 mines the increase of population. I refer, of 
 course, to the food products. 
 
 " Manufactured articles may exist in abso- 
 lutely unlimited quantities, but if there is 
 only enough food to support life in one mil- 
 lion persons, the population cannot possibly 
 increase beyond this point, even allowing 
 equal distribution, regardless of the total 
 wealth of the country. You may say that 
 these people could exchange their manufac- 
 tured goods for food, but the above statement 
 includes all food, whether raised at home or 
 imported from abroad. 
 
 " Now, wealth is measured in dollars ; and 
 since, in your day, there seemed to be no 
 limit to the increase of wealth thus measured, 
 in manufactured articles, personal property, 
 real estate, railroads, steamships, etc., it was 
 assumed that the increase could have no 
 limit. But the true way to measure the wealth 
 
334 The Great Awakening 
 
 of a country, with a view of finding out what 
 population it will support, is to measure, not 
 in dollars, but in barrels, bushels, pounds, etc., 
 the quantity of food products it can raise or 
 import. The manufactured articles or any 
 other articles — other than food products and 
 the necessary raw material for clothing — 
 which are used for home consumption, play 
 no part in increasing the population, although 
 they increase the wealth ; it is only those 
 articles which are exported in exchange for 
 food that enter into the calculation. 
 
 " To prevent physical suffering, it is neces- 
 sary to have, first, equal division of wealth, 
 and second, a stationary population. That is 
 the secret of all the happiness you see here, 
 and it has been the acceptance of that great 
 fact which has changed the nature of the 
 science of political economy, so that instead 
 of treating of methods to produce justice 
 and happiness it treats of the production of 
 wealth pure and simple. Now it must be 
 evident to you that in any given civilization 
 the production of food will be limited both 
 by the area devoted to cultivation and the 
 state of the art ; so while it may be impos- 
 sible to fix a limit to the production of other 
 forms of wealth, this does not hold with 
 
Population and Industry 335 
 
 food products, which always require certain 
 definite conditions, as ground space, good soil, 
 light, air, and time to produce, all of which 
 conditions limit the number of harvests in a 
 year, and therefore the quantity which can be 
 taken from any given area. This was not 
 appreciated in your time, or your economists 
 would have taught differently. There were 
 tyrants in your day, men who increased the 
 misery by their teachings ; but this has hap- 
 pened in all ages, and the landowner and cap- 
 italist had to disappear finally, not because 
 they caused all the misery, but because they 
 — or, rather, the system by which they were 
 supported — increased that misery and inter- 
 fered with the rapid production of wealth. 
 
 " With us, our economy being as perfect as 
 possible, the increase of population led imme- 
 diately to the study of the principles underly- 
 ing this increase ; and the science of statistics 
 having been developed tremendously since 
 Malthus died, we were able to prove the point 
 he makes. Then the question came which 
 check should be used. Malthus gives as 
 preventive checks, moral restraint, by which 
 he means a life of celibacy, vice, misery, or the 
 fear of misery ; and as positive checks, vice, 
 misery, famine, pestilence, and war. The 
 
336 The Great Awakening 
 
 latter checks kill after birth, the former pre- 
 vent breeding. It is thus evident that all of 
 these checks imply more or less unhappiness, 
 moral restraint perhaps the least of all ; but it 
 was this fact that led Malthus to the conclu- 
 sion, now known to be erroneous, that there 
 must always be unhappiness caused by phy- 
 sical suffering. 
 
 " If Malthus had lived a century later and 
 had used the fuller statistics of that time, he 
 would have found an interesting fact, which is, 
 that marriages amongst the more intelligent 
 classes produced fewer children than those 
 made in the lower classes, one or two children 
 to a family being the average in the upper 
 classes — which would, of course, keep the po- 
 pulation stationary — because of the existence 
 of another check which Malthus evidently did 
 not see. This check we call the precautionary 
 check, and the great advance of the science of 
 medicine has rendered it absolutely effective, 
 so that the birth of children is regulated 
 regardless of the gratification of passion ; and 
 this is now in force amongst us, and is accepted 
 by all, since it is well known that of all 
 checks to the increase of population this one 
 causes the least unhappiness. The popula- 
 tion of the world is less to-day than at your 
 
Population and Industry 337 
 
 time, and being wholly civilized it is practically 
 stationary, and there will be no increase, for 
 the relation of population to happiness is 
 understood at last. 
 
 " In using the word happiness, you must 
 understand that I mean the happiness which 
 comes from the gratification of the physical 
 appetites necessary to life ; the gratification 
 of the mental appetites is entirely independ- 
 ent of this law, and it is here that our 
 unhappiness lies. 
 
 " Man is apt to exaggerate the evil which 
 touches him to such an extent that he can see 
 no other, and therefore naturally believes that 
 he would be perfectly happy if the one evil 
 were removed ; but the moment this is done 
 there appears another evil not seen before, and 
 this must continue forever. One may ask 
 that if people believed this to be true, why 
 should they attempt to remove the first evil ; 
 and the answer is, that after the removal of 
 the first evil, the second almost always strikes 
 another man or another generation. Men are 
 optimistic enough to believe that they can 
 dodge future evils provided they can remove 
 present ones, and this optimism has played a 
 tremendous part in the progress of the human 
 race. One thing more, and then I will not 
 
338 The Great Awakening 
 
 bother you with my economics. Of course, 
 as long as there was war, or any danger of war, 
 the necessity of having a large population 
 was so great to the Anglo-Saxon race that the 
 precautionary check acted with but little 
 power ; but after the fall of Russia and the 
 annihilation of the Chinese through famine 
 and pestilence due to the war in China, the 
 Anglo-Saxon race quickly overspread the earth, 
 and war ceased forever at the end of the 
 Chaotic Era. Then the checks to population 
 were but four — precautionary, moral restraint, 
 vice, and misery ; and of these the first, which 
 had been growing in power for two centuries, 
 triumphed over the others, and thus Malthus' 
 conclusions were proved wrong. Physical 
 happiness is dependent upon two things — the 
 greatest possible production and equal distri- 
 bution of wealth, and a small stationary popu- 
 lation. That state we have attained. The 
 population of this country now is thirty-nine 
 millions, and for the last fifty years the births 
 have equalled the deaths. The population of 
 the world is only five hundred millions and is 
 also stationary, being composed almost wholly 
 of descendants of the Anglo-Saxon race." 
 
 In the afternoon we rode down to the 
 wharf and went on board the steamer, which 
 
Population and Industry 339 
 
 really was one of the finest I had ever seen. 
 Getting upon the deck, I was much amazed to 
 see that the frames of the ship had been 
 raised above and met overhead, and the pro- 
 fessor told me that between these frames 
 large sheets of a tough hard glass were raised 
 and fastened when the boat was running in a 
 heavy sea, thus making her practically air- 
 tight, so that no matter how high the waves 
 were, promenading on deck was at all times 
 possible, and the glass overhead and on each 
 side allowed a perfect view under all conditions. 
 The height of this canopy of glass above the 
 deck was, I should judge, twenty-five feet, so 
 that all deck houses were under this shelter ; 
 and with the glass in place, the boat had the 
 appearance of an enormous glass whaleback, 
 and never suffered the slightest danger from 
 storms. It was a twin-screw vessel driven by 
 electricity generated by a small gas thermopile, 
 and went thirty knots an hour, easily. The 
 staterooms were large, roomy, and well lighted, 
 and the accommodation in every way equal 
 to hotel service. We left New York at sun- 
 set and were soon in the Sound ; but as the 
 scenery here was very familiar to me I did 
 not stay long on deck, but soon retired to my 
 stateroom. The next morning we were up 
 early, and at seven o'clock we got into Boston. 
 
CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 IN WHICH THE NARRATIVE CLOSES. 
 
 Thus ended my journey through your 
 beautiful country — a journey which to me 
 was full of interest and which taught me, 
 more than any other experience I had ever 
 undergone, the changes which have taken 
 place in the last three centuries. When I 
 look back upon my own time my former life 
 seems but a distressing dream, and I see how 
 uncivilized, how brutish, we were in the nine- 
 teenth century. 
 
 There is little more to be said. The pro- 
 fessor returned to his work, and by his aid 
 and the aid of some of his friends my case 
 was put before the public, and it resulted, as 
 you all know, in my being appointed a teacher 
 of medieval history in Howard College. 
 
 I wish to express to you all my deepest 
 thanks for the consideration with which I 
 have been treated, and I assure you it has 
 been appreciated. As for myself and my 
 work, I feel that the teaching of the history 
 
Conclusion 341 
 
 of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is 
 all that I am capable of doing, and I feel 
 keenly at times the difference between myself 
 and those born in this enlightened age. I 
 realize fully now the monstrous evils which 
 existed in my day, but it is impossible that 
 my nineteenth-century methods of thought 
 should change quickly; that will take time, 
 and I therefore ask forbearance, especially 
 from my students, who, though they are 
 taught by me, must, I am afraid, look upon 
 me more or less as a barbarian. It is my 
 fondest hope that the process of time will 
 eradicate much of this, and that a future will 
 come when I can say, " I am a citizen of 
 the twenty-second century, I am a civilized 
 man." When that comes I shall be extremely 
 happy, because it is the limit of my ambition, 
 and I shall die knowing that I have lived with 
 two generations separated from each other by 
 over two hundred years. 
 
 Yes, I have lived ; what other man has 
 lived as I have ? And life ! What a strange 
 affair it is ! What a different thing it means 
 to each one of us ! Life at best is but a 
 short existence, and in my ignorant times to 
 the majority it was an existence of misery. 
 Ah, truly ignorance is the bane of man- 
 
342 The Great Awakening 
 
 kind, the supporter of tyrants, the worker of 
 evils ; but Knowledge, thou art the light, 
 guiding mankind forward to happiness and 
 plenty. It is ever to thee that man must 
 turn for guidance ; it is ever to thee he must 
 look for help ; to thee he owes everything that 
 is good in his life. Ever growing brighter 
 and brighter, thy light has for centuries been 
 dissipating the mists of ignorance which have 
 befogged the poor weak brain of man. 
 
 The progress of man is measured by the 
 increase of knowledge. Literature, music, the 
 fine arts, and religion are but the superficial 
 embellishments of the age in which they exist, 
 and are moulded by it, but in themselves 
 are passive, and exert no influence on prog- 
 ress. To what, then, do we owe the pres- 
 ent great civilization .-* I answer. To science. 
 Not to great novelists, poets, composers, 
 painters, or priests, but to those who, in ob- 
 scurity, and perhaps ridiculed by their con- 
 temporaries, have spent their life unravelling 
 the complex phenomena of nature, and 
 thereby given to man that greatest of all 
 things — science. Let a people have litera- 
 ture, music, art, and religion as much as 
 you will ; without science their condition will 
 never change. 
 
Conclusion 343 
 
 What is that which has weakened super- 
 stition, which has moulded religion into re- 
 spectability, which has overthrown forever 
 the power of kings, which has broken down 
 race hatred, which has destroyed the worst 
 diseases that afflicted the human race ? Is it 
 literature ? A novel, perhaps, or a poem ? 
 Is it music ? A symphony, you think ? Is it 
 art ? A painting or, it may be, a statue ? Is 
 it religion ? A creed or the life of a priest ? 
 Tell me, is it any of these ? Is the suit a 
 man wears the cause of his actions ? What 
 are all these but the suit worn by the age, 
 the outside garments which show the his- 
 torian the character of the times ? That is 
 all they are, and that is all they ever can be. 
 To know a man you must do more than ex- 
 amine his clothes ; you must converse with 
 him and find your way to his brain. The 
 historian must do the same, and the brain of 
 the age is the science of the age. 
 
 Progress depends upon two things : first 
 the accumulation, and then the diffusion, of 
 knowledge ; and these should go hand in hand 
 to attain the best results. Scepticism leads 
 to investigation, and investigation leads to the 
 accumulation of knowledge. To believe is to 
 remain stationary, to doubt is to progress. 
 
344 The Great Awakening 
 
 Let every man, then, investigate for himself, 
 adopt systems, not because they are old. but 
 because they are good, not because they ex- 
 ist, but because they should exist. Let every 
 man think for himself and express his 
 thoughts freely. This is the philosophy of 
 the twenty-second century, and its goal is 
 happiness and plenty. 
 
Conclusion 345 
 
 " For the great enemy of knowledge is not error, but 
 inertness. All that we want is discussion, and then we 
 are sure to do well, no matter what our blunders may 
 be. One error conflicts with another, each destroys 
 its opponent, and truth is evolved. This is the course 
 of the human mind ; and it is from this point of view 
 that the authors of new ideas, the proposers of new 
 contrivances, and the originators of new heresies, are 
 benefactors of their species. Whether they are right 
 or wrong is the least part of the question. They tend 
 to excite the mind ; they open up the faculties ; they 
 stimulate us to fresh inquiry ; they place old subjects 
 under new aspects ; they disturb the public sloth ; and 
 they interrupt rudely, but with most salutary effect, that 
 love of routine which, by inducing men to go grovelling 
 on in the ways of their ancestors, stands in the path of 
 every improvement, as a constant, an outlying, and, too 
 often, a fatal obstacle." 
 
 Henry Thomas Buckle. 
 
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