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Cheques crossed " London and Westminster Bank," and made payable to Hector Munko Fergusok, Esq., Hon. Treas., by whom all don.ations-are speedily and safely forwarded. NO ACENTS EMPLOYED. LATEofBROMPrGNHDSPimt HARDY^S BSOMPTOH CONSUMPTION and COUGH SPECIFIC A certain cure for Coughs, Colds, ConsuTTiptioa, Bronchitis, Ijleediug of theLuugs, Influenza. 4o. Highly reciimmeiided by the Medical I'ro. fesfioii. Price Is. Ud. .ind 5f. Sd., of all Clieinista, or post. free. ;^ g)ir-CU(?ES WHERE ALL ELSE FAILS. Depot : 42, Waterloo Road, S.E. (Late ol Bromptoa.) 50^'EARS'REPtrrATION >,^y^y^vnT "We read in the histories," said Edith's mother, "much about the amazing extent to which particular individuals and families succeeded in concentrating in their own hands the natural resources, industrial machinery, and products of the several countries. Julian had only a million dollarS; but many in- dividuals or families had, we are told, wealth amounting to fifty, a hundred, and even two or three hundred millions. We read of infants who in the cradle were heirs of hundreds of millions. Now, something I never saw mentioned in the books v/as the limit, for there must have been some limit fixed to which one individual might appro- priate the earth's surface and resources, the means of production, and the products of labour." "There was no limit," I replied. "Do you mean," exclaimed Edith, "that if a man wexe only clever and unscrupulous enough he might appropriate, say, the entire territory of a country, and leave the people actually nothing to stand on unless by his consent? " "Certainly," I replied. "In fact, in many countries of the Old World individu^ils owned whole provinces, and in the United States even vaster tracts had passed and were pass- ing into private and corporate hands. There 44 EQUALITY was no limit whatever to the extent of land which one person might own, and of course this ownership implied the right to evict every human being from the territory unless the owner chose to let individuals remain on payment of tribute." "And how about other things besides land ? " asked Edith. "It was the same," I said. "There was no limit to the extent to which an individual might acquire the exclusive ownership of all the factories, shops, mines, and means of industry, and commerce of every sort, so that no person could find an opportunity to earn a living except as the servant of the owner, and on his terras." "If we are correctly informed," said the doctor, "the concentration of the ownership of the machinery of production and distribu- tion, trade and industry, had already, before you fell asleep, been carried to a point in the United States through trusts and syndi- cates which excited general alarm." "Certainly," I replied. "It was then already in the power of a score of men in New York city to stop at will every car wheel in the IJnited States, and the com- bined action of a few other groups of capi- talists would have Bufl&ced practically to arrest the industries and commerce of the entire country, forbid employment to every- body, and starve the entire population. The self-interest of these capitalists in keeping business going on was the only ground of assurance the rest of the people had for their livelihood fi-om day to day. Indeed, when the capitalists desired to compel the people to vote as they wished, it was their regular custom to threaten to stop the industries of the country and produce a business crisis if the election did not go to suit them." "Suppose, Julian, an individual or family or group of capitalists, having become sole owners of all the land and machinery of one nation, should wish to go on and acquire the sole ownership of all the land and economic means and machinery of the whole earth, would that have been inconsistent with your law of property? " "Not at all. If one individual, as you Buggest, through the effect of cunning and skill combined with inheritances, should ob- tain a legal title to the whole globe, it would be his to do what he pleased with as abso- lutely as if it were a garden patch, accord- ing to our law of property. Nor is your sup- position about one person or family becoming owner of the whole earth a wholly fanciful one. There was, when I fell asleep, one family of European bankers whose world- wide power and resources were so vast and increasing at such a prodigious and accelerat- ing rate that they had already an influence over the destinies of nations wider than per- haps any monarch ever exercised." 'And if I understand your system, if they had gone on and attained the ownership of the globe to the lowest inch of standing room at low tide^ it would have been the legal right of that family or single individual, in the name of the sacred right of property, to give the people of the human race legal notice to move off the earth, and in case of their failure to comply with the requirements of the notice, to call upon them in the name of the law to form themselves into sheriffs' posses and evict themselves from the earth's surface ? " ' ' Unquestionably. ' ' "Oh, father," exclaimed Edith, "you and Julian are trying to make fun of us. You must think we will believe anything if you only keep straight faces. But you are going too far." "I do not wonder you think so," said the , doctor. "But you can easily satisfy yourself from the books that we have in no way ex- aggerated the possibilities of the old system of property. What was called under that system the right of property meant the un- limited right of anybody who was clever enough to deprive everybody else of any property whatever." "It would seem, then," said Edith, "that the dream of world-conquest by an individual, if ever realised, was more likely under the old regime to be realised by economic than by military means." "Very true," said the doctor. "Alex- ander and Napoleon mistook their trade ; they should have been bankers, not soldiers. But, indeed, the time was not in their day ripe for a world-wide money dynasty, such as we have been speaking of. Kings had a rude way of interfering with the so-called rights of property when they conflicted with royal prestige or produced dangerous popular discontent. Tyrants themselves, they did not willingly brook rival tyrants in their dominions. It was not till the kings had been shorn of power and the interregnum of sham democracy had set in, leaving no virile force in the state or the world to resist the money power, that the opportunity for a world-wide plutocratic despotism arrived. Then, in the later part of the nineteenth century, when international trade and finan- cial relations had broken down national bar- riers and the world had become one field of economic enterprise, did the idea of a uni- versally dominant and centralised money power become not only possible, but, as Julian had said, had already so far material- ised itself as to cast its shadow before. If the Revolution had not come when it did, we cannot doubt that something like this universal plutocratic dynasty, or some highly- centred oligarchy, based upon the complete monopoly of all property by a small body, would long before this time have become the government of the world. But of course the Revolution must have come when it did, so we need not talk of what would have hap- pened if it had not come." EQUALITY 45 CHAPTER XVI AN EXCUSE THAT CONDEMNED "I HAVE read," said Edith, "that there never was a system of oppression so bad that those who benefited by it did not recognise the moral sense so far as to make some ex- cuse for themselves. Was the old system of property distribution, by which the few held the many in servitude through fear of starva- tion, an exception to this rule ? Surely the rich could not have looked the poor in the face unless they had some excuse to off«r, some colour of reason to give for the cruel con- trast between their conditions." "Thanks for reminding us of that point," said the doctor. "As you say, there never was a system so bad that it did not make an excuse for itself. It would not be strictly fair to the old system to dismiss it without considering the excuse made for it, although, on the other hand, it would really be kinder not to mention it, for it was an excuse that, far from excusing, furnished an additional ground of condemnation for the system which it undertook to iustifj'." "What was the excuse?" asked Edith. "It was the claim that, as a matter of justice, every one is entitled to the effect of his qualities — that is to say, the result of his abilities, the fruit of his efforts. The qualities, abilities, and effoi'ts of different persons being different, they would naturally acquire advantages over others in wealth- seeking as in other ways; but as this was according to Natui'e, it was urged that it must be right, and nobody had any business to complain, unless of the Creator. "Now, in the first place, the theory that a person has a right in dealing with his fellows to take advantage of his superior abilities is nothing other than a slightly more roundabout expression of the doctrine that might is right. It was precisely to pre- vent their doing this that the policeman stood on the corner, the judge sat on the bench, and the hangman drew his fees. The whole end and amount of civilisation had indeed been to substitute for the natural law of superior might an artificial equality by force by statute, whereby, in disregard of their natural differences, tne weak and simple were made equal to the strong and cunning by means of the collective force lent them. "But while the nineteenth-century moral- ists denied as sharply as we do men's right to take advantage of their superiorities in direct dealings by physical force, they held that they might rightly do so when the deal- ings were indirect and carried on through the medium of things. That is to say, a man might not so much as jostle another while drinking a cup of water lest he should spill it, but he might acquire the spring of water on which the community solely de- pended, and make the people pay a dollar a drop for water or go without. Or if he filled up the spring so as to deprive the popu- lation of water on any terms, he was held to be acting within his right. He might not by force take away a bone from a beggar's dog, but he might corner the grain supply of a nation, and reduce millions to starva- tion. "If you touch a man's living you touch him, would seem to be about as plain a truth as could be put in words ; but our ancestors had not the least difficulty in getting around it. ' Of course,' they said, ' you must not touch the man ; to lay a finger on him would be an assault punishable by law. But his living is quite a different thing. That de- pends on bread, meat, clothing, land, houses, and other material things, which you have an unlimited right to appropriate and dispose of as you please without the slightest regard to whether anything is left for the rest of the world.' "I think I scarcely need dwell on the entire lack of any moral justification for the different rule which our ancestors followed in determining what use you might rightly make of your superior powers in dealing with your neighbour directly by physical force and in- directly by economic duress. No one can have any more or other right to take away another's living by superior economic skill or financial cunning than if he used a club, simply because no one has any right to take advantage of any one else, or to deal with him otherwise than justly by any means whatever. The end itself being immoral, the means employed could not possibly make any difference. Moralists at a pinch used to argue that a good end might justify bad means, but none, I think, went so far as to claim that good means justified a bad end ; yet this was precisely what the defenders of the old property system did in fact claim when they argued that it was right for a man to take away the living of others, and make them his servants, if only his triumph re- sulted from superior talent or more diligent devotion to the acquisition of material things. "But, indeed, the theory that the mono- poly of wealth could be justified by superior economic ability, even if morally sound, would not at all have fitted the old property 4G EQUALITY system, for of all conceivable plans for dis- tributing property, none could have more absolutely defied every notion of desert based on economic effort. None could have been more utterly wrong if it were true that wealth ought to be distributed according to the ability and industry displayed by in- dividuals." "All this talk started with the discussion of Julian's fortune. Now tell us, Julian, was your million dollars the result of your economic ability, the fruit of your in- dustry? " "Of course not," I replied. "Every cent of it was inherited. As I have often told you, I never lifted a finger in a useful way in ray life." "And were you the only person whose pro- perty came to him by descent without effort of his own? " "On the contrary, title by descent was the basis and backbone of the whole property system. All land, except in the newest countries, together with the bulk of the more stable kinds of property, was held by that title." "Precisely so. We hear what Julian says. While the moralists and the clergy solemnly justified the inequalities of wealth, and re- proved the discontent of the poor on the ground that those inequalities were justified by natural differences in ability and dili- gence, they knew all the time, and every- body knew who listened to them, that the foundation principle of the whole property system was not ability, effort, or desert of any kind whatever, but merely the accident of birth, than which no possible claim could more completely mock at ethics." "But, Julian," exclaimed Edjth, "you must surely have had some way of excusing yourself to your conscience for retaining in the presence of a needy world such an excess of good things as you had ! " "I am afraid," I said, "that you cannot easily imagine how callous was the cuticle of the nineteenth-century conscience. There may have been some of my class on the in- tellectual plane of little "jack Horner in Mother Goose, who concluded he must be a good boy because h-e pulled out a plum, but I did not, at least, belong to that grade. I never gave much thought to the subject of my ris:ht to an abundance which I had done nothing to earn in the midst of a starv- ing world of toilers, but occasionally, when I did think of it, I felt like craving pardon of the beggar who asked alms for being in a position to give to him." "It is impossible to get up any sort of a quarrel with Julian," said the doctor; "but there were others of his class less rational. Cornered as to their moral claim to their •possessions, they fell back on that of their ancestors. They argued that these ancestors, assuming them to have had a right by merit to their possessions, had as an incident of that merit the right to give them to others. Here, of course, they absolutely confused the ideas of legal and moral right. The law might, indeed, give a person power to trans- fer a legal title to property in any way that suited the lawmakers ; but the meritorious right to the property, resting as it did on personal desert, could not in the nature of moral things be transferred or ascribed to any one else. The cleverest law;>'er wouKi never have pretended that he could draw up a document that would carry over the smallest tittle of merit from one person to another, however close the tie of blood. "In ancient times it was customary to hold children responsible for the debts of their fathers and sell them into slavery to make satisfaction. The people of Julian's day found it unjust thus to inflict upon innocent offspring the penalty of their ancestors' faults. But if these children did not desen-e the consequences of their ancestors' sloth, no more had they any title to the product of their ancestors' industry. The barbarians who insisted on both sorts of inheritance were more logical than Julian's contemporaries, who, rejecting one sort of inheritance, re- tained the other. Will it be said that at least the later theory of inheritance was more humane, although one-sided ? Upon that point you should have been able to get the opinion of the disinherited masses, who, by reason of the monopolising of the earth and its resources from generation to genera- tion by the possessors of inherited property, were left no place to stand on, and no way to live except by permission of the inherit- ing class." "Doctor," I said, "I have nothing to offer against all that. We who inherited our wealth had no moral title to it, and that we knew as well as everybody else did, although it was not considered polite to refer to the fact in our presence. But if I am going to stand up here in the pillory as a representative of the inheriting class, there are others who ought to stand beside me. We were not the only ones who had no right to our money. Are you not going to say anything about the money-makers, the rascals who raked together great fortunes in a few years by wholesale fraud and extor- tion? " " "Pardon me, I was just coming to them," said the doctor. "You ladies must re- member," he continued, "that the rich, who in Julian's day possessed nearly everything of value in every country, leaving the masses mere scraps and crumbs, were of two sorts : those who had inherited their wealth, and those who, as the saying was, had made it. Wo have seen how far the inheriting class were justified in their holdings by the prin- ciple which the nineteenth century asserted to be the excuse for wealth — namely, that individuals were entitled to the fruit of their labours. Let us next inguire how far EQUALITY 47 the same principle justified the possessions of these others whom Julian refers to, who claimed that they had made their money themselves, and showed in proof lives abso- lutely devoted from childhood to age, with- out rest or respite, to the piling up of gains. Now, of course, labour in itself, however arduous, does not imply moral desert. It may be a criminal activity. Let us see if these men who claimed that they made their money had any better title to it than Julian's class by the rule put forward as the excuse for unequal wealth, that every one has a light to tlie product of his labour. The most complete statement of the principle of the right of property, as based on economic effort, which has come down to us is this maxim : ' Every man is entitled to his own product, his whole product, and nothing but his product.' Now, this maxim had a double edge, a negative as well as a positive, and the negative edge is very sharp. If every- body was entitled to his own product, no- body else was entitled to any part of it, and if any one's accumulation was found to con- tain any product not strictly his own, he stood condemned as a thief by the law he had invoked. If in the great fortunes of the stockjobbers, the railroad kings, the bankers, the great landlords, and the other moneyed lords who boasted that they had begun life with a shilling — if in these great fortunes of mushroom rapidity of growth there was anything that was properly the product of the efforts of any one but the iwner, it was not his, and his possession of ft condemned him as a thief. If he would be justified, he mast not be more careful to obtain all that was his own product than to avoid taking anything that was not his product. If he insisted upon the pound of iesh awarded him by the letter of the law, he must stick to the letter, observing the warning of Portia to Shylock — ' Nor cut thou less, nor more, But just a pound of flesh ; if thou tak'st more, Or less, than a just pound, — be it but so much As makes it light, or heavy, in the substance, Or the division of the tvyentieth part Of one poor scruple ; nay, if the scale do turn But in the estimation of a hair, — Thou diest, and all thy goods are confiscate.' How many of the great fortunes heaped up by the self-made men of your day, Julian, would have stood that test?" "It is safe to say," I replied, "that there was not one of the lot whose lawyer would not have advised him to do as Shylock did, ind resign his claim rather than try to push it at the risk of the penalty. Why, dear me, there never would have been any possibility of making a great fortune in a lifetime if the maker had confined himself to his own product. The whole acknowledged art of wealth-making on a large scale consisted in devices for getting possession of other people's product without too open breach of the law. It was a current and a true say- ing of the times that nobody could honestly acquire a million dollars. Everybody knew that it was only by extortion, speculation, stock gambling, or some other form of plunder under pretext of law, that such a feat could be accomplished. You yourselves cannot condemn the human cormorants who piled up these heaps of ill-gotten gains more bitterly than did the public opinion of their own time. The execration and contempt of the community followed the great money-getters to their graves, and with the best of reason. I have had nothing to say in defence of my own class, who inherited our wealth, but actually the people seemed to have more respect for us than for these others who claimed to have made their money. For if we inheritors had confessedly no moral right to the wealth we had done nothing to pro- duce or acquire, yet we had committed no positive wrong to obtain it." "You see," said the doctor, "what a pity it would have been if we had forgotten to compare the excuse offered by the nineteenth century for the unequal distribution of wealth with the actual facts of that distribution. Ethical standards advance from age to age, and it is not always fair to judge the systems of one age by the moral standards of a later one. But we have seen that the property system of the nineteenth century would have gained nothing by way of a milder verdict by appealing from the moral standards of the twentieth to those of the nineteenth cen- tury. It was not necessary, in order to justify its condemnation, to invoke the modem ethics of wealth which deduce the rights of property from the rights of man. It was only necessary to apply to the actual reali- ties of the system the ethical plea put forth in its defence — namely, that everybody was entitled to the fruit of his own labour, and was not entitled to the fruit of anybody else's, to leave not one stone upon another of the whole fabric." "But was there, then, absolutely no class under your system," said Edith's mother, "which even by the standards of your time could claim an ethical as well as a legal title to their possessions ? " "Oh yes," I replied, "we have been speak- ing of the rich. You may set it down as a rule that the rich, the possessors of great wealth, had no moral right to it as based upon desert, for either their fortunes be- longed to the class of inherited wealth, or else, when accumulated in a lifetime, neces- sarily represented chiefly the product of others, more or less forcibly or fraudulently obtained. There were, however, a great number of modest competencies, which were recognised by public opinion as being no more than a fair measure of the service ren- dered by their possessors to the community. Below these there was the vast mass of well- nigh wholly penniless toilers, the real people. 48 EQUALITY Here there was indeed abundance of ethical title to property, for these were the producers of all ; but beyond the shabby clothing they wore, they had little or no property." "It would seem," said Edith, "that, speak- ing generally, the class which chiefly had the property had little or no right to it even according to the ideas of your day, while the masses which had the right had little or no property." "Substantially that was the case," I re- plied. "That is to say, if you took the aggregate of property held by the merely legal title of inheritance, and added to it all that had been obtained by means which public opinion held to be speculative, extor- tionate, fraudulent, or representing results in excess of services rendered, there would be little property left, and certainly none at all in considerable amounts." "From the preaching of the clergy in Julian's time," said the doctor, "you would have thought the corner-stone of Christianity was the right of property, and the supreme crime was the wrongful appropriation of pro- perty. But if stealing meant only taking that from another to which he had a sound ethical title, it must have been one of the most difficult of all crimes to commit for lack of the requisite material. When one took away the possessions of the poor, it was reasonably certain that he was stealing, but then they had nothing to take away." "The thing that seems to me the most utterly incredible about all this terrible story," said Edith, "is that a system which was such a disastrous failure in its effects ou the general welfare, which, by disinheriting the great mass of the people, had made them its bitter foes, and which finally even people like Julian, who were its beneficiaries, did not attempt to defend as having any ground of fairness, could have maintained itself a day." "No wonder it -seems incomprehensible to you, as now, indeed, it seems to me when I look back," I replied. "But you cannot pos- fiibly imagine, as I myself am fast losing the power to do in my new environment, how benumbing to the mind was the prestige be- longing to the immemorial antiquity of the property system as we knew it, and of the rule of the rich based on it. No other in- stitution, no other fabric of power ever known to man, could be compared with it as to duration. No different economic order could really be said ever to have been known. There had been changes and fashions in all other human institutions, but no radical change in the system of property. The pro- cession of political, social, and religious Bystems, the royal, imperial, priestly, demo- cratic epochs, and all other great phases of human affairs, has been as passing cloud shadows, mere fashions of a day, compared with tho honry antiquity of the rule of the rich. Consider how profound and how widely ramified a root in human prejudices such a system must have had, how overwhelming the presumption must have been with the mass of minds against the possibility of making an end of an order that had never been known to have a beginning ! What need for excuses or defenders had a system so deeply based in usage and antiquity as this? It is not too much to say that to the mass of mankind in my day the division of the race into rich and poor, and the subjection of the latter to the former, seemed almost as much a law of Nature as the succession of the seasons — something that might not be agreeable, but was certainly unchangeable. And just here, I can well understand, must have come the hardest as well as, neces- sarily, the first task of the revolutionary leaders — that is, of overcoming the enormous dead weight of immemorial inherited pre- judice against the possibility of getting rid of abuses which had lasted so long, and open ing people's eyes to the fact that the system of wealth distribution was merely a human institution like others, and that if there is any truth in human progress, the longer an institution had endured unchanged, the more completely it was likely to have become out of joint with the world's progress, and the more radical the change must be which should bring it into correspondence with other lines of social evolution." "That is quite the modern view of tha subject, said the doctor. "I shall be understood in talking with a representative of the century v/hich invented poker if I say that when the revolutionists attacked the fundamental justice of the old property system, its defenders were able on account of its antiquity to meet them with a tre- mendous bluff — one which it is no wonder should have been for a time almost paralys- ing. But behind the bluff there was abso- lutely nothing. The moment public opinion could be nerved up to the point of calling it, the game was up. The principle of in- heritance, the backbone of the whole pro- perty system, at the first challenge of serious criticism abandoned all ethical defence and shrivelled into a mere convention established by law, and as rightfully to be disestablished by it in the name of anything fairer. As for the buccaneers, the great money-getters, when the light was once turned on their methods, the question was not so much of saving their booty as their bacon. "There is historically a marked difference," the doctor went on, "between the decline and fall of the systems of royal and priestly power and the passing of the rule of tho rich. The former systems were rooted deeply in sentiment and romance, and for ages after tlieir overthrow retained a strong hold on the hearts and imaginations of men. Our generous race has remembered without rancour all tho oppressions it has endured EQUALITY 49 save only the rule of the rich. The dominion of the money power had always been devoid of moral basis or dignity, and from the moment its material supports were destroyed, it not only perished, but seemed to sink away at once into a state of putrescence that made the world hurry to bury it for ever out of sight and memory." CHAPTER XVII THE REVOL-CrriON SAVES PBIVATE PEOPEBTY FROM MONOPOLY. "Eeally," said her mother, "Edith touched the match to quite a large discussion when she suggested that you should open the safe for us," To which I added that I had learned more that morning about the moral basis of eco- nomic equality, and the grounds for the abolition of private property, than in my entire previous experience as a citizen of the twentieth century. "The abolition of private property!" ex- claimed the doctor. "What is that you Bay?" "Of course," I said, "I am quite ready to admit that you have something very much better in its place, but private property you have certainly abolished — have you not? Is not that what we have been talking about ? " The doctor turned as if for sympathy to the ladies. "And this young man," he said, "who thinks that we have abolished private property, has at this moment in his pocket a card of credit representing a private annual income, for strictly personal use, of four thousand dollars, based upon a share of stock in the wealthiest and soundest cor- poration in the world, the value of his share, calculating the income on a four per cent, basis, coming to one hundred thousand dollars." I felt a little silly at being convicted so palpably of making a thoughtless observa- tion, but the doctor hastened to say that he understood perfectly what had been in my mind. I had, no doubt, heard it a hundred times asserted by the wise men of my day that the equalisation of human conditions as to wealth would necessitate destroying the institution of private property, and, without having given special thought to the subject, had naturally assumed that the equalisation of wealth having been effected, private pro- perty must have been abolished, according to the prediction. "Thanks," I said; "that is it exactly." "The Revolution," said the doctor, "abolished private capitalism — that is to say, it put an end to the direction of the industries and commerce of the people by irresponsible persons for their own benefit, and transferred that function to the people collectively, to be carried on by responsible agents for the common benefit. The change created an entirely new system of property- holding, but did not, either directly or in- directly, involve any denial of the right of private property. Quite on the contrary, the change in system placed the private and per- sonal property rights of every citizen upon a basis incomparably more solid and secure and extensive than they ever before had or could have had while private capitalism lasted. Let us analyse the effects of the change of systems, and see if it was not so. "Suppose you and a number of other men of your time, all having separate claims in a mining region, foi-med a corporation to carry on as one mine your consolidated properties, would you have any less private property than you had when you owned your claims separately? You would have changed the mode and tenure of your property, but if the arrangement were a wise one, that would be wholly to your advantage, would it not ? " "No doubt." "Of course, you could no longer exercise the personal and complete control over the consolidated mine which you exercised over your separate claim. You would have, with your fellow-corporators, to entrust the man- agement of the combined property to a board of directors chosen by yourselves, but you w'ould not think that meant a sacrifice of your private property, would you ? " '.' Certainly not. That was the form under which a very large part, if not the largest part, of private property in my day was in- vested and controlled." "It appears, then," said the doctor, "that it is not necessary to the full possession and 50 EQUALITY enjoyment of private property that it should be in a separate parcel, or that the owner should exercise a direct and personal control over it. Now, let us further suppose that instead of entrusting the management of your consolidated property to private direc- tors more or less rascally, who would be con- Btantly trying to cheat the stockholders, the nation undertook to manage the business for you by agents chosen by and responsible to yon; would that be an attack on your pro- perty interests ? " "On the contrary, it would greatly en- hance the value of the property. It would be as if a government guarantee were ob- tained for private bonds." "Well, that is what the people in the Revolution did with private property. They simply consolidated the property in the conntry previously held in separate parcels, and put the management of the business into the hands of a national agency charged with paying over the dividends to the stockholders for their individual use. So far, surely, it must be admitted, the Revolution did not involve any abolition of private property." ' "That is true," said I, "except in one particular. It is, or used to be, a usual in- cident to the ownership of property that it may be disposed of at will by the owner. iThe owner of stock in a mine or mill could not indeed sell a piece of the mine or mill, but he could sell his stock in it; but the' citizen now cannot dispose of his share in the national concern.^ He can only dispose of the dividend." "Certainly," replied the doctor; "but while the power of alienating the principal of one's property was a usual incident of ownership in your time, it was veiy far from being a necessary incident, or one which was beneficial to the owner, for the right of dis- posing of property involved the risk of being dispossessed of it by others. I think there were few property owners in your day who would not very gladly have relinquished the right to alienate their property if they could have had it guaranteed indefeasibly to them and their children. So to tie up property by trusts that the beneficiary could not touch the principal was the study of rich people who desired best to protect their heirs. Take the case of entailed estates as another illus- tration of this idea. Under that mode of holding property, the possessor could not sell it, yet it was considered the most desir- able sort of property on account of that very fact. The fact you refer to — that the citizen cannot alienate his share in the national cor- poration v.'hich forms the basis of his income — tends in the same way to make it a moro and not a less valuable sort of property. Certainly its quality as a strictly personal and private sort of property is intensified by the very indefeasiblcness with which it is attached to the individual. It might be said that the reorganisation of the property system which we are speaking of amounted to making the United States an entailed estate for the equal benefit of the citizens thereof and their descendants for ever." "You have noi yet mentioned," I said, "the most drastrc measure of all by which the Revolution affected privat-e property, namely, the absolute equalising of the amount of property to be held by each. Here was not perhaps any denial of the principle itself of privat« property, but it was certainly a prodigious interference . with property holders." "The distinction is well made. It is of vital importance to a correct apprehension of this subject. History has been full of just such wholesale readjustments of property in- terests by spoliation, conquest, or confisca- tion. They have been more or less justifi- able, but when least so they were never thought to involve any denial of the idea of private property in itself, for they went right on to reassert it under a different form. Less than any previous readjustment of pro- perty relations could the general equalising of property in the Revolution be called a denial of the right of property. On the pre- cise contrary, it was an assertion and vin- dication of that right on a scale never before dreamed of. Before the Revolution very few of the people had any property at all, and no economic provision save from day to day. By the new system all were assured of a large, equal, and fixed share in the total national principal and income. Before the Revolution, even those who had secured a property were likely to see it taken from them, or slip from them by a thousand acci- dents. Even the millionaire had no assurance that his grandson might not become a home- less vagabond, or his granddaughter be forced to a life of shame. Under the new system, the title of every citizen to his individual fortune became indefeasible, and he could lose it only when the nation became bank- rupt. The Revolution, that is to say, in- stead of denying or abolishing the institution of private property, affirmed it in an incom- parably more positive, beneficial, permanent, and general form than had ever been known before. "Of course, Julian, it was in the way of human nature quite a matter of course that your contemporaries should have cried out against the idea of a universal right of pro- perty as an attack on the principle of property. There was never a prophet or reformer who raised his voice for a purer, more spiritual, and perfect idea of religion whom his con- temporaries did not accuse of seeking to abolish religion ; nor ever in political affairs did any party proclaim a juster, larger, wiser ideal of government without being accused of seeking to abolish government. So it was quite according to precedent that those who taught the right of all to property should be accused of attacking the right of property. EQUALITY 51 Eut who, think you, were the true friends and champions of private property? those who advocated a system under which one man, if clever enough, could monopolise the earth — and a very small number were fast monopolising it, turning the rest of the race into proletarians — or, on the other hand, those who demanded a system by which all should become property-holders on equal terms? " "It strikes me," I said, "that as soon as the revolutionary leaders succeeded in open- ing the eyes of the people to this view of the matter, my old friends the capitalists must have found their cry about ' the sacred right of property ' turned into a most dangerous sort of boomerang." "So they did. Nothing could have better served the ends of the E-evolution, aa we have seen, than to raise the issue of the right of property. Nothing was so desirable as that the people at large should be led to give a little serious consideration on rational and moral grounds to what that right was as compared with what it ought to be. It was very soon, then, that the cry of 'the sacred right of property,' first raised by the rich in the name of the few, was re-echoed with overwhelming effect by the disinherited millions in the name of all." CHAPTER XVIII AN ECHO OF THE PAST. "Ah!" exclaimed Edith^ who with her mother had been rummaging the drawers of the safe as the doctor and I talked, "here are some letters, if I am not mistaken. It seems, then, you used safes for something besides money." It was, in fact, as I noted with quite in- describable emotion, a packet of letters and notes from Edith Bartlett, written on various occasions during our relation as lovers, that Edith, her great-granddaughter, held in her hand. I took them from her, and opening one, found it to be a note dated May 30, 1887, the very day on which I parted with her for ever. In it she asked me to join her family in their Decoration-day visit to the grave at Mount Auburn, where her brother lay, who had fallen in the civil war. "I do not expect, Julian," she had written, "that you will adopt all my relations as your own because you marry me — that would be too much — but my hero brother I want you to take for yours, and that is why I would like you to go with us to-day." The gold and parchments, once so price- less, now carelessly scattered about the chamber, had lost their value, but these tokens of love had not parted with their potency through lapse of time. As by a magic power, they called up in a moment a mist of memories which shut me up in a world of my own — a world in which the pre- sent had no part. I do not know for how long I sat thus tranced and oblivious of the silent, sympathising group around me. It was by a deep involuntary sigh from my own lips that I was at last roused from my ab- straction, and returned from the dream-world of the past to a consciousness of my present environment and its conditions. "These are letters," I said, "from the other Edith — Edith Bartlett, your great- grandmother. Perhaps you would be in- terested in looking them over. I don't know who has a nearer or better claim to them after myself than you and your mother." Edith took the letters and began to examine them with reverent curiosity. "They will be very interesting," said her mother, "but I am afraid, Julian, we shall have to ask you to read them for us." My countenance no doubt expressed the surprise I felt at this confession of illiteracy on the part of such highly-cultivated persons. "Am I to understand," I finally inqurred, "that handwriting, and the reading of it, like lock-making, is a lost art?" "I am afraid it is about so," replied the doctor, "although the explanation here is not, as in the other case, economic equality so much as the progress of invention. Our children are still taught to write and to read writing, but they have so little practice in after-life that they usually forget their acquirements pretty soon after leaving school ; but really Edith ought still to be able to make out a nineteenth-century letter. — My dear, I am a little ashamed of you." "Oh, I can read this, papa," she exclaimed, looking up, with brows still corrugated, from a page she had been studying. "Don't you remember I studied out those old letters of c 2 52 EQUALITY Julian's to Edith Bartlett, which mother had ? — though that was yeai's ago, and I have grown rusty since. But I have read nearly two lines of this already. It is really quite plain. I am going to work it all out with- out any help from anybody except mother." "Dear me, dear me!" said I, "don't you write letters any more? " "Well, no," replied the doctor, "practically speaking, handwriting has gone out of use. For correspondence, when we do not tele- phone, we send phonographs, and use the latter, indeed, for all purposes for which you employed handwriting. It has been so now so long that it scarcely occurs to us that people ever did anything else. But surely this is an evolution that need sur- prise you little : you had the phonograph and its possibilities were patent enough from the first. For our important records we still largely use types, of course, but the printed matter is transcribed from phonographic copj', so that really, except in emergencies, there is little use for handwriting. Curious, isn't it, when one comes to think of it, that the riper civilisation has grown the more perishable its records have become ? The Chaldeans and Egyptians used bricks, and the Greeks and Romans made more or less use of stone and bronze, for writing. If the race were destroyed to-day and the earth should be visited, say, from Mars, five hun- dred years later or even less, our books would have perished, and the Roman Empire be accounted the latest and highest stage of human civilisation." CHAPTER XIX "can a maid foeget her ornaments? Presently Edith and her mother went into the house to study out the letters, and the doctor being so delightfully absorbed with the stocks and bonds that it w^ould have been unkind not to leave him alone, it struck me that the occasion was favourable for the execution of a private project for which op- portunity had hitherto been lacking. From the moment of receiving my credit card I had contemplated a particular pur- chase which I desired to make on the first opportunity. This was a betrothal ring for Edith. Gifts in general, it was evident, had lost their value in this age when everybody had everything he wanted, but this was one which, for sentiment's sake, I was sure would still seem as desirable to a woman as ever. Taking advantage, therefore, of the un- usual absorption of my hosts in special in- terests, I made my way to the great store Edith had taken me to on a former occa- sion, the only one I had thus far entered. Not seeing the class of goods which I desired indicated by any of the placards over the alcoves, I presently asked one of the young women attendants to direct me to the jewel- lery department. "I beg your pardon," she said, raising her eyebrows a little, "what did I understand you to ask for? " , *"^^« jewellery department," I repeated. I want to look at some rings." "Rings!" she repeated, regarding me with a rather blank expression. "May I ask what kind of rings, for what sort of use? " "Finger-rings," I repeated, feeling that the young woman could not be so intelligent as she looked. At the word she glanced at my left hand, on one of the fingers of which I wore a seal ring after a fashion of my day. Her countenance took on an expression at once of intelligence and the keenest interest. "I beg your pardon a thousand times!" she exclaimed. "I ought to have understood before. You are Julian West ? " I was beginning to be a little nettled with so much mystery about so simple a matter. "I certainly am Julian West," I said, "but pardon me if I do not see the relevancy of that fact to the question I asked you." "Oh, you must really excuse me," she said, "but it is most relevant. Nobody in America but just yourself would ask for finger-rings. You see, they have not been used for so long a period that we have quite ceased to keep them in stock; but if you would like one made to order, you have only to leave a description of what you want, and it will be at once manufactured." I thanked her, but concluded that I would not prosecute the undertaking any further until I had looked over the ground a little more thoroughly. I said nothing about my adventure at home, not caring to be laughed at more than EQUALITY 53 was necessary; but when, after dinner, I found the doctor alone in his favourite out- door study on the house-top, I cautiously sounded liim on the subject. Remarking, as if quite in a casual way, that I had not noticed so much as a finger- ring worn by any one, I asked him whether the wearing of jewellery had been disused, and, if so, what was the explanation of the abandonment of the custom ? The doctor said that it certainly was a fact that the wearing of jewellery had been virtually an obsolete custom for a couple of generations, if not more. "As for the reasons for the fact," he continued, "they really go rather deeply into the direct and indirect consequences of our present econ- omic system. Speaking broadly, I suppose the main and sufiicient reason why gold and silver and precious stones have ceased to be prized as ornaments is that they entirely lost their commercial value when the nation organised wealth distribution on the basis of the indefeasible economic equality of all citizens. As you know, a ton of gold or a bushel of diamonds would not secure a loaf of bread at the public stores, nothing avail- ing there except or in addition to the citi- zen's credit, which depends solely on his citizenship, and is always equal to that of every other citizen. Consequently, nothing is worth anything to anybody nowadays save for the use or pleasure he can personally derive from it. The main reason why gems and the precious metals were formerly used as ornaments seems to have been the great convertible value belonging to them, which made them symbols of wealth and' import- ance, and consequently a favourite means of social ostentation. The fact that they have entirely lost this quality would account, I think, largely for their disuse as orna- ments, even if ostentation itself had not been deprived of its motive by the law of equality." "Undoubtedly," I said; "yet there were those who thought them pretty, quite apart from their value." "Well, possibly," replied the doctor. "Yes, I suppose savage races honestly thought so, but, being honest, they did not distinguish between precious stones and glass beads, so long as both were equally shining. As to the pretension of civilised persons to admire gems or gold for their intrinsic beauty apart from their value, I suspect that was a more or less unconscious sham. Suppose, by any sudden abundance, diamonds of the first water had gone down to the value of bottle glass, how much longer do you think they would have been worn by anybody in your day? " I was constrained to admit that undoubt- edly they would have disappeared from view promptly and permanently. "I imagine," said the doctor, "that good taste, which we understand even in your day rather frowned on the use of such ornaments, came to the aid of the economic influence in promoting their disuse when once the new order of things had been established. The loss by the gems and precious metals of the glamour that belonged to them as forms of concentrated wealth, left the taste free to judge of the real aesthetic value of orna- mental effects obtained by hanging bits of shining stones and plates and chains and rings of metal about the face and neck and fingers, and the view seems to have been soon generally acquiesced in that such com- binations were barbaric and not really beau- tiful at all." "But what has become of all the diamonds and rubies and emeralds, and gold and silver jewels?" I exclaimed. "The metals, of course — silver and gold — kept their uses, mechanical and artistic. They are always beautiful in their proper places, and are as much used for decorative purposes as ever, but those purposes are architectural, not personal, as formerly. Be- cause we do not follow the ancient practice of using paints on our faces and bodies, we use them not the less in what we consider their proper places, and it is just so with gold and silver. As for the precious stones, some of them have found use in mechanical applications, and there are, of course, collec- tions of them in museums here and there. Probably there never were more than a few hundred bushels of precious stones in exist- ence, and it is easy to account for the dis- appearance and speedy loss of so small a quantity of such minute objects after they had ceased to be prized." "The reasons you give for the passing of jewellery," I said, "certainly account for the fact, and yet you can scarcely imagine v/hat a surprise I find in it. The degrada- tion of the diamond to the rank of the glass bead, save for its mechanical uses, expresses and typifies as no other one fact to me the completeness of the revolution which at the present time has subordinated things to humanity. It would not be so difficult, of course, to understand that men might readily have dispensed with jewel-wearing, which indeed was never considered in the best of taste as a masculine practice except in bar- barous countries, but it would have stag- gered the prophet Jeremiah to have his query 'Can a maid forget her ornaments? ' answered in the affirmative." The doctor laughed. "Jeremiah was a very wise man," he said, "and if his attention had been drawn to the subject of economic equality and its effect upon the relation of the sexes, I am sure he would have foreseen, as one of its logical results, the growth of a sentiment of quite as much philosophy concerning personal orna- mentation on the part of women as men have ever displayed. He would not have been surprised to learn that one effect of that 54 EQUALITY equalitj' as between men and women had been to revolutionise women's attitude on the whole question of dress so' completely that the most bilious of misogynists — if indeed any were left — would no longer be able to accuse them of being more absorbed in that interest than are men." "Doctor, doctor, do not ask me to believe that the desire to make herself attractive has ceased to move woman ! " "Excuse me, I did not mean to say any- thing of the sort," replied the doctor. "I spoke of the disproportionate development of that desire which tends to defeat its own end by over-ornament and excess of arti- fice. If we may judge from the records of your time, this was quite generally the result of the excessive devotion to dress on the part of your women j was it not 60?" *' Undoubtedly. Overdressing, over-exer- tion to be attractive, was the greatest draw- back to the real attractiveness of women in my day." "And how was it with the men?" "That could not be said of any men worth calling men. There were, of course, the dandies, but most men paid too little at- tention to their appearance rather than too much." "That is to say, one sex paid too much attention to dress and the other too little? " ' "That was it." . ■ "Very well; the effect of~ economic equality of the sexes, and the consequent independence of women at all times as to maintenance upon men, is that women give much less thought to dress than in your day, and men con- siderably more. No one would indeed think of suggesting that either sex is nowadays more absorbed in setting off its personal at- tractions than the other. Individuals differ as to their interest in this matter, but the difference is not along the line of se'x." "But why do you attribute this miracle," I exclaimed, "for miracle it seems, to the effect of economic equality on the relation of men and women ? " i "Because from the moment that equality became established between them, it ceased to be a whit more the interest of women to make themselves attractive and desirable to men than for men to produce the same impression upon women." "Meaning thereby that previous to the establishment of economic equality between nien and women, it was decidedly more the interest of the women to make themselves personally attractive than of the men?" "Assuredly," said the doctor. "Tell me to what motive did men in your day ascribe the excessive devotion of the other sex to matters of dress as compared with men's comparative neglect of the subject?" "Well, I don't think we did much clear thinking on the subject. In fact, anything which had any sexual suggestion about it was scarcely ever treated in any other than a sentimental or jesting tone." "That is indeed," said the doctor, "a strik- ing trait of your age, though explainable enough in view of the utter hypocrisy under- lying the entire relation of the sexes, the pretended chivalric deference to women on the one hand, coupled with their pi-actical sup- pression on the other. But you must have had some theory to account for women's excessive devotion to personal adornment?" "The theory, I think, was that handed down from the ancients — namely, that women were naturally vainer than men. But they did not like to hear that said ; so the polite way of accounting for the obvious fact that they cared so much more for dress than did men, was that they were more sensitive to beauty, more unselfishly desirous of pleas- ,ing, and other agreeable phrases." j "And did it not occur to you that the real reason why woman gave so much thought to devices for enhancing her beauty was simply that, owing to her economic depend- ence on man's favour, a woman's face was her fortune, and that the reason men were so careless for the most part as to their per- sonal appearance was that their fortune in no way depended on their beauty; and that even when it came to commending them- selves to the favour of the other sex their economic position told more potently in their favour than any question of personal advan- tages ? Surely this obvious consideration fully explained woman's greater devotion to personal adornment, without assuming any ^difference whatever in the natural endowment of the sfexes as to vanity." I "And consequently," I put in, "v.'hen jWomen ceased any more to depend for their economic welfare upon men's favour, it 'ceased to be their main aim in life to make themselves attractive to men's eyes?" j "Precisely so, to their unspeakable gain in comfort, dignity, and freedom of mind for ■more important interests." ' "But to the diminution, I suspect, of the picturesqueness of the social panorama?" j "Not at all, but most decidedly to its notable advantage. So far as we can judge, what claim the women of your period had to be regarded as attractive was achieved dis- tinctly in spite of their efforts to make them- selves so. Let us recall that we arc talking about that excessive concern of women for the enhancement of their charms which led to a mad race after effect that for the most part defeated the end sought. Take away the economic motive which made women's attractiveness to men a means of getting on in life, and there remained Nature's impulse to attract the admiration of the other sex, a motive quite strong enough for beauty's end, and the more effective for not being too strong." "It is easy enough to see," I said, "why the economic independence of women should EQUALITY 65 have had the effect of moderating to a reason- able measure their interest in personal adorn- ment; but why should it have operated in the opposite direction upon men, in making them more attentive to dress and personal appearance than before?" "For the simple reason that their economic superiority to women having disappeared, they must henceforth depend wholly upon personal attractiveness if they would either win the favour of women or retain it when won." CHAPTER XX WHAT TDE REVOLUTION DID FOR WOMEN. "It occurs to me, doctor," I said, "that it would have been even better worth the while of a woman of my day to have slept over till now than for me, seeing that the estab- lishment of economic equality seems to have meant even more for women than for men." "Edith would perhaps not have been pleased with the substitution," said the doctor; "but really there is much in what you say, for the establishment of economic equality did in fact mean incomparably more for women than for men. In your day the condition of the mass of men was abject as compared with their present state, but the lot of women was abject as compared with that of the men. The most of men were indeed the servants of the rich, but the woman was subject to the man whether he were rich or poor, and in the latter and more common case was thus the servant of a ser- vant. However low down in poverty a man might be, he had one or more lower even than he in the persons of the women depen- dent on him and subject to his will. At the very bottom of the social heap, bearing the accumulated burden of the whole mass, was woman. All the tyrannies of soul and mind and body which the race endured, weighed at last with cumulative force upon her. So far beneath even the mean estate of man was that of woman that it would have been a mighty uplift for her could she have only attained his level. But the great Revolution not merely lifted her to an equality with man, but raised them both with the same mighty upthrust to a plane of moral dignity and material welfare as much above the former state of man as his former state had been above that of woman. If men, then, owe gratitude to the Revolution, how much greater must women esteem their debt to it ! If to the men the voice of the Revolution was a call to a higher and nobler plane of living, to woman it was as the voice of Gfod calling her to a new creation." "Undoubtedly," I said, "the women of the poor had a pretty abject time of it, but the women of the rich certainly were not oppressed." "The women of the rich," replied the doctor, "were numerically too insignificant a proportion of the mass of women to be worth considering in a general statement of woman's condition in your clay. Nor, for that matter, do we consider their lot prefer- able to that of their poorer sisters. It is true that they did not endure physical hard- ship, but were, on the contrary, petted and spoiled by their men protectors like over- indulged children; but that seems to us not a sort of life to be desired. So far as we can learn from contemporary accounts and social pictures, the women of the rich lived in a hot-house atmosphere of adulation and affectation, altogether less favourable to moral or mental development than the harder conditions of the women of the poor. A woman of to-day, if she were doomed to go back to live in your world, would beg at least to be reincarnated as a scrub-woman rather than as a wealthy woman of fashion. The latter rather than the former seems to us the sort of woman which most completely typified the degradation of the sex in your age." As the same thought had occurred to me, even in my former life, I did not argue the point. "The so-called woman movement, the be- ginning of the great transformation in her condition," continued the doctor, "was already making quite a stir in your day. You must have heard and seen much of it, and may have even known some of the noble women who were the early leaders." "Oh yes," I replied. "There was a great stir about women's rights, but the programme then announced was by no means revolution- ary. It only aimed at securing the right to vote, together with various changes in the laws about property-holding by women, the custody of children in divorces, and such details. I assure you that the women no 56 EQUALITY more than the men had at that time any notion of revolutionising the economic system." "So we understand/' replied the doctor. "In that respect the women's struggle for in- dependence resembled revolutionary move- ments in general, which, in their earlier stages, go blundering and stumbling along in such a seemingly erratic and illogical way that it takes a philosopher to calculate what outcome to expect. The calculation as to the ultimate outcome of the women's movement was, however, as simple as was the same calculation in the case of what you called the labour movement. What the wom.en were after was independence of men and equality with them, while the working-men's desire was to put an end to their vassalage to capi- talists. Now, the key to the fetters the women wore was the same that locked the shackles of the workers. It was the econo- mic key, the control of the means of sub- sistence. Men, as a sex, held that power over women, and the rich as a class held it over the working masses. The secret of the sexual bondage and of the industrial bond- age was the same — namely, the unequal distri- bution of the wealth power, and the change which was necessary to put an end to both forms of bondage must obviously be econo- mic equalisation^ which in the sexual as in the industrial relation would at once insure the substitution of co-operation for coercion. "The first leaders of the women's revolt were unable to see beyond the ends of their noses, and consequently ascribed their sub- ject condition and the abuses they endured to the wickedness of man, and appeared to believe that the only remedy necessary was a moral reform on his part. This was the period during which such expressions as the ' tyrant man ' and ' man the monster ' were watchwords of the agitation. The champions of the women fell into precisely the same mistake committed by a large proportion of the early leaders of the working-men, who wasted good breath and wore out their tempers in denouncing the capitalists as the wilful authors of all the ills of the prole- tarian. This was worse than idle rant; it was misleading and blinding. The men were essentially no w^orse than the women they oppressed, nor the capitalists than the work- men they exploited. Put working-men in the places of the capitalists, and they would have done just as the capitalists were doing. In fact, whenever working-men did become capitalists they were commonly said to make the hardest sort of masters. So, also, if women could have changed places with the men, they would undoubtedly have dealt with the men precisely as the men had dealt with them. It was the system which permitted human beings to come into relations of superi- ority and inferiority to one another which was the cause of the whole evil. Power over others is necessarily demoralising to the master and degrading to the subject. Equality is the only moral relation between human beings. Any reform which should re- sult in remedying the abuse of women by men, or working-men by capitalists, must therefore be addressed to equalising their economic condition. Not till the women, as well as the working-men, gave over the folly of attacking the consequences of economic inequality and attacked the inequality itself, was there any hope for the enfranchisement of either class. "The utterly inadequate idea which the early leaders of the women had of the great salvation they must have, and how it must come, are curiously illustrated by their en- thusiasm for the various so-called temperance agitations of the period for the purpose of checking drunkenness among men. The special interest of the women as a class in this reform in men's manners — for women as a rule did not drink intoxicants — consisted - in the calculation that if the men drank less, they would be less likely to abuse them, and would provide more liberally for their main- tenance ; that is to say, their highest aspira- tions were limited t-o the hope that, by re- forming the morals of their masters, they might secure a little better treatment for themselves. The idea of abolishing the mas- tership had not yet occurred to them as a possibility. "This point, by the way, as to the efforts of women in your day to reform men's drink- ing habits by law, rather strikingly suggests the difference between the position of women then and now in their relation to men. If nowadays men were addicted to any practice which made them seriously and generally offensive to women, it would not occur to the latter to attempt to curb it by law. Our spirit of personal sovereignty and the right- ful independence of the individual in all matters mainly self-regarding would indeed not tolerate any of the legal interferences with the private practices of individuals so common in your day. But the women would not find force necessary to correct the manners of the men. Their absolute economic independence, whether in or out of marriage, would enable them to use a more potent in- fluence. It would presently be found that the men who made themselves offensive to women's susceptibilities would sue for their favour in vain. But it was practically im- possible for women of your day to protect themselves or assert their wills by assuming that attitude. It was economically a neces- sity for a woman to marry, or at least of so great advantage to her that she could not well dictate terms to her suitors unless very fortunately situated, and once married it was the practical understanding that in return for her maintenance by her husband she must hold herself at his disposal.',' "It sounds horribly," I said, "at this dis- tance of time, but I beg you to believe that EQUALITY 57 it was not always quite as bad as it sounds. The better men exercised their power with consideration, and with persons of refinement the wife virtually retained her self-control, and for that matter in many families the woman was practically the head of the house." "No doubt, no doubt," replied the doctor. "So it has always been under every form of servitude. However absolute the power of a master, it has been exercised with a fair degree of humanity in a large proportion of instances, and in many cases the nominal slave, when of strong character, has in reality exercised a controlling influence over the master. This observed fact is not, however, considered a valid argument for subjecting human beings to the arbitrary wiU of others. Speaking gene'rally, it is undoubtedly true that both the condition of women when sub- jected to men, and that of the poor in sub- jection to the rich, were in fact far less in- tolerable than it seems to us they possibly could have been. As the physical life of man can be maintained and often thrive in any climate from the poles to the equator, so his moral nature has shown its power to live and even put forth fragrant flowers under the most terrible social conditions." "In order to realise the prodigious debt of woman to the great Revolution," resumed the doctor, "we must remember that the bondage from which it delivered her was in- comparably more complete and abject than any to which men had ever been subjected by their fellow-men. It was enforced not by a single but by a triple yoke. The first yoke was the subjection to the personal and class rule of the rich, which the mass of v/omen boi'e in common with the mass of men. The other two yokes were peculiar to her. One of them was her personal subjection not only in the sexual relation, but in all her be- haviour to the particular man on whom she depended for subsistence. The third yoke was an intellectual and moral one, and con- sisted in the slavish conformity exacted of her in all her thinking, speaking, and acting to a set of traditions and conventional stan- dards calculated to repress all that was spon- taneous and individual, and impose an arti- ficial uniformity upon both the inner and outer life. "The last was the heaviest yoke of the three, and most disastrous in its effects both upon women directly, and indirectly upon mankind, through the degradation of the mothers of the race. Upon the woman her- self the effect was so soul-stifling and mind- stunting as to be made a plausible excuse for treating her as a natural inferior by men not philosophical enough to see that what they would make an excuse for her subjec- tion was itself the result of that subjection. The explanation of woman's submission in thought and action to what was practically a slave code— a code peculiar to her sex and scorned and derided by men — was the fact that the main hope of a comfortable life for every woman consisted in attracting the favourable attention of some man who could provide for her. Now, under your economic system it was very desirable for a man who sought employment to think and talk as his employer did if he was to get on in life. Yet a certain degree of independence of mind and conduct was conceded to men by their economic superiors under most circumstances, so long as they were not actually offensive, for, atter all, what was mainly v/anted of them was their labour. But the relation of a woman to the man who supported her was of a very different and much closer char- acter. She must be to him persona grata, as your diplomats used to say. To attract him she must be personally pleasing to him, must not offend his tastes or prejudices by her opinions or conduct. Otherwise he would be likely to prefer someone else. It followed from this fact that while a boy's training looked toward fitting him to earn a living, a girl was educated with a chief end to mak- ing her, if not pleasing, at least not dis- pleasing to men. " Now, if particular women had been especially trained to suit particular men's tastes— trained to order, so to speak — while that would have been offensive enough to any idea of feminine dignity, yet it would have been far less disastrous, for many men would have vastly preferred women of inde- pendent minds and original and natural opinions. But as it was not known before- hand what particular men would support par- ticular women, the only safe way was to, train girls with a view to a negative rather than a positive attractiveness, so that at least they might not offend average mascu- line prejudices. This ideal was most likely to be secured by educating a girl to conform herself to the customary traditional and fashionable habits of thinking, talking, and behaving — in a word, to the conventional standards prevailing at the time. She must, above all things, avoid as a contagion any new or original ideas or lines of conduct in any important respect, especially in religious, political, and social matters. Her mind, that is to say, like her body, must be trained and dressed according to the current fashion plates. By all her hopes of married comfort she must not be known to have any peculiar or unusual or positive notions on any subject more important than embroidery or parlour decoration. Conventionality in the essentials having been thus secured, the brighter and more piquant she could be in small ways and frivolous matters the better for her chances. Have I erred in describing the working of your system in this particular, Julian?" "No doubt," I replied, "you have de- scribed to the life the correct and fashion- able ideal of feminine education in my time, but there were, you must understand, a great 58 EQUALITY many women who were persons of entirely original and serious minds, who dared to think and speak for themselves." "Of com-se there were. They were the prototypes of the universal woman of to-day. They represented the coming woman, who to-day has come. They had broken for them- selves the conventional trammels of their sex, and proved to the world the potential equality of women with men in every field of thought and action. But while great minds master their circumstances, the mass of minds are mastered by them and formed by them. It is when we think of the bearing of the system upon this vast majority of women, and how the virus of moral and mental slavery through their veins entered into the blood of the race, that we realise how tre- mendous is the indictment of humanity against your economic arrangements on ac- count of woman, and how vast a benefit to mankind was the Revolution that gave free mothers to the race — free not merely from physical but from moral and intellectual fetters." " I referred a moment ago," pursued the doctor, " to the close parallelism existing in your time between the industrial and the sexual situation, between the relations of the working masses to the capitalists, and those of the women to men. It is strik- ingly illustrated in yet another way. " The subjection of the working men to the owners of capital was insured by the exist- ence at all times of a large class of the un- employed ready to underbid the workers and eager to get employment at any price and on any terms. This was the club with which the capitalist kept down the workers. In like manner it was the existence of a body of unappropriated women which riveted the yoke of women's subjection to men. When maintenance was the difficult problem it was in your day there were many men who could not maintain themselves, and a vast number who could not maintain women in addition to themselves. The failure of a man to m^rry might cost him happiness, but in the case of women it not only involved loss of happiness, but, as a rule, exposed them to the pressure or peril of poverty, for it was a much more difficult thing for women than for men to secure an adequate support by their own efforts. The result was one of the most shocking spectacles the world has ever known — nothing less, in fact, than a state of rivalry and competition among women for the oppor- tunity of marriage. To realise how helpless were women in your day to assume toward men an attitude of physical, mental, or moral dignity and independence, it is enough to re- member their terrible disadvantage in what your contemporaries called with brutal plain- ness the marriage market. " And still woman's cup of humiliation was not full. There was yet another and more dreadful form of competition by her own sex to which she was exposed. Kot only was there a constant vast surplus of unmarried women desirous of securing the economic sup- port which marriage implied, but beneath these there were hordes of wretched women, hopeless of obtaining the support of men on honourable terms, and eager to sell them- selves for a crust. Julian, do you wonder that, of all the aspects of the horrible mess you called civilisation in the nineteenth cen- tury, the sexual relation reeks worst ? " "Our philanthropists were greatly dis- turbed over what we called the social evil," said I — "that is, the existence of this great multitude of outcast women — but it was not common to diagnose it as a part of the eco- nomic problem. It was regarded rather as a moral evil resulting from the depravity of the human heart, to be properly dealt with by moral and religious influences." "Yes, yes, I know. No one in your day, of course, was allowed to intimate that the economic system was radically wicked, and consequently it was customary to lay off all its hideous consequences upon poor human nature. Yes^ I know there were people who agreed that it might be possible by preach- ing to lessen the horrors of the social evil while yet the land contained millions of women in desperate' need, who had no other means of getting bread save by catering to the desires of men. I am a bit of a phreno- logist, and have often wished for the' chance of examining the cranial developments of a nineteenth-century philanthropist who honestly believed this, if indeed any of them honestly did." "By the way," I said, "high-spirited women, even in my day, object<3d to the custom that required them to take their husbands' names on marriage. How do you manage that now?" "Women's names are no more affected by marriage than men's." "But how about the children?" "Girls take the mother's last name with the father's as a middle name^ while with boys it is just the reverse." "It occurs to me," I said, "that it would be surprising if a fact so profounj^ly affect- ing woman's relations with man as her . achievement of economic independence, had not modified the previous conventional standards of sexuaJ morality in some re- spects." "Say, rather," replied the doctor, "that the economic equalisation of men and women for the first time made it possible to estab- lish the'ir relations on a moral basis. The first condition of ethical action in any relation is the freedom of the actor. So long as women's economic dependence upon men pre- vented them from being free agents in the sexual relation, there could be no ethics of that relation. A proper ethical standard of EQUALITY sexual conduct was first made possible when women became capable of independent action through the attainment of economic equality." "It would have startled the moralists of my day," I said, "to be told that we had no sexual ethics. W© certainly had a very strict and elaborate syst-em of ' thou shalt nots.' " "Of course, of course," replied mv com- panion. "Let us understand eapriety outraged; but according to your standard, if the contract had been legally executed, all that followed was white and beautiful. On the other hand, if the con- tract had been neglected, and a womin had accepted a lover without it, then, however great their love, however fit their union in every natural way, the woman was cast out as unchaste, impure, and abandoned, and consigned to the living death of social ig- nominy. Now let me repeat that we fully recognise the excuse for this social law under your atrocious system as the only possible way of protecting the economic interests of women and children, but to speak of it as ethical or moral in its view of the sex rela- tion is certainly about as absurd a misuse of words as could be conmiitted. On the con- trary, we must say that it was a law which, in order to protect women's material in- terests, was obliged deliberately to disregard all the laws that are written on the heart touching such matters. "It seems from the records that there was much talk in your day about the scandalous fact that there were two distinct moral codes in sexual matters, one for men and another for women — men refusing to be bound by the law imposed on women, and society not even attempting to enforce it against "them. It was claimed by the advocates of one coda for both sexes that what was wrong or right for woman was so for man, and that there should be one standard of right and wrong, purity and impurity, morality and immoral- ity, for both. That was obviously the cor- rect view of the matter; but what moral gain would there have been for the race even if men could have been induced to accept the women's code — a code so utterly unworthy in its central idea of the ethics of the sexual relation ! Nothing but the bitter duress of their economic bondage had forced women to accept a law against which the blood of ten thousand stainless Marguerites, and the ruined lives of a countless multi- tude of women, whose only fault had been too tender loving, cried to God perpetually. Yes, there should doubtless be one standard of conduct for both men and women as there is now, but it was not to be the slave code, with its sordid basis, imposed upon the women by their necessities. The common and higher code for men and women which the conscience of the race demanded wo'rild first become possible, and at once thereafter would become assured when men and women stood over against each other in the sexual rela- tion, as in all others, in attitudes of absolute equality and mutual independence." "After all, doctor," I said, "although sJi first it startled me a little to hear you say that we had no sexual ethics, yet you really say no more, nor use stronger words, than did our poets and satirists in treating the same theme. The complete divergence be- 60 EQUALITY tween our conventional sexual morality and the instinctive morality of love was a com- monplace with us, and furnished, as doubt- less you well know, the motive of a large part of our romantic and dramatic literature." "Yes," replied the doctor, "nothing could be added to the force and feeling with which your writers exposed the cruelty and injus- tice of the iron law of society as to these matters — a law made doubly cruel and unjust by the fact that it bore almost exclusively on .women. But their denunciations were wasted, and the plentiful emotions they evoked were barren of result, for the reason that they failed entirely to point out the basic fact that was responsible for the law they at- tacked, and must be abolished if the law were ever to be replaced by a just ethical standard. That fact, as we have seen, was the system of wealth distribution, by which woman's only hope of comfort and security was made to depend on her success in obtain- ing a legal guarantee of support from some man as the price of her person." "It seems to me," I observed, "that when the women once fairly opened their eyes to what the revolutionary programme meant for their sex by its demand of economic equality for all, self-interest must have made them more ardent devotees of the cause than even the men." "It did indeed," replied the doctor. "Of course the blinding, binding influence of con- ventionality, tradition, and prejudice, as well as the timidity bred of immemorial servitude, for a long while prevented the mass of women from understanding the greatness of the deliverance which was offered them ; but when once they did understand it they threw themselves into the revolutionary move- ment with a unanimity and enthusiasm that had a decisive effect upon the struggle. Men^ might regard economic equality with favour or disfavour, according to their economic positions, but every woman, simply because she was a woman, was bound to be for it as soon as she got into her head what it meant for her half of the race." CHAPTER XXI AT THE GYMNASIUM Edith had come up on the house-top in time to hear the last of our talk, and now she Baid to her father — " Considering what you have been telling Julian about women nowadays as compared with the old days, I wonder if he would not be interested in visiting the gymnasium this afternoon, and seeing something of how we train ourselves ? There are going to be some foot-races and air-races, and a number of other tests. It is the afternoon when our year has the grounds, and I ought to be there anyway." To this suggestion, which was eagerly ac- cepted, I owe one of the most interesting and instructive experiences of those early days during which I was forming the ac- quaintance of the twentieth-century civilisa- tion. At the door of the gymnasium Edith left HB to join her class in the amphitheatre. " Is she to compete in anything? " 1 asked. " All her year — that is, all of her age — in this ward will be entered in more or less events." "What is Edith's speciality?" I asked. " As to specialities," replied the doctor, " our people do not greatly cultivate them. Of course, privately they do what they please, but the object of our public training is not so much to develop athletic specialities as to produce an all-round and well-proportioned physical development. We aim first of all to secure a certain standard of strength and measurement for legs, thighs, arms, loins, chest, shoulders, neck, &c. This is not the highest point of perfection either of physique or performance. It is the necessary mini- mum. All who attain it may be regarded as sound and proper men and women. It is then left to them as they please individually to develop themselves beyond that point in special directions." " How long does this public gymnastic education last ? " "It is as obligatory as any part of the educational course until the body is set, which we put at the age of twenty-four; but it is practically kept up through life, al- though, of course, that is according to just how one feels." "Do j'ou mean that you take regular exer- cise in a gymnasium ? " "Why should I not? It is no less of an EQUALITY Gl object to me to be well at sixty than it was at twenty." "Doctor," said I, "if I seem surprised you must remember that in my day it was an adage that no man over forty-five ought to allow himself to run for a car, and as for women, they stopped running at fifteen ; when their bodies were put in a vice, their legs in bags, their toes in thumbscrews, and they bade farewell to health." " You do indeed seem to have disagreed terribly with your bodies," said the doctor. " The women ignored theirs altogether, and as for the men, so far as I can make out, up to forty they abused their bodies, and after forty their bodies abused them, which, after all, was only fair. The vast mass of physical misery caused by weakness and sick- ness, resulting from wholly preventable causes, seems to us, next to the moral aspect of the subject, to be one of the largest single items chargeable to your system of economic inequality, for to that primal cause nearly every feature of the account appears directly or indirectly traceable. Neither souls nor bodies could be considered by your men in their mad struggle for a livmg, and for a grip on the livelihood of others, while the complicated system of bondage under which the women were held perverted mind and body alike, till it was a wonder if there were any health left in them." On entering the amphitheatre we saw gathered at one end of the arena some two or three hundred young men and women talking and lounging. These, the doctor told me, were Edith's companions of the class of 1978, being all those of twenty-two years of age, born in that ward or since coming there to live. I viewed with admiration the figures of these young men and women, all strong and beautiful as the gods and god- desses of Olympus. "Am I to understand," I asked, "that this is a fair sample of your youth, and not a picked assembly of the more athletic?" "Certainly," he replied; "all the youth in their twenty-third year who live in this v/ard are here to-day, with perhaps two or three exceptions on account of some special reason." "But where are the cripples, the deformed, the feeble, the consumptive ? " " Do you see that young man yonder in the chair with so many of the others about him ? " asked the doctor. "Ah! there is then at least one invalid?" "Yes," replied my companion; "he met with an accident, and will never be vigorous. He is the only sickly one of the class, and you see how much the others make of him. Your cripples and sickly were so many that pity itself grew weary and spent of tears, and compassion callous with use ; but with us they are so few as to be our pets and darlings." At that moment a bugle sounded, and some scores of young men and women dashed by us in a foot-race. While they ran, the bugle continued to sound a nerve-bracing strain. The thing that astonished me was the even- ness of the finish, in view of the fact that the contestants were not specially trained for racing, but were merely the group which in the round of tests had that day come to the running test. In a race of similarly un- selected competitors in my day, they would have been strung along the track from the finish to the half, and the most of them nearest that. " Edith, I see, was third in," said the doctor, reading from the signals. "She will be pleased to have done so well, seeing you were here." The next event was a surprise. I had noticed a group o^ youths on a lofty plat- form at the far end of the amphitheatre making some sort of preparations, and won- dered what they were going to do. Now suddenly, at the sound of a trumpet, I saw them leap forward over the edge of the plat- form. I gave an involuntary cry of horror, for it was a deadly distance to the ground below. " It's all right," laughed the doctor, and the next moment I was staring up at a score of young men and women charging through the air fifty feet above the racecourse. Then followed contests in ball-throwing and putting the shot. "It is plain where your women get their splendid chests and shoulders," said I. " You have noticed that, then ! " exclaimed the doctor. "I have certainly noticed," was my answer, " that your modern women seem generally to possess a vigorous development and appearance of power above the waist which were only occasionally seen in our day." " You will be interested, no doubt," said the doctor, " to have your impression cor- roborated by positive evidence. Suppose we leave the amphitheatre for a few minutes, and step into the anatomical rooms. It is indeed a rare fortune for an anatomical en- thusiast like myself to have a pupil so well qualified to bo appreciative, to whom to point out the effect our principle of social equality, and the best opportunities of culture for all, have had in modifying toward perfection, the human form in general, and especially the female figure. I say especially the female figure, for that had been most per- verted in your day by the influences which denied woman a full life. Here are a group of plaster statues, based on the lines handea down to us by the anthropometric experts of the last decades of the nineteenth century, to whom we are vastly indebted. You will observe, as your remark just now indicated that you had observed, that the tendency was to a spindling and inadequate develop- ment above the waist and an excessive de- 62 EQUALITY velopment below. The figure seemed a little as if it had softened and run down like a sugar cast in warm weather. See, the front breadth flat measurement of the hips is actually greater than across the shoulders, whereas jt ought to be an inch or two less, and the bulbous effect must have been exag- gerated by the bulging mass of draperies your women accumulated about the waist." At his words I raised my eyes to the stony face of the woman figure, the charms of which he had thus disparaged, and it seemed to me that the sightless eyes rested on mine with an expression of reproach, of which my heart instantly confessed the justice. I had been the contemporary of this type of women, and had been indebted to the light of their eyes for all that made life worth living. Complete or not, as might be their beauty by modern standards, through them I had learned to know the stress of the ever- womanly, and been made an initiate of Nature's sacred mysteries. Well might these stony eyes reproach me for consenting by my silence to the disparagement of charms to which I owed so much, by a man of another age. " Hush, doctor, hush!" I exclaimed. "No doubt you are right, but it is not for me to hear these words." I could not find the language to explain what was in my mind, but it was not neces- sary. The doctor understood, and his keen grey eyes glistened as he laid his hand on my shoulder. ''Right, my boy, quite right! That is the thing for you to say, and Edith v/ould like you the better for your words, for women nowadays are jealous for one another's honour, as I judge they were not in your day. But, on the other'hand, if there were present in this room disembodied shades of those women of your day, they would rejoice more than any others could" at the fairer, ampler temples liberty has built for their daughters' souls to dwell in. "Look!" he added, pointing to another figure; "this is the typical woman of to- day, the lines not ideal, but based on an average of measurements for the purpose of scientific comparison. First, you will ob- serve that the figure is over two inches taller than the other.* Note the shoulders ! They have gained two inches in width relative to the hips, as compared with the figure we have been examining. On the other hand, the girth at the hips is greater, show- ing more powerful muscular development. The chest is an inch and a half deeper, while the abdominal measure is fully two inches deeper. These increased develop- ments are all over and above what the mere increase in stature would call for. As to the general development of the muscular sy.stem, you v.'ill see there is simply no com- parison. "Now, what is the explanation? Simply the effect upon woman of the full, free, un- trammelled physical life to which her eco- nomic independence opened the way. To develop the shoulders, arms, chest, loins, legs, and body generally, exercise is needed — not mild and gentle, but vigorous, con- tinuous exertion, undertaken, not spasmodic- ally, but regularly. There is no dispensation of Providence that will, or ever would, give a woman physical development on any other terms than those by which men have acquired their development. But your women had re- course to no such means. Their work had been confined for countless ages to a multi- plicity of petty tasks — hand work and finger work — tasks wearing to body and mind in the extreme, but of a sort wholly failing to provoke that reaction of the vital forces which builds up and develops the parts exercised. From time immemorial the boy had gone out to dig and hunt with his father, or contend for the mastery with other youths, while the girl stayed at home to spin and bake. Up to fifteen she might share with her brother a few of his more insipid sports, but with the beginnings of womanhood came the end of all participation in active physical outdoor life. What could be expected save what resulted — a dwarfed and enfeebled physique, and a semi-invalid existence ? The only wonder is that, after so long a period of bodily repres- sion and perversion, the feminine physique should have responded, by so great an im- provement in so brief a period, to the free life opened up to woman within the last century." "We had very many beautiful women; physically perfect they seemed at least to 'IS," I said. "Of course you had, and no doubt they were the perfect types you deemed them," replied the doctor. "They showed you what Nature meant the whole sex to be. But am I wrong in assuming that ill-health was a general condition among your women ? Cer- tainly the records tell us so. If we may be- lieve them, four-fifths of the practice of doctors was among women, and it seemed to do t]icm mighty little good either, although perhaps I ought not to reflect on my own profession. The fact is, they could not do anything, and probably knew they couldn't so long as the social customs governing women remained unchanged." "Of course you are right enough as to the general fact," I replied. " Indeed, a great writer had given currency to a generally accepted maxim when he said that invalidism was the normal condition of woman." "I remember that expression. . What a con- fession it was of the abject failure of your civilisation to solve the most fundamental proposition of happiness for half the race ! Woman's invalidism was one of the great tragedies of your civilisation, and her physi- cal rehabilitation is one of the gi-eatest single EQUALITY 63 elements in the total increment of happiness which economic equality has brought the human race. Consider what it implied in the transformation of the woman's world of sighs and tears and suffering, as j'ou know it, into the woman's world of to-day, with its atmo- sphere of cheer and joy, and overflowing vigour and vitality ! " "But," said I, "one thing is not quite clear to me. Without being a physician, or knowing more of such matters than a young man might be supposed to, I have yet under- stood in a general way that the weakness and delicacy of women's pliysical condition had their causes in certain natural disabili- ties of the sex." "Yes, I know it was the general notion in your day that woman's physical constitution doomed her by its necessary effect to be sick, wretched, and unhappy, and that at most her condition could not be rendered Tnore than tolerable in a physical sense. A more blight- ing blasphemy against Nature never found expression. No natural function ought to cause constant suffering or disease; and if it does, the rational inference is that some- thing is wrong in the circumstances. The Orientals invented the myth of Eve and the apple, and the curse pronounced upon her, to explain the sorrows and infirmities of the sex, which were, in fact, a consequence, not of God's wrath, but of man-made conditions and customs. If you once admit that these sorrows and infirmities are inseparable from woman's natural constitution, why, then, there is no logical explanation but to accept that myth as a matter of history. There were, however, plentiful illustrations already in your day of the great differences in the physical conditions of women, under different circumstances and different social environ- 'ments, to convince unprejudiced minds that thoroughly healthful conditions, which should be maintained a sufliciently long period, would lead to a physical rehabilitation for woman that would c[uite redeem from its un- deserved obloquy the reputation of her Creator." "Am I to understand that maternity now is unattended with risk or suffering ? " "It is not nowadays an experience which is considered at all critical either in its actual occurrence or consequences. As to the other supposed natural disabilities which your wise men used to make so much of as excuses for keeping women in economic subjection, they have ceased to involve any physical disturb- ance whatever. "And the end of this physical rebuilding of the feminine physique is not yet in view. While men still retain superiority in certain lines of athletics, we believe the sexes will yet stand on a plane of entire physical equality, with differences only as between individuals." "There is one question," said I, "which this wonderful physical rebirth of woman suggests. You say that she is already the physical equal of man, and that your phy- siologists anticipate in a few generations more her evolution to a complete equality with him. That amounts to saying, does it not, that normally and potentially she always has been man's physical equal, and that nothing but adverse circumstances and conditions have ever made her seem less than his equal? " ' "Certainly." "How, then, do you account for the fact that she has in all ages and countries since the dawn of history, with perhaps a few doubtful and transient exceptions, been his physical subject and thrall? If she ever was his equal, why did she cease to become so, and by a rule so universal? If her in- feriority since historic times may be ascribed to unfavourable man-made conditions, why, if she was his equal, did she permit those conditions to be imposed upon her ? A philo- sophical theory as to how a condition is to cease should contain a rational suggestion as to how it arose." "Very true indeed," replied the doctor. "Your question is practical. The theory of those who hold that woman will yet be man's full equal in physical vigour necessarily im- plies, as you suggest, that she must probably once have been his actual equal, and calls for an explanation of the loss of that equality. Suppose man and woman actual physical equals at some point of the past. There re- mains a radical difference in their relation as sexes — namely, that man can passionally appropriate woman against her will if he can overpower her, while woman cannot, even if disposed, so appropriate man without his full volition, however great her superiority of force. I have often speculated as to the reason of this i-adical difference, lying as it does at the root of all the sex tyranny of the past, now happily for evermore replaced by mutuality. It has sometimes seemed to me that it was Nature's provision to keep the race alive in periods of its evolution when life was not worth living save for a far-off posterity's sake. This end, we may say, she shrewdly secured by vesting the aggressive and appropriating power in the sex relation in that sex which had to bear the least part of the consequences resultant on its exercise. We may call the device a rather mean one on Nature's part, but it was well calculated to effect the purpose. But for it, owing to the natural and rational re- luctance of the child-bearing sex to assume a burden so bitter and so seemingly profit- less, the race might easily have been exposed to the risk of ceasing utterly during thb darker periods of its upward evolution. "But let us come back to the specific ques- tion we were talking about. Suppose man and woman in some former age to have been, on the whole, physically equal, sex for sex. Nevertheless, there would be many indivl- 64 EQUALITY dual variations. Some of each sex would be stronger than others of their own sex. Some men would be stronger than some women, and as many women be stronger than some men. Very good : we know that well within historic times the savage method of taking wives has been by forcible capture. Much more may we suppose force to have been used wherever possible in more primi- tive periods. Now, a strong woman would have no object to gain in making captive a weaker man for any sexual purpose, and would not therefore pursue him. Conversely, however, strong men would have an object in making captive and keeping as their wives women weaker than themselves. In seeking to capture wives, men would naturally avoid the stronger women, whom they might have difficulty in dominating, and prefer as mates the weaker individuals, who would be less able to resist their will. On the other hand, the weaker of the men would find it rela- tively difficult to capture any mates at all, and would be consequently less likely to leave progeny. Do you see the inference ? " "It is plain enough," I replied. "You mean that the stronger women and the weaker men would both be discriminated against, and that the types which survived would be the stronger of the men and the weaker of the women." "Precisely so. Now, suppose a difference in the physical strength of the sexes to have become well established through this pro- cess in prehistoric times, before the dawn of civilisation, the rest of the story follows very simply. The now confessedly dominant sex would, of course, seek to retain and in- crease its domination, and the now fully subordinated sex would in time come to re- gard the inferiority to which it was born as natural, inevitable, and Heaven-ordained. And so it would go on as it did go on, until the world's awakening, at the end of the last century, to the necessity and possibility of a reorganisation of human society on a moral basis, the first principle of v/hich must be the equal liberty and dignity of all human beings. Since then women have been recon- quering, as they will later fully reconquer, their pristine physical equality with men." "A rather alarming notion occurs to me," said I. "What if woman should in the end not only equal but excel man in physical and mental powers, as he has her in the past, and what if she should take as mean an advantage of that superiority as he did." The doctor laughed. "I think you need not be apprehensive that such a superiority, even if attained, would be abused. Not that women, as such, are any more safely to be trusted with irresponsible power than men, but for the reason that the race is rising fast towards the plane already in part at- tained in which spiritual forces will fully dominate all things, and questions of physi- cal power will cease to be of any importance in human relations. The control and leading of humanity go already largely, and are plainly destined soon to go wholly, to those who have the largest souls — that is to say, to those who partake most of the Spirit of the Greater Self j and that condition is one which in itself is the most absolute guaran- tee against the misuse of that power for selfish ends, seeing that with such misuse it would cease to be a power." "The Greater Self — what does that mean? " I asked. "It is one of our names for the soul and for God," replied the doctor, "but that is too great a theme to enter on now." CHAPTER XXII ECONOMIC SUICIDE OF THE PROFIT SYSTEM. The morning following Edith received a call to report at her post of duty for some special- occasion. After she had gone, I sought out the doctor in the library, and began to ply him with questions, of which, as usual, a store had accumulated in my mind overnight. "If you desire to continue your historical studies this morning," he said presently, "I am going to propose a change of teachers." "I am very well satisfied with the one whom Providence assigned to me," I an- swered, "but it is quite natural you should want a little relief from such persistent cross-questioning." "It is not that at all," replied the doctor. "I am sure no one could conceivably have a more inspiring task than mine has been, nor have I any idea of giving it up as yet._ But it occurrecl to me that a little change in the method and medium of instruction this morn- ing might be agreeable." "Who is to be the new teacher?" I askecL EQUALITY 65 "There are to be a number of them, and they are not teachers at all, but pupils." "Come, doctor/' I protested, "don't you think a man in my position has enough riddles to guess, without making them up for him? " "It sounds like a riddle, doesn't it? But it 13 not. However, I will hasten to ex- plain. As one of those citizens to whom for supposed public services the people have voted the blue ribbon, I have various honor- ary functions as to public matters, and especi- ally educational affairs. This morning I have notice of an examination at ten o'clock of the ninth grade in the Arlington School. They have been studying the history of the period before the great Revolution, and are going to give their general impressions of it. I thought that perhaps, by way of a change, you might be interested in listening to them, especially in view of the special topic they are going to discuss. I assured the doctor that no programme could promise more entertainment. "What is the topic they discuss?" I inquired. "The profit system as a method of econo- mic suicide is their theme," replied the doctor. "In our talks hitherto we have chiefly touched on the moral wrongfulness of the old economic order. In the discussion we shall listen to this morning there will be no reference unless incidentally to moral considerations. The young people will en- deavour to show us that there were certain inherent and fatal defects in private capital- ism as a machine for producing wealth, which, quite apart from its ethical chai^ac- ter, made its abolition necessary if the race was ever to get out of the mire of poverty." "That is a very different doctrine from the preaching I used to hear," I said. "The clergy and moralists in general assured us that there were no social evils for which moral and religious medicine was not ade- quate. Poverty, they said, was in the end the result of human depravity, and would disappear if everybody would only be good." "So we read," said the doctor. "How far the clergy and the moralists preached this doctrine with a professional motive as cal- culated to enhance the importance of their services as moral instructors, how far they merely echoed it as an excuse for mental in- dolence, and how far they may really have been sincere, we cannot judge at this dis- tance, but certainly more injurious nonsense was never taught. The industrial and com- mercial system by which the labour of a great population is organised and directed constitutes a complex machine. If the machine is constructed unscientifically, it will result in loss and disaster, without the slightest regard to whether the managers are the rarest of saints or the worst of sinners. The world always has had, and will have, need of all the virtue and true religion that men can be induced to practise; but to tell farmers that personal religion will take the place ot a scientific agriculture, or the master of an unseaworthy ship that the practice of good morals will bring his craft to shore, would be no greater childishness than the priests and moralists of your day committed, in assuring a world beggared by a crazy economic system that the secret of plenty was good works and personal piety. History gives a bitter chapter to these blind guides, who, during the revolutionary period, did far more harm than those who openly defended the older order, because, while the brutal frank- ness of the latter repelled good men, the former misled them and long diverted from the guilty system the indignation which otherwise would have sooner destroyed it. "And just hero let me say, Julian, as a most important point for you to remember in the history of the great Revolution, that it was not until the people had outgrown this childish teaching, and saw the causes of the world's want and misery, not primarily in human depravity, but in the economic mad- ness of the profit system on which private capitalism depended, that the Revolution began to go forward in earnest." Now, although the doctor had said that the school we were to visit was in Arlington, which I knew to be some distance out of the city, and that the examination would take place at ten o'clock, he continued to sit com- fortably in his chair, though the time was five minutes to ten. "Is this Arlington the same town that was a suburb of the city in my time?" I presently ventured to inquire. "Certainly." "It was then ten or twelve miles from the city," I said. "It has not been moved, I assure you," said the doctor. "Then if not, and if the examination, is to begin in five minutes, are we not likely to be late?" I mildly observed. "Oh no," replied the doctor, "there are three or four minutes left yet." "Doctor," said I, "I have been introduced within the last few days to many new and speedy modes of locomotion, but I can't see how you are going to get me to Arlington from here in time for the examination that begins three minutes hence, unless you reduce me to an electrified solution, send me by wire, and have me precipitated back to my shape at the other end of the line ; and even in that case I should suppose we had no time to waste." "We shouldn't have, certainly, if we were intending to go to Arlington even by that process. It did not occur to me that you would care to go, or we might just as well have started earlier. It is too bad ! " "I did not care about visiting Arlington," I replied, "but I assumed that it would be rather necessary to do so if I were to attend an examination at that place. I see my 66 EQUALITY mistake. I ought to have le4.:at by this time not to take for granted that any of what we used to consider the laws of Nature are still in force." "The laws of Nature are all right," laughed the doctor. "But is it possible that Edith has not shown you the electroscope? " "What is that?" f asked. "It does for vision what the telephone does for hearing," replied the doctor, and, leading the way to the music room, he showed me the apparatus. "It is ten o'clock," he said, "and we have no time for explanations now. Take this chair and adjust the instrument as you see me do. Now ! " Instantly, without warning, or the faintest preparation for what was coming, I found myself looking into the interior of a large room. Some twenty boys and girls, thirteen to fourteen years of age, occupied a double row of chairs arranged in the form of a semi- circle about a desk at which a young man was seated with his back to us. The rows of students were facing us, apparently not twenty feet away. The rustling of their garments and every change of expression in their mobile faces were as distinct to my eyes and ears as if we had been directly behind the teacher, as indeed we seemed to be. At the moment the scene had flashed upon me I was in the act of making some remark to the doctor. As I checked myself he laughed. "You need not be afraid of interrupting them," he said. "They don't see or hear us, though we both see and hear them so well. They are a dozen miles away." "Good heavens!" I whispered — for, in spite of his assurance, I could not realise that they did not hear me — "are we here or there ? " "We are here certainly," replied the doctor, "but our eyes and ears are there. This is the electroscope and telephone com- bined. We could have heard the examina- tion just as well without the electroscope, but I thought you would be better enter- tained if you could both see and hear. Fine- looking young people, are they not? We shall see now whether they are as intelli- gent as they are handsome." How Profits cut down Consumption. "Our subject this morning," said the teacher briskly, "is 'The Economic Suicide of Production for Profit,' or ' The Hopeless- ness of the Economic Outlook of the Race under Private Capitalism.' — Now, Frank, will you tell us exactly what this proposi- tion means? " At these words one of the boys of the class rose to his feet. "It means," he said, "that communities which depended— as they had to depend, so long as private capitalism lasted— upon the motive of profit-making for the production of the things by which they lived, must always suffer poverty, because the profit system, by its necessary nature, operated to stop limit and cripple production at the point where it began to be efficient." "By what is the possible production of wealth limited?" "By its consumption." "May not production fall short of possible consumption? May not the demand for con- sumption exceed the resources of produc- tion?" "Theoretically it may, but not practically - — that is, speaking of demand as limited to rational desires, and not extending to merely fanciful objects. Since the division of labour was introduced, and especially since the great inventions multiplied indefinitely the powers of man, production has been practi- cally limited only by the demand created by consumption." "Was this so before the great Revolution? " "Certainly. It was a truism among econo- mists that either England, Germany, or the United States alone could easily have sup- plied the world's whole consumption of manu- factured goods. No country began to pro- duce up to its capacity in any line." "Why not? " "On account of the necessary law of the profit system, by which it operated to limit production." "In what way did this law operate?" "By creating a gap between the producing and consuming power of the community, the result of which was that the people were not able to consume as much as they could pro- duce." "Please tell us just how the profit system led to this result." "There being, under the old ^ order of things," replied the boy Frank, "no collec- tive agency to undertake the organisation of labour and exchange, that function naturally fell into the hands of enterprising individuals who, because the undertaking called for much capital, had to be capitalists. They were of two general classes — the capitalist who or- ganised labour for production ; and the traders, the middlemen, and storekeepers, who organised distribution, and having col- lected all the varieties of products in the market, sold them again to the general public for consumption. The great mass of the people — nine, perhaps, out of ten — were wage- earners who sold their labour to the produc- ing capitalists ; or small first-hand producers, who sold their personal product to the middle- men. The farmers were of the latter class. With the money the wage-earners and farmers received in v/ages, or as the price of their produce, they afterward went into the market, where the products of all sorts were assembled, and bought back as much as they could for consumption. Now, of course, the capitalists, whether engaged in organis- EQUALITY 67 ing production or distribution, had to have some inducement for risking their capital and spending their time in this work. That in- ducement was profit." "Tell us how the profits were collected." "The manufacturing or employing capi- talists paid the people who worked for them, and the merchants paid the farmers for their products in tokens called money, which were good to buy back the blended products of all in the market. But the capitalists gave neither the wage-earner nor the farmer enough of these money tokens to buy back the equivalent of the product of his labour. The difference which the capi- talists kept back for themselves was their profit. It was collected by putting a higher price on the products when sold in the stores than the cost of the product had been to the capitalists." "Give us an example." " We will take then, first, the manufac- turing capitalist, who employed labour. Suppose he manufactured shoes. Suppose for each pair of shoes he paid ten cents to the tanner for leather, twenty cents for the labour of puting the shoe together, and ten cents for all other labour in any way en- tering into the making of the shoe, so that the pair cost him in actual outlay forty cents. He sold the shoes to a middleman for, say, seventy-five cents. The middle- man sold them to the retailer for a dollar, and the retailer sold them over his counter to the consumer for a dollar and a half. Take the next case of the farmer, who sold not merely his labour like the wage-earner, but his labour blended with his material. Suppose he sold his wheat to the grain merchant for forty cents a bushel. The grain merchant, in selling it to t^ie flouring mill, would ask, say, sixty cents a bushel, the flouring mill would sell it to the wholesale flour merchant for a price over and above the labour cost of milling at a figure which would include a handsome profit for him. The wholesale flour merchant would add another profit in selling to the retail grocer, and the last yet another in selling to the consumer. So that finally the equivalent of the bushel of wheat in finished flour as bought back by the original farmer for con- sumption would cost him, on account of profit charges alone, over and above the actual labour cost of intermediate pro- cesses, perhaps twice what he received for it from the grain merchant." "Very well," said the teacher. "Now for the practical effect of this system." " The practical effect," replied the boy, "was necessarily to create a gap between the producing and consuming power of those engaged in the production of the things upon which profits were charged. Their ability to consume would be measured by the value of the money tokens they received for pro- ducing the goods, which by the statement was less than the value put upon those goods in the stores. That difference would repre- sent a gap between what they could produce and what they could consume." MARGARET TELLS ABOUT THE DEADLY GAP. "Margaret," said the teacher, "you may now take up the subject where Frank leaves it, and tell us what would be the effect upon the economic system of a people of such a gap between its consuming and producing power as Frank shows us was caused by profit taking." "The effect," said the girl who answered to the name of Margaret, "would depend oa two factors : first, on how numerous a body were the wage-earners and first producers, on whose products the profits were charged ; and, second, how large was the rate of profit charged, and the consequent discre- pancy between the producing and consuming power of each individual of the working body. If the producers on whose product a profit was charged were but a handful of the people, the total effect of their inability to buy back and consume more than a part of their product would create but a slight gap between the producing and consuming power of the community as a whole. If, on the other hand, they constituted a large propor- tion of the whole population, the gap would be correspondingly great, and the reactive effect to check production would be disas- trous in proportion." "And what was the actual proportion of the total population made up by the wage- earners and original producers, who by the profit system were prevented from consum- ing as much as they produced ? " " It constituted, as Frank has said, at least nine-tenths of the whole people, prob- ably more. The profit takers, whether they were organisers of production or of distri- bution, were a group numerically insignifi- cant, while those on whose product the profits were charged constituted the bulk of the community." "Very well. We will now consider the other factor on which the size of the gap between the producing and consuming power of the community created by the profit sys- tem was dependent — namely, the rate of profits charged. Tell us, then, what was the rule followed by the capitalists in charging profits. No doubt, as rational men who realised the effect of high profits to prevent consumption, they made a point of making their profits as low as possible." " On the contrary, the capitalists made their profits as high as possible. Their maxim was, 'Tax the traffic all it will bear.' " "Do you mean that instead of trying to minimise the effect of profit-charging to diminish consumption, they deliberately 68 EQUALITY sought to magnify it to the greatest possible degree ? " "I mean that precisely," replied Mar- garet. "The golden rule of the profit sys- tem, the great motto of the capitalists, was, ' Buy in the Cheapest Market, and sell in the Dearest.' " "What did that mean?" " It meant that the capitalist ought to pay the least possible to those who worked for him or sold him their produce, and on the other hand should charge the highest possible price for their product when he offered it for sale to the general public in the market." "That general public," observed the teacher, " being chiefly composed of the workers to whom he and his fellow-capitalists had just been paying as nearly nothing as possible for creating the product which they were now expected to buy back at the highest possible price." " Certainly." "Well, let us try to realise the full economic wisdom of this rule as applied to the business of a nation. It means, doesn't it, Get something for nothing, or as near nothing as you can. Well, then, if you can get it for absolutely nothing, you are carry- ing out the maxim to perfection. For example, if a manufacturer could hypnotise his workmen so as to get them to work for him for no wages at all, he would be realis- ing the full meaning of the maxim, would he not?" " Certainly : a manufacturer who could do that, and then put the product of his un- paid workmen on the market at the usual price, w.ould have become rich in a very short time." " And the same would be true, I sup- pose, of a grain merchant who was able to take such advantage of the farmers as to obtain their grain for nothing, afterward selling it at the top price." " Certainly. He would become a million- aire at once." " Well, now, suppose the secret of this hypnotising process should get abroad among the capitalists engaged in production and ex- change, and should be generally applied by them so that all of them were able to get workmen without wages, and buy produce without paying anything for it, then doubt- less all the capitalists at once would become fabulously rich." " Not at all." " Dear me ! why not ? " " Because if the whole body of wage- earners failed to receive any wages for their work, and the farmers received nothing for their produce, there would be nobody to buy anything, and the market would collap.se entirely. There would be no demand for any goods except what little the capitalists themselves and their friends could consume. The working people would then presently starve, and the capitalists be left to do their own work." " Then it appears that what would be good for the particular capitalist, if he alone did it, would be ruinous to him and everybody else if all the capitalists did it. Why was this ? " " Because the particular capitalist, in ex- pecting to get rich by underpaying his employees, would calculate on selling his produce, not to the particular group of workmen he had cheated, but to the com- munity at large, consisting of the employees of other capitalists not so successful in cheat- ing their workmen, who therefore would have something to buy with. The success of his trick depended on the presumption that his fellow-capitalists would not succeed in practising the same trick. If that presump- tion failed, and all the capitalists succeeded at once in dealing with their employees as all were trying to do, the result would be to stop the whole industrial system outright." " It appears, then, that in the profit sys- tem we have an economic method, of which the working rule only needed to be applied thoroughly enough in order to bring the system to a complete standstill, and that all which kept the system going was the diffi- culty found in fully carrying out the work- ing rule ? " "That was precisely so," replied the girl; "the individual capitalist grew rich fastest who succeeded best in beggaring those whose labour or produce he bought ; but obviously it was only necessary for enough capitalists to succeed in so doing in order to involve capitalists and people alike in general ruin. To make the sharpest possible bargain with the employer or producer, to give him the least possible return for his labour or pro- duct, was the ideal every capitalist must constantly keep before him, and yet it was mathematically certain that every such sharp bargain tended to undermine the whole busi- ness fabric, and that it was only necessary that enough capitalists should succeed in making enough such sharp bargains to topple the fabric over." "One question more. The bad effects of a bad system are aKvays aggravated by the wilfulness of men who take advantage of it, and so, no doubt, the profit system was made by selfish men to work worse than it might have done. Now, suppose the capitalists had all been fair-minded men and not ex- tortioners, and had made their charges for their services as small as was consistent with reasonable gains and self-protection, would that course have involved such a reduction of profit charges as would have greatly helped the people to consume their products and thus to promote production ? " "It would not," replied the girl. "The antagonism of the profit .system to effecti\-te wealth production arose from causes inherent in and inseparable from private capitalism; EQUALITY 69 and BO long as private capitalism was re- tained, those causes must have made the profit system inconsistent with any economic improvement in the condition of the people, even if the capitalists had been angels. The root of the evil was not moral, but strictly economic." "But would not the rate of profits have been much reduced in the case supposed?" "In some instances temporarily no doubt, but not generally, and in no case perman- ently. It is doubtful if profits, on the whole, were higher than they had to be to encourage capitalists to undertake production and trade." "Tell us why the profits had to be so large for this purpose." "Legitimatd profits under private capital- ism," replied the girl Margaret^ — "that is, such profits as men going into production or trade must in self-protection calculate upon, however well disposed toward the public— consisted of three elements, all growing out of conditions inseparable from private capitalism, none of which longer exist. First, the capitalist must calculate on at least as large a return on the capital he was to put into the venture as he could obtain by lending it on good security — that is to say, the ruling rate of interest. If he were not sure of that, he would prefer to lend his capital. But that was not enough. In going into business he risked the entire loss of his capital, as he would not if it were lent on good security- Therefore, in addition to the ruling rate of interest on capital, his profits must cover the cost of insurance on the capital risked — that is, there must be a prospect of gains large enough in case the venture succeeded to cover the risk of loss of capital in case of failure. If the chances of failure, for insta-nce, were even, he must calculate on more than a hundred per cent, profit in case of success. In point of fact, the chances of failure in business and loss of capital in those days were often far more than even. Business was indeed little more than a speculative risk, a lottery in which the blanks greatly outnumbered the prizes. The prizes to tempt investment must there- fore be large. Moreover, if a capitalist were personally to take charge of the business in which he invested his capital, he would reasonably have expected adequate wages of superintendence — compensation, in other words, for his skill and judgment in navigat- ing the venture through the stormy waters of the business sea, compared with which, as it Civas in that day, the North Atlantic in mid- winter is a mill-pond. For this service he would be considered justified in making a large addition to the margin of profit charged." "Then you conclude, Margaret, that, even if disposed to be fair toward the community, a capitalist of those days would not have been able safely to reduce his rate of profits sufficiently to bring the people much nearer the point of being able to consume their products than they were?" "Precisely so. The root of the evil lay in the tremendous difficulties, complexities, mis- takes, risks, and wastes with which private capitalism necessarily involved the processes of production and distribution, which under public capitalism have become so entirely simple, expeditious, and certain." "Then it seems it is not necessary to con- sider our capitalist ancestors moral monsters in order to account for the tragical outcome of their economic methods?" "By no means. The capitalists were no doubt good and bad, like other people, but probably stood up as well as any people could against the depraving influences of a system which in fifty years would have turned heaven itself into hell." M/VRION EXPLAINS OvER-PRODUCTION. "That will do, Margaret," said the teacher. "We will next ask you, Marion, to assist us in further elucidating the subject. If the profit system worked according to the de- scription we have listened to, we shall be prepai'ed to learn that the economic situation was marked by the existence of large stores of consumable goods in the hands of the profit takers which they would be glad to sell, and, on the other hand, by a great popu- lation composed of the original producers of the goods, who vv'ere in sharp need of the goods, but unable to purchase them. How does this theory agree with the facts stated in the histories? " "So well," replied Marion, "that one might almost think you had been reading them." 'At which the class smiled, and so did I. "Describe, without unnecessary infusion of humour — for the subject was not humorous to our ancestors — the condition of things to which you refer. Did our great-grandfathers recognise in this excess of goods over buyers a cause of economic disturbance?" "They recognised it as the great and con- stant cause of such disturbance. The per- petual burden of their complaints was dull times, stagnant trade, glut of products. Oc- casionally they had brief periods of what they called good times, resulting from a little bi-isker buying, but in the best of what they called good times the condition of the mass of the people was what we should call ab- jectly wretched." j "What was the term by which they most commonly described the presence m the market of more products than could be .sold?" "Over-production." "Was it meant by this expression that ';„there had been actually more food, clothing, ''and other good things produced than the people conldi use ? " 70 EQUALITY "Not at all. The mass of the people were in great need always, and in more bitter need than ever, precisely at the times when the business machine was clogged by what they called over-production. The people, if they could have obtained access to the over- produced goods, would at any time have con- sumed them in a moment and loudly called for more. The trouble was, as has been said, that the profits charged by the capitalist manufacturers and traders had put them out of the power of the original producers to buy back with the price they had received for their labour or products." "To what have our historians been wont to compare the condition of the community under the profit system?" "To that of a victim of the disease of chronic dyspepsia, so prevalent among our ancestors." "Please develop the parallel." ^ "In dyspepsia the patient suffered from inability to assimilate food. With abundance of dainties at hand, he wasted away from the lack of power to absorb nutriment. Al- though unable to eat enough to support life, he was constantly suffei-ing the pangs of indigestion, and while actually starving for want of nourishment, was tormented by the sensation of an ovei'loaded stomach. Now, the economic condition of a community under the profit system afforded a striking analogy to the plight of such a dyspeptic. The masses of the people were always in bitter need of all things, and were abundantly able by their industry to provide for all their needs, but the profit system would not per- mit them to consume even what they pro- duced, much less pi'oduce what they could. No sooner did they take the first edge off their appetite than the commercial system was seized with the pangs of acute indi- gestion and all the symptoms of an over- loaded system, which nothing but a course of starvation would relieve, after which the experience would be repeated with the same result, and so on indefinitely." "Can you explain why such an extraor- dinary misnomer as over-production should be applied to a situation that would better be described as famine ; why a condition should be said to result from glut when it was obviously the consequence of enforced abstinence? Surely, the mistake was equiva- lent to diagnosing a case of starvation as one of gluttony." "It was because the economists and the learned classes, who alone had a voice, re- garded the economic question entirely from the side of the capitalists, and ignored the interest of the people. From the point of view of the capitalist, it was a case of over- production when he had charged profits on products which took them beyond the power of the people to buy, and so the economist writing in his interest called it. From the point of view of the capitalist, and conse- quently of the economist, the only question was the condition of the market, not of the people. They did not concern themselves whether the people were famished or glutted ; the only question was the condition of the market. Their maxim that demand governed supply, and supply would always meet de- mand, referred in no way to the demand representing human need, but wholly to an artificial thing called the market, itself the product of the profit system." "What was the market?" "The market was the number of those who had money to buy with. Those who had no money were non-existent so far as the market was concerned, and in proportion as people had little money they were a small part of the market. The needs of the market were the needs of those who had the money to supply their needs with. The rest, who had needs in plenty, but no money, were not counted, though they were as a hundred to one of the moneyed. The market was sup- plied when those who could buy had enough, though the most of the people had little, and many had nothing. The market was glutted when the well-to-do were satisfied, though starving and naked mobs might riot in the streets." "Would such a thing be possible nowadays as full store-houses and a-iiungry and naked people existing at the same time ? " "Of course not. Until every one was satis- fied there could be no such thing as over- product now. Our system is so arranged that there can be too little nowhere so long as there is too much anywhere. But the old system had no circulation of the blood." "What name did our ancestors give to the various economic disturbances which they ascribed to over-production?" "They called them commercial crises. That is to say, there was a chronic state of glut which might be called a chronic crisis, but every now and then the arrears resulting from the constant discrepancy be- tween consumption and production accumu- lated to such a degree as to nearly block business. When this happened they called it, in distinction from the chronic glut, a crisis or panic, on account of the blind terror which it caused." "To what cause did they ascribe the "To almost everything besides the per- fectly plain reason. An extensive literature seems to have been devoted to the subject. There are shelves of it up at the museum which I have been trying to go through, or at least to skim over, in connection with this study. If the books were not so dull in style they would be very amusing, just on account of the extraordinary ingenuity the writers display in avoiding the natural and obvious explanation of the facts they dis- cuss. They even go into astronomy." "What do you mean?" EQUALITY 71 "1 suppose the class will think I am romancing, but it is a fact that one of the most famous of the theories by which our ancestors accounted for the periodical break- downs of business resulting from the profit system was the so-called ' sun-spot theory.' During the first half of the nineteenth cen- tury it so happened that there were severe crises at periods about t^n or eleven years apart. Now, it happened that sun-spots were at a maximum about every ten years, and a certain eminent English economist concluded that these sun-spots caused the panics. Later on, it seems, this theory was found unsatis- factory, and gave place to the lack-of-con- fidence explanation." "And what was that?" "I could not exactly make out, but it seemed reasonable to suppose that there must have developed a considerable lack of con- fidence in an economic system which turned out such results." "Marion, I fear you do not bring a spirit of sympathy to the study of the ways of our forefathers, and without sympathy we can- not understand others." "I am afraid they are a little too other for me to understand." The class tittered, and Marion was allowed to take her seat. John tells about CoMrExiTioN. "Now, John," said the teacher, "we will ask you a few questions. We have seen by what process a chronic glut of goods in the market resulted from the operation of the profit system to put products out of reach of the purchasing power of the people at large. Now, what notable characteristic and main feature of the business system of our fore- fathers resulted from the glut thus pro- duced? " "I suppose you refer to competition?" said the boy. "Yes. What was competition and what caused it, referring especially to the com- petition between capitalists?" "It resulted, as you intimate, from the in- sufiBcient consuming power of the public at large, which in turn resulted from the profit system. If the wage-earners and first-hand producers had received purchasing power suflBcient to enable them to take up their numerical proportion of the total product offered in the market, it would have been cleared of goods without any effort on the part of sellers, for the buyers would have sought the sellers and been enough to buy all. But the purchasing power of the masses, owing to the profits charged on their pro- ducts, being left wholly inadequate to take those products out of the market, there natur- ally followed a great struggle between the capitalists engaged in production and distri- bution to divert the most possible of the all too scanty buying each in his own direction. The total buying could not, of course, be in- creased a dollar without relatively or abso- lutely increasing the purchasing power in tho people's hands, but it was possible by effort to alter the particular directions in which it should be expended, and this was the sole aim and effect of competition. Our fore- fathers thought it a wonderfully fine thing. They called it the life of trade, but, as we have seen, it was merely a symptom of the effect of the profit system to cripple consump- tion." "What were the methods which the capi- talists engaged in production and exchange made use of to bring trade their way, as they used to say? " "First was direct solicitation of buyers and a shameless vaunting of every one's wares by himself and his hired mouthpieces, coupled with a boundless depreciation of rival sailers and the wares they offered. Unscrupulous and unbounded misrepresentation was so uni- versally the nile in business that oven when here and there a dealer told the truth he commanded no credence. History indicates that lying has always been moi-e or less common, but it remained for the competi- tive system as fully developed in the nine- teenth century to make it the means of live- lihood of the whole world. According to our grandfathers — and they certainly ought to have known — the only lubricant which was adapted to the machinery of the profit system was falsehood, and the demand for it was unlimited." "And all this ocean of lying, you say, did not and could not increase the total of goods consumed by a dollar's worth." "Of course not. Nothing, as I said, could increase that save an increase in the pur- chasing power of the people. The system of solicitation or advertising, as it was called, far from increasing the total sale, tended powerfully to decrease it." "How so? " "Because it was prodigiously expensive, and the expense had to be added to the price of the goods and paid by the consiuner, who therefore could buy just so much less than if he had been left in peace and the price of the goods had be'en reduced by the saving in advertising." "You say that the only way by which consumption could have been increased was by increasing the purchasing power in tha hands of the people relatively to the goods to be bought. Now our forefathers claimed that this was just what competition did. They claimed that it was a potent means of reducing prices and cutting down the rate of profits, thereby relatively increasing the pur- chasing power of'the masses. Was this claim well based ? " "The rivalry of the capitalists among themselves," replied the lad, "to tempt thj buyers' custom, certainly prompted them to n EQUALITY undersell one another by nominal reductions of prices, but it was rarely that these nominal - reductions, though often in appearance very large, really represented in the long run any economic benefit to the people at large, for they were generally effected by means which nullified their practical value." "Please make that clear." "Well, naturally the capitalist would prefer to reduce the prices of his goods in such a way, if possible, as not to reduce his profits, and that would be his study. There ^■were numerous devices which he employed to this end. The first was that of reducing the quality and real worth of the goods on which the price was nominally cut down. This was done by adulteration and scamped work, and the practice extended in the nine- teenth century to every branch of industry and commerce, and affected pretty nearly all articles of human consumption. It came to that point, as the histories tell us, that no one could ever depend on anything he purchased being what it appeared or was represented. The whole atmosphere of trade was mephitic with chicane. It became the policy of the capitalists engaged in the most important lines of manufacture to turn out goods expressly made with a view to wear- ing as short a time as possible, so as to need the speedier renewal. They taught their very machines to be dishonest, and corrupted steel and brass. Even the purblind people of that day recognised the vanity of the pretended reductions in price by the epithet 'cheap and nasty,' with which they charac- terised cheapened goods. All this class of reductions, it is plain, cost the consumer two dollars for every one it professed to save him. As a single illustration of the utterly deceptive character of reductions in price under the profit system, it may be re- called that towards the close of the nine- teenth century in America, after almost magical inventions for reducing the cost of shoemaking, it was a common saying that although the price of shoes was considerably lower than fifty years before, when they were made by hand, yet that later-made shoes were so much poorer in quality as to be really quite as expensive as the earlier." "Were adulteration and scamped work the only devices by which sham reductions of prices were effected?" "There were two other ways. The first was where the capitalist saved his profits while reducing the price of goods by taking the reduction out of the wages he had paid his employees. This was the method by which the redactions in price were very generally brought about. Of course, the pro- cess was one which crippled the purchasing power of the community by the amount of the lowered wages. By this means the par- ticular group of capitalists cutting down wages might quicken their sales for a time until other capitalists likewise cut wages. In the end nobody was helped, not even the capitalist. Then there was the third of the three main kinds of reductions in price to bo credited to competition — namely, that made on account of labour-saving machinery or other inventions which enabled the capitalist to discharge his labourers. The reduction Id price on the goods wa.s here based, as in the former case, on the reduced amount of wages paid out, and consequently meant a reduced purchasing power on the part of the community, which, in the tot-al effect, usually nullified the advantage of reduced price, and oft-en more than nullified it." "You have shov?n," said the teacher, "that most of the reductions of price effected by competition were reductions at the expense of the original producers or of the final consumers, and not reductions in profits. Do you mean to say that the competition of capitalists for trade never operated to reduce profits? " " Undoubtedly it did so operate in countries where, from the long operation of the profit system, surplus capital had accu- mulated so as to compete under great pres- sure for investment; but under such cir- cumstances reductions in prices, even though they might come from sacrifices of profits, usually came too late to increase the con- sumption of the people." " How too late? " "Because the capitalist had naturally re- frained from sacrificing his profits in order to reduce prices so long as he could take the cost of the reduction out of the wages of his workmen or out of the first-hand producer. That is to say, it was only when the work- ing masses had been reduced to pretty near the minimum subsiKstence point that the capitalist would decide to sacrifice a portion of his profits. By that time it was too late for the people to take advantage of the re- duction. When a population had reached that point, it had no buying power left to be stimulated. Nothing short of giving commodities away freely could help it. Accordingly, we observe that in the nine- teenth century it was always in the countries where the populations were most hopelessly poor that the prices were lowest. It was in this sense a bad sign for the economic condition of a community when the capitalist found it necessary to make a real sacrifice of profits', for it was a clear indica- tion that the working masses had been squeezed until they could be squeezed no longer." " Then, on the whole, competition was not a palliative of the profit system ? " "I think that it has been made apparent that it was a grievous aggravation of it. The desperate rivalry of the capitalists for a share in the scanty market which their own profit-taking had beggared drove them to the practice of deception and brutality, and compelled a hard-neartedness such as EQUALITY 73 we are bound to believe human beings would not under a less pressure have been " What was the general economic effect of competition ? " " It operated in all fields of industry, and in the long run for all classes, the capitalists as well as the non-capitalists, as a steady downward pull as irresistible and universal as gravitation. Those felt it first who had least capital, the wage-earners who had none, and the farmer proprietors who, hav- ing next to none, were under almost the same pressure to find a prompt market at any sacrifice of their product, as were the wage- earners to find prompt buyers for their labour. These classes were the first victims of the competition to sell in the glutted markets of things and of men. Next came the turn of the smaller capitalists, till finally only the largest were left, and these found it necessary tor self-preservation to protect themselves against the process of competi- tive decimation by the consolidation of their interests. One of the signs of the times in the period preceding the Revolution was this tendency among the great capitalists to seek refuge from the destructive efforts of com- petition through the pooling of their under- takings in great trusts and syndicates." " Suppose the Revolution had not come to interrupt that process, would a system under which capital and the control of all busi- ness had been consolidated in a few hands have been worse for the public interest than the effect of competition ? " " Such a consolidated system would, of course, have been an intolerable despotism, the yoke of which, once assumed, the race might never have been able to break. In that respect private capitalism under a con- solidated plutocracy, such as impended at the time of the Revolution, would have been a worse threat to the world's future than the competitive system ; but as to the imme- diate bearings of the two systems on human welfare, private capital in the consolidated form might have had some points of advan- tage. Being an autocracy, it would have at least given some chance to a benevolent despot to be better than the system, and to ameliorate a little the conditions of the people, and that was something competition did not allow the capitalists to do." " What do you mean ? " " I mean that under competition there •was no free play whatever allowed for the capitalist's better feelings even if he had any. He could not be better than the sys- tem. If he tried to be, the sy.stcm would crush him. He had to follow "the pace sot by his competitors or fail in business. What- ever rascality or cruelty his rivals might devise, he must imitate or drop out of the struggle. The very wickedest, meanest, and most rascally pf the competitors, the one who ground his employees lowest, adulter- ated his goods most shamefully, and lied about them most skilfully, set the pace for all the rest." " fiividently, John, if you had lived in the early part of the revolutionary agitation you would have had scant sympathy with those early reformers whose fear was lest the great monopolies would put an end to competi- tion." "I can't say whether I should have been wiser than my contemporaries in that case," replied the lad, ' but I think my gratitude to the monopolists for destroying competi- tion would have been only equalled by my eagerness to destroy the monopolists to make way for public capitalism." Robert tells about the Glut of Mex. "Now, Robert," said the teacher, "John has told us how the glut of products result- ing from the profit system caused a com- petition among capitalists to sell goods, and what its consequences were. There was, however, another sort of glut besides that of goods which resulted from the profit sys- tem. What was that?" "A glut of men," replied the bov Robert'- "Lack of buying power on the paVt of the' people whether from lack of employment or' lowered wages, meant less demand "for pro-- diicts, and that meant less work for pro- ducers. Clogged storehouses meant closocJ factories and idle populations of workers who could get no work— that is to say, the glut in the goods market caused a corresponding glut in the labour or man market. And as the glut in the goods market stimulated com- petition among the capitalists to sell their goods so likewise did the glut in the labour market stimulate an equally desperate com- petition among the workers to sell their labour. Tl^p capitalists who could not find buyers for their goods lost their money in- deed, but those who had nothing to sell but their strength and skill, and could find none to buy, must perish. The capitalist, unless his goods were perishable, could wait for a market, but the working-man must find a buyer for his labour at once or die. And in respect to this inability to wait for a market, the farmer, while te'chnically a capitalist, was little better off than the wage-earner, being, on account of the smallness of his capital, almost as unable to withhold his pro- duct as the working-man his labour. The pressing necessity of the wage-earner to sell his labour at once on any terms, and of the small capitalist to dis^pose of his product, was the means by which the great capitalists were able steadily to force down the rate of wages and the prices paid for their product to the first producers." "And was it only among the wage-earners and the small producers that this glut of men existed? " 74 EQUALITY "On the contrary every trade, every occu- pation, every art, and every profession, in- cluding the most leai-ned ones, was similarly overcrowded and those in the ranks of each regarded every fresh recruit with jealous eyes, seeing in him one more rival in the struggle for life, making it just so much more difficult than it had been before. It would seem that in those days no man could have had any satisfaction in his labour, how- ever self-denying and arduous, for he must always have Iseen haunted by the feeling that it would have been Icinder to have stood aside and let another do the work and take the pay, seeing that there was not work and pay for all." "Tell us, Robert, did not our ancestors recognise the facts of the situation you have described ? Did they not see that this glut of men indicated something out of order in the social arrangements ? " "Certainly. They professed to be much distressed over it. A large literature was de- voted to discussing why there was not enough work to go around in a world in which so much more work evidently needed to be done as incficated by its general poverty. The Congresses and Legislatures were constantly appointing commissions of learned men to investigate and report on the subject." "And did these learned men ascribe it to its obvious cause as the necessary effect of the profit system to maintain and constantly increase a gap between the consuming and producing power of the community ? " "Dear me no! To have criticised the profit system would have been flat blas- phemy. The leai-ned men called it a pro- blem — the problem of the unemployed — and gave it up as a conundrum. It was a favourite way our ancestors had of dodging questions which they could not answer with- out attacking vested interests ta call them problems, and give them up as insolvable mysteries of Divine Providence." "There was one philosopher, Robert — an Englishman — who went to the bottom of this difficulty of the glut of men resulting from the profit system. He stated the only way possible to avoid the glut, provided the profit system was retained. Do you remember his name ? " "You mean Malthus, I suppose." "Yes. What was his plan?" "He advised poor people, as the only way to avoid starvation, not to get born — that is, I mean, he advised poor people not to have children. This old fellow, as you say, was the only one of the lot who went to the root of the profit system, and saw that there was not room for it and for mankind on the earth. Regarding the profit system as a God-ordained necessity, there could be no doubt in his mind that it was mankind which must, under the circumstances, get off the '- rth. People called Malthus a cold-blooded philosopher. Perhaps he was, but certainly it was only common humanity that, so long as the profit system lasted, a red flag should be hung out on the planet, warning souls not to land except at their own risk." Emily Shows the Necessity of Waste Pipes. " I quite agree with you, Robert," said the teacher, "and now, Emily, we will ask you to take us in charge as we pursue a little further this interesting, if not very edifying theme. The economic system of production and distribution by which a nation lives may fitly be compared to a cistern with a supply pipe, representing production, by which water is pumped in; and an escape pipe, represent- ing consumption, by which the product is disposed of. When the cistern is scientifi- cally constructed the supply pipe and escape pipe correspond in capacity, so that the water may be drawn off as fast as supplied, and none be wasted by overflow. Under the profit system of our ancestors, however, the arrangement was different. Instead of corre- sponding in capacity with the supply pipe representing production, the outlet represent- ing consumption was half or two-thirds shut off by the water-gate of profits, so that it was not able to carry off more than, say, a half or a third of the supply that was pumped into the cistern through the feed pipe of production. Now, Emily, what would be the natural effect of such a lack of correspondence between the inlet and the outlet capacity of the cistern?" " Obviously," replied the girl who an- swered to the name of Emily, " the effect would be to clog the cistern, and compel the pumps to slow down to half or one-third of their capacity — namely, to the capacity of the escape pipe." " But," said the teacher, " suppose that in the case of the cistern used by our ances- tors the effect of slowing down the pump of production was to diminish still further the capacity of the escape pipe of consumption, already much too small, by depriving the working masses of even the small purchasing power they had before possessed in the form of wages for labour or prices for produce ? " "Why, in that case," replied the girl, "it is evident that since slowing down produc- tion only checked instead of hastening relief by consumption, there would be no way to avoid a stoppage of the whole service except to relieve the pressure in the cistern by opening waste pipes " " Precisely so. Well now, we are in a position to appreciate how necessary a part the waste pipes played in the economic sys- tem of our forefathers. We have seen that under that system the bulk of the people sold their labour or produce to the capi- talists, but were unable to buy back and EQUALITY consume but a small part of the result of that labour or produce in the market, the rest remaining in the hands of the capi- talists as profits. Now, the capitalists, being a very small body numerically, could con- sume upon their necessities but a petty part of these accumulated profits, and yet, if they did not get rid of them somehow, production would stop, for the capitalists absolutely controlled the initiative in production, and would have no motive to increase accumula- tions they could not dispose of. In propor- tion, moreover, as the capitalists from lack of use for more profits should slacken pro- duction, the mass of the people, finding none to hire them, or buy their produce to sell again, would lose what little consuming power they had before, and a still larger accumulation of products bo left on the capi- talists' hands. The question then is, How did the capitalists, after consuming all they -^ould of their profits upon their own necessi- ties, dispose of the surplus, so as to make room for more production? " "Of course," said the girl Emily, "if the surplus products were to be so expended as to relieve the glut, the first point was that they must be expended in such ways that there should be no return for them. They must be absolutely 'wasted — like water poured into the sea. This was accomplished by the use of the surplus products in the support of bodies of workers employed in unproductive kinds of labour. This waste labour was of two sorts — the first was that employed in wasteful industrial and commercial competi- tion ; the second was that employed in the means and services of luxury." "Tell us about the wasteful expenditure of labour in competition." "That was through the undertaking of industrial and commercial enterprises which were not called for by any increase in con- sumption, their object being merely the dis- placement of the enterprises of one capi- talist by those of another." " And was this a very large cause of waste ? " " Its magnitude may be inferred from the saying current at the time that ninety-five per cent, of industrial and commercial enterprises failed, which merely meant that in this pro- portion of instances capitalists wasted their investments in trying to fill a demand which either did not exist or was supplied already. If that estimate were even a remote sug- gestioTi of the truth, it would serve to give an idea of the enormous amounts of accumu- lated profits which were absolutely v/asted in competitive expenditure. And it must be remembered also that when a capitalist suc- ceeded in displacing another and getting away his business the total waste of capital was just as great as if he failed, only in the one case it was the capital of the pre- vious investor that was destroyed instead of the capital of the new-comer. In every country which had attained any degree of economic development there were many times more business enterpr-ses in every line than there was business for, and many times as much capital already invested as there was a return for. The only way in which new capital could be put into business was by forcing out and destroying old capital already invested. The ever-mounting aggregation of profits seeking part of a market that was prevented from increasing by the effect of those very profits, created a pressure of com- petition among capitalists which, by all accounts that come down to us, must have been like a conflagration in its consuming effects upon capital." " Now tell us something about the other great waste of profits by which the pressure in the cistern was sufficiently relieved to permit production to go on — that is to say, the expenditure of profits for the employ- ment of labour in the service of luxury. What was luxury ? " " The term luxury, in referring to the state of society before the Revolution, meant the lavish expenditure of wealth by the rich to gratify a refined sensualism, while the masses of the people were suffering lack of the primary necessities." "What were some of the modes of luxu- rious expenditure indulged in by the capi- talists ? " "They were unlimited in variety, as, fo* example, the construction of costly palaces for residence and their decoration in royal style, the support of great retinues of ser- vants, costly supplies for the table, rich equipages, pleasure ships, and all manner of boundless expenditure in fine raiment and precious stones. Ingenuity was exhausted in contriving devices by which the rich might waste the abundance the people were dying for. A vast army of labourers was con- stantly engaged in manufacturing an infinite variety of articles and appliances of elegance and ostentation which mocked the unsatisfied primary necessities of those who toiled to produce them." " What have you to say of the moral aspect of this expenditure for luxury ? " "If the entire community had arrived at that stage of economic prosperity which would enable all alike to enjoy the luxuries equally," replied the girl, " indulgence in them would have been merely a question of taste. But this waste of wealth by the rich in the presence of a vast population suffer- ing lack of the bare necessaries of life was an illustration of inhumanity that would seem incredible on the part of civilised people were not the facts so well substan- tiated. Imagine a company of persons sitting down with enjoyment to a banquet, while on the floors and all about the corners of the banquet-hall were groups of fellow- beings dying with want and following with hungry eyes every morsel the feasters lifted 76 EQUAIJTY to their mouths. And yet that precisely describes the way in which the rich used to spend their profits in the great cities of America, France, England, and Germany before the Revolution, the one difference being that the needy and the hungry, instead of being in the banquet-room itself, were just outside on the street." "It was claimed, was it not, by the apologists of the luxurious expenditure of the capitalists, that they thus gave em- ployment to many who would otherwise have lacked it? " "And why would they have lacked em- ployment? Why were the people glad to find employment in catering to the luxurious pleasures and indulgences of the capitalists, selling themselves to the most frivolous and degrading uses ? It was simply because the profit-taking of these same capitalists, by reducing the consuming power of the people to a fraction of its producing power, had correspondingly limited the field of produc- tive employment, in which under a rational system there must always have been work for every hand until all needs were satisfied, even as there is now. In excusing their luxurious expenditure on the ground you have mentioned, the capitalists pleaded the results of one wrong to justify the commis- sion of another." " The moralists of all ages," said the teacher, "condemned the luxury of the rich. Why did their censures effect no change ? " "Because they did not understand the economics of the subject. They failed to see that under the profit system the absolute waste of the excess of profits in unproductive expenditure was an economic necessity, if production was to proceed, as you showed in comparing it with the cistern. The waste of profits in luxury was an economic neces- sity, to use another figure, precisely as a running sore is a necessary vent in some cases for the impurities of a diseased body. Under our system of equal sharing, the wealth of a community is freely and equally distributed among its members as is the blood in a healthy body. But when, as under the old system, that wealth was con- centrated in the hands of a portion of the community, it lost its vitalising quality, as does the blood when congested in par- ticular organs, and like that becomes an active poison, to be got rid of at any cost. Luxury in this way might be called an ulcer, which must be kept open if the profit system was to continue on any terms." "You say," said the teacher, "that in order that production should go on it was absolutely necessary to get the excess of profits wasted in some sort of unproductive expenditure. But might not the profit-takers have devised some way of getting rid of the surplus more intelligent than mere competi- tion to displace one another, and more con- sistent with human feeling than wasting wealth upon refinements ot sensual indul- gence in the presence of a needy multitude ? " " Certainly. If the capitalists had cared at all about the humane aspect of the matter, they could have taken a much less demora- lising method in getting rid of the obstruc- tive surplus. They could have periodically made a bonfire of it as a burnt sacrifice to the god Profit, or, if they preferred, it might have been carried out in scows beyond soundings and dumped there." " It is easy to see," said the teacher, " that from a moral point of view such a periodical bonfire or dump would have been vastly more edifying to gods and men than was the actual practice of expending it in luxuries which mocked the bitter want of the mass. But how about the economic operation of this plan?" "It would have been as advantageous economically as morally. The process of wasting the surplus profits in competition and luxury was slow and protracted, and meanwhile productive industry languished, and the workers waited in idleness and want for the sui'plus to be so far reduced as to make room for more production. But if the surplus at once, on being ascertained, were destroyed, productive industry would go right on." "But how about the workmen employed by the capitalists in ministering to their luxuries ? Would they not have been thrown out of work if luxury had been given up ? " " On the contrary, under the bonfire sys- tem there would have been a constant de- mand for them in productive employment to provide material for the blaze, and that surely would have been a far more worthy occupation than helping the capitalists to consume in folly the product of their brethren employed in productive industry. But the greatest advantage of all which would have resulted from the substitution of the bonfire for luxury remains to be mentioned. By the time the nation had made a few such annual burnt-offerings to the principle of profit, perhaps even after the first one, it is likely they would begin to question, in the light of such vivid object lessons, whether the moral beauties of the profit system were sufficient compensation for so large an economic sacrifice." Charles Removes an Apprehension. "Now, Charles," said the teacher, "you shall help us a little on a point of con- science. We have, one and another, told a very bad story about the profit sj'stem, both in its moral and its economic aspects. Now, is it not possible that wo have done it injustice? Have we not painted too black EQUALITY 77 a picture'? From an ethical point of view we could indeed scarcely have done so, for there are no words strong enough to justly characterise the mock it made of all the humanities. But have we not possibly asserted too strongly its economic imbecility and the hopelessness of the world's outlook for material welfare so long as it should be tolerated ? Can you reassure us on this point? " "Easily," replied the lad Charles. "No more conclusive testimony to the hopeless- ness of the economic outlook under private capitalism could be desired than is abun- dantly given by the nineteenth-century economists themselves. While they seemed quite incapable of imagining anything dif- ferent from private capitalism as the basis of an economic system, they cherished no illusions as to its operation. Far from try- ing to comfort mankind by promising that if present ills were bravely borne matters would grow better, they expressly taught that the profit system must inevitably result at some time not far ahead in the arrest of industrial progress and a stationary condition of production." "How did they make that out?" "They recognised, as we do, the tendency under private capitalism of rents, interests, and profits to accumulate as capital in the hands of the capitalist class, while, on the other hand, the consuming power of the masses did not increase, but either decreased or remained practically stationary. From this lack of equilibrium between production and consumption, it followed that the diffi- culty of profitably employing capital in productive industry must increase as the accumulations of capital so disposable should grow. The home market having been first glutted with products and afterwards the foreign market, the competition of the capi- talists to find productive employment for their capital would lead them, after having reduced wages to the lowest possible point, to bid for what was left of the market by reducing their own profits to the minimum point at which it was worth while to risk capital. Below this point more capital would not be invested in business. Thus the rate of wealth production would cease to advance and become stationary." " This, you say, is what the nineteenth- century economists themselves taught con- cerning the outcome of the profit sys- tem ? " "Certainly. I could quote from "their standard books any number of passages foi-e- telling this condition of things, which, in- deed, it required no prophet to foretell." "How near was the world — that is, of course, the nations whose industrial evolu- tion had gone furthest — to this condition when the Revolution came?" "They were apparently on its verge. The more economically-advanced countries had generally exhausted their home markets and were struggling desper-ately for what was left of foreign markets. The rate of interest, which indicated the degree to which capital had become glutted, had fallen in England to two per cent., and in America within thirty years had sunk from seven and six to five and three and four per cent., and was falling year by year. Productive industry had become generally clogged, and proceeded by fits and starts. In America the wage- earners were becoming proletarians, and the farmers fast sinking into the stato of a tenantry. It was indeed the popular dis- content caused by these conditions, coupled with apprehension of worse to come, which finally roused the people at the close of the nineteenth century to the necessity of de- stroying private capitalism for good and all." "And do I understand, then, that this stationary condition, after which no increase in the rate of wealth production could be looked for, was setting in while yet the primary needs of the masses remained un- provided for? " "Certainly. The satisfaction of the needs of the masses, as we have abundantly seen, was in no way recognised as a motive for production under the profit system. As pro- duction approached the stationary point the misery of the people would, in fact, increase as a direct result of the competition among capitalists to invest their glut of capital in business. In order to do so, as has already been shown, they sought to reduce the prices of products, and that meant the reduction of wages to wage-earners and prices t-o first producers to the lowest possible point, before any reduction in the profits of the capitalist was considered. What the old economists called the stationary condition of production meant, therefore, the perpetuation indefinitely of the maximum degree of hardship endur- able by the people at large." "That will do, Charles; you have said enough to relieve any apprehension that pos- sibly we were doing injustice to the profit system. Evidently that could not be done to a system of which its own champions fore- told such an outcome as you have described. What, indeed, could be added to the descrip- tion they give of it in these predictions of the stationary condition as a programme of industry confessing itself at the end of its resources in the midst of a naked and starv- ing race? This was the good time coming, with the hope of which the nineteenth-cen- tury economists cheered the cold and hungry world of toilers — a time when, being worse off than ever, they must abandon for ever even the hope of improvement. No wonder our forefathers described their so-called poli- tical economy as a dismal science, for never was there a pessimism blacker, a hopeless- 78 EQUALITY ness more hcpjaless than it preached. Ill indeed had it "been for humanity if it had been truly a science." Esther counts the Cost of the Profit System. "Now, Esther," the teacher pursued, "I am going to ask you to do a little estimating as to about how much the privilege of re- taining the profit system cost our forefathers. Emily has given us an idea of the magni- tude of the two great wastes of profits — the waste of competition and the waste of luxury. Now, did the capital wasted in these two ways represent all that the profit system cost the people? " "It did not give a faint idea of it, much less represent it," replied the girl Esther. "The aggregate wealth wasted respectively in competition and luxury, could it have been distributed equally for consumption among the people, would undoubtedly have considerably raised the general level of com- fort. In the cost of the profit system to a community, the wealth wasted by the capi- talists was, however, an insignificant item. The bulk of that most consisted in the effect of the profit system to prevent wealth from being produced, in holding back and tying down the almost boundless wealth-producing power of man. Imagine the mass of the population, instead of being sunk in poverty and a large part of them in bitter want, to have received sufficient to satisfy all their needs and give them ample, comfortable lives, and estimate the amount of additional wealth which it would have been necessary to produce to meet this standard of consump- tion. That will give you a basis for calcu- lating the amount of wealth which the Ameri- can people or any people of those days might and would have produced but for the profit system. You may estimate that this would have meant a fivefold, sevenfold, or tenfold increase of production, as you please to 'But tell us this: Would it have been possible for the people of America, say, in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, to have multiplied their production at such a rate if consumption had demanded it?" "Nothing is more certain than that they could easily have done so. The progress of invention had been so great in the nine- teenth century as to multiply from twenty- fold to many hundredfold the productive power of industry. There was no time during the last quarter of the century in America, or in any of the advanced coun- tries, when the existing productive plants could not have produced enough in six months to have supplied the total annual consumption as it actually was. And those plants could have been multiplied indefi- nitely. In like manner the agricultural pro- duct of the country was always kept far within its possibility, for a plentiful crop under the profit system meant ruinous prices to the farmers. As has been said, it was an admitted proposition of the old economists that there was no visible limit to production if only sufficient demand for consumption could be secured." "Can you recall any instance in history in which it can be argued that a people paid so large a price in delayed and prevented de- velopment for the privilege of retaining any other tyranny as they did for keeping the profit system ? " "I am sure there never was such another instance, and I will tell you why I think so. Human progress has been delayed at various stages by oppressive institutions, and the world has leaped forward at their over- throw. But there was never before a time when the conditions had been so long ready and waiting for so great and so instantane- ous a forward movement all along the line of social improvement as in the period pre- ceding the Revolution. The mechanical and industrial forces, held in check by the profit system, only required to he unleashed to transform the economic condition of the race as by magic. So much for the material cost of the profit system to our forefathers; but, vast as that was, it is not worth considering for a moment in comparison with its cost in human happiness. I mean the moral cost in wrong, and tears, and black negations, and stifled moral possibilities which the world paid for every day's retention of pri- vate capitalism : there are no words ade- quate to express the sum of that." No Political Economy before the REVOLtniON. "That will do, Esther.-^Now, George, 1 want you to tell us just a little alDout a parti- cular body among the learned class of the nineteenth century, which, according to the professions of its members, ought to have known and to have taught the people all that we have so easily perceived as to the suicidal character of the profit system and the econo- mic perdition it meant for mankind so long as it should be tolerated. I refer to the poli- tical economists." "There were no political economists before the Revolution," replied the lad. "But there certainly was a large class of learned men who called themselves political economists." "Oh, yes; but they labelled themselves wrongly." "How do you make that out?" "Because there was not, until the Revoln- tion — except, of course, among those who sought to bring it to pass — any conception whatever of what political economy is. "What is it?" EQUALITY 79 "Economy," replied the lad, "means the wise husbandry of wealth in production and distribution. Individual economy is the science of this husbandry when conducted in the interest of the individual without regard to any others. Family economy is this hus- bandry carried on for the advantage of a family group without regard to other groups. Political economy, however, can only mean the husbandry of wealth for the greatest ad- vantage of the political or social body, the whole number of .the citizens constituting the political organisation. This sort of husbandry necessarily implies a public or political regulation of economic affairs for the general interest. But before the Revo- lution there was no conception of such an economy, nor any organisation to carry it out. All systems and doctrines of economy previous to that time were distinctly and exclusively private and individual in their whole theory and practice. While in other respects our forefathers did in various ways and degi-ees recognise a social solidarity and a political unity with proportionate rights and duties, their theory and practic^ as to all matters touching the getting and sharing of wealth were aggressively and brutally in- dividualistic, antisocial, and unpolitical." "Have you ever looked over any of the treatises which our forefathers called politi- cal economies, at the Historical Library?" "I confess," the boy answered, "that the title of the leading work under that head was enough for me. It was called "The Wealth of Nations." That would be an ad- mirable title for a political economy nowa- days, when the production and distribution of wealth are conducted altogether by and for the people collectively ; but what meaning could it conceivably have had as applied to a book written nearly a hundred years before such a thing as a national economic organisa- tion was thought of, with the sole view of instructing capitalists how to get rich at the cost of, or at least in total disregard of, the welfare of their fellow-citizens ? I noticed too, that quite a common sub-title used for these so-called works on political economy was the phi'ase, ' The Science of Wealth.' Now what could an apologist of private capital- ism and the profit system possibly have to say about the science of wealth ? The ABC of any science of wealth-production is the necessity of co-ordination and concert of effort ; whereas competition, conflict, and end- less cross-purposes were the sum and sub- stance of the economic methods set forth by these writers." "And yet," said the teacher, "the only real fault of these so-called books on Political Economy consists in the absurdity of the title. Correct that, and their value as docu- ments of the times at once becomes evident. For example, we might call them ' Examina- tions into the Economic and Social Conse- quences of trying to get along without any Political Economy.' A title scarcely less fit would perhaps be 'Studies into the Natural Course of Economic Affairs when left to Anarchy by the Lack of any 1 Regulation in the General Interest.' It ig^ when regarded in this light, as painstaking and conclusive expositions of the ruinous effects of private capitalism upon the welfare of communities, that we perceive the true use and value of these works. Taking up in detail the various phenomena of the industrial and commercial world of that day, with their reactions upon the social status, their authors show how the results could not have been other than they were, owing to the laws of private capital- ism, and that it was nothing but weak senti- mentalism to suppose that while those laws continued in operation, any different results could be obtained, however good men's in- tentions. Although somewhat heavy in style for popular reading, I have often thought that during the revolutionary period no docu- ments could have been better calculated to convince rational men who could be induced to read them, that it was absolutely neces- sary to put an end to private capitalism if humanity were ever to get forward. . "The fatal and quite incomprehensible mistake of their authors was that they did not themselves see this conclusion and preach it. Instead of that they committed the in- credible blunder of accepting a set of condi- tions that were manifestly mera barbaric survivals as the basis of a social science, when they ought easily to have seen that the very idea of a scientific social order sug- gested the abolition of those conditions as the first step toward its realisation. "Meanwhile, as to the present lesson, there are two or three points to clear up before leaving it. We have been talking altogether of profit-taking, but this was only one of the three main methods by which the capitalists collected the tribute from the toil- ing world by which their power was acquired and maintained. What were the other two ? " "Rent and interest." "What was rent? " "In those days," replied George, "the right to a reasonable and equal allotment of land for private uses did not belong as a matter of course to every person as it does now. No one was admitted to have any natural right to land at all. On the other hand, there was no limit to the extent of land, though it were a whole province, which any one might not legally possess if he could get hold of it. By natural consequence of this arrangement the strong and cunning had acquired most of the land, while the majority of the people were left with none at all. Now, the owner of the land had the right to drive any one off his land and have him punished for entering on it. Nevertheless, the people who owned no land required to have it and to use it and must needs go to 80 EQUALITY the capitalists for it. Rent was the price charged by capitalists for not driving people off their land." "Did this rent represent any economic ser- vice of any sort rendered to the community by the rent receiver ? " "So far as regards the charge for the use of the land itself apart from improvements it represented no service of any sort, nothing but the waiver for a price of the owner's legal right of ejecting the occupant. It was not a charge for doing anything, but for not doing something." "Now tell us about interest j what was that?" "Interest was the price paid for the use of money. Nowadays the collective admin- istration directs the industrial forces of the nation for the general welfare, but in those days all economic enterprises were for private f)rofit, and their projectors had to hire the abour they needed with money. Naturally, the loan of bo indispensable a means as this commanded a high price; that price was in- terest." "And did interest represent any economic service to the community on the part of the interest taker in lending his money? " "None whatever. On the contrary, it was by the very nature of the transaction a waiver on the part of the lender of the power of action in favour of the borrower. It was a price charged for letting some one else do what the lender might have done, but chose not to. It was a tribute levied by inaction upon action." "If all the landlords and money-lenders had died over-night, would it have made any difference to the world ? " "None whatever, so long- as they left the land and the money behind. Their eco- nomic role was a passive one, and in strong contrast with that of the profit-seeking capi- talists, which, for good or bad, was at least active." "What was the general effect of rent and interest upon the consumption and conse- quently the production of wealth by the com- munity ? " "It operated to reduce both." "How?" "In the same way that profit-taking did. Those who received rent were very few, those who paid it were nearly all. Those who received interest were few, and those who paid it many. Rent and interest meant, therefore, like profits, a constant drav/ing away of the purchasing power of the com- munity at large and its concentration in the hands of a small part of it." "What have you to say of these three pro- cesses as to their comparative effect in de- stroying the consuming power of the masses, and consequently the demand for produc- tion ? " "That differed in different ages and countries according to the stage of their eco- nomic development. Private capitalism haa been compared to a three-horned bull, the horns being rent, profit, and interest, differ- ing in comparative length and strength according to the age of the animal. In the Unit-ed States, at the time covered by our lesson, profits were still the longest of the three horns, though the others were growing terribly fast." "We have seen, George," said his teacher, "that from a period long before the great Revolution it was as true as it is now that the only limit to the production of wealth in society was its consumption. We have seen that what kept the world in poverty under private capitalism was the effect of profits, aided by rent and interest to reduce consumption and thus cripple production, by concentrating the purchasing power of the people in the hands of a few. Now, that was the wrong way of doing things. Before leaving the subject I want you to tell us in a word what is the right way. Seeing that production is limited by consumption, what rule must^be followed in distributing the re- sults of production to be consumed in order to develop consumption to the highest pos- sible point, and thereby in turn to create the greatest possible demand for production." "For that purpose the results of produc- tion must be distributed equally among all the members of the producing community." "Show why that is so." "It is a self-evident mathematical pro- position. The more people a loaf of bread or any given thing is divided among, and the more equally it is divided, the sooner it will be consumed and more bread be called for. To put it in a more formal way, the needs of human beings result from the same natural constitution, and are substantially the same. An equal distribution of the things needed by them is therefore that general plan by which the consumption of such things will be at once enlarged to the greatest possible ex- tent, and continued on that scale without in- terruption to the point of complete satisfac- tion for all. It follows that the --equal distribution of products is the rule by which the largest possible consumption can be se- cured, and thus in turn the largest produc- tion be stimulated." "What, on the other hand, would be the effect on consumption of an unequal division of consumable products ? " "If the division were unequal, the result would be that some would have more than they could consume in a given time, and others would have less than they could have consumed in the same time, the result mean- ing a reduction of total consumption below what it would have been for that time with an equal division of products. If a million dollars were equally divided among one thousand men, it would presently be wholly expended in the consumption of needed things, creating a demand for the production EQUALITY 81 oi as much more; but if concentrated in ono man's hands, not a hundredth part of it, however great his luxnrj', would be likely to be so expended in the same period, '.rhe fun- damental general law in the science of social wealth is, therefore, that the efficiency of a given amount of purchasing power to pro- mote consumption is in exact proportion to its wide disti-ibution,. and is most efficient when equally* distributed among the v,;hole body of consumers, because that is the widest possible distribution." \ "You have not called attention to the fact that the formula of the greatest wealth pro- duction—namely, equal sharing of the pro- duct among the community — is also that application o1 the product which \yll cause the greatest sum of human happiness." "1 spoke strictly of the economic side of the subject." "Would it not have startled the old economists to hear that the secret of the most efficient system of wealth production waa conformity on a national scale to the ethical idea of equal treatment for all embodied by Jesus Christ in the golden rule ? ' "No doubt, for they falsely taught that there were two kinds of science dealing with human conduct — one moral, the other econ- omic; and two lines of reasoning as to con- duct — the economic, and the ethical ; both right in different ways. We know better. There can be but ono science of human conduct in whatever field, and that is ethical. Any economic proposition which cannot be stated in ethical terms is false. Nothing can be in the long-run, or on a large scale, sound economics which is not sound ethics. It is not, therefore, a mere coincidence, but a logical necessity, that the supreme word of both ethics and economics should be one and the same — equality. The golden rule in its social application is as truly the secret of jDlentv as of peace." CHAPTER XXIII 'the parable of the water tank. "That will do. George. We will close the session here. Our discussion, I find, has taken a broader range than I expected, and to complete the subject we shall need to have a brief session this afternoon. — And now, by way of concluding the morning, I propose to offer a little contribution of my own. The other day, at the museum, I was delving among the relics of literature of the gi-eat Revolution, with a view to finding something that might illustrate our theme. I came across a little pamphlet of the period, yellow and almost undecipherable, which, on examination, I found to be a rather amusing skit or satirical take-off on the profit system. It struck me that prob- ably our lesson might prepare us to appre- ciate it, and I made a copy. It is entitled ' The Parable of the Water Tank,' and runs - this way : "'There was a certain very cky land, the people whereof were in sore need of water. And they did nothing but to seek after water [ from morning until night, and many perished L because they could not find it.' f "'Howbeit, there were certain men in that land who were more crafty and diligent than the rest, and these had gathered stores of water where others could find none, and the name of these men was called capitalists. EQUALITY And it came to pass that the people of the land came unto the capitalists and prayed them that they would give them of the water they had gathered that they might drink, for their need was sore. But the capitalists answered them and said — "'"Go to, ye silly people! why should we give you of the water which we have gathered, for then we should become even as ye are, and perish with you ? But behold what we will do unto you. Be ye our ser- vants and ye shall have water." "'And the people said, "Only give us to drink and we will be your servants, we and our children." And it was so. "'Now, the capitalists were men of under- standing, and wise in their generation. They ordered the people who were their servants in bands with captains and officers, and some they put at the springs to dip, and others did they make to carry the water, and others did they cause to .seek for new- springs. And all the water was brought to- gether in one place, and there did the capi- talists make a great tank for to hold it, and the tank was called the Market, for it was there that the people, even the servants of the capitalists, came to get water. And the capitalists said unto the people — "'"For every bucket of water that ye 82 EQUALITY bring to us, that we may pour it into the tank, which is the Market, behold ! we will give you a penny, but for every bucket that ■we shall draw forth to give unto you that ye may drink of it, ye and your wives and your children, ye shall give to us two pen- nies, and the difference shall be our profit, seeing that if it were not for this profit we would not do this thing for you, but ye ahould all perish." '"And it was good in the people's eyes, for they were dull of understanding, and they diligently brought water unto the tank for many days, and for every bucket which they did bring the capitalists gave them every man a penny ; but for every bucket that the capitalists drew forth from the tank to give again unto the people, behold ! the people rendered to the capitalists two pennies. "'And after many days the water tank, which was the Market, overflowed at the top, seeing that for every bucket the people poured in they received only so much as would buy again half of a bucket. And because of the excess that was left of every bucket, did the tank overflow, for the people were many, but the capitalists were few, and could drink no more than others. There fore did the tank overflow. '"And when the capitalists saw that the water overflowed, they said to the people— "'"See ye not the tank, which is the Market, doth overflow? Sit ye down, therefore, and be patient, for ye shall bring us no more water till the tank be empty." '"But when the people no more received the pennies of the capitalists for the water they brought, they could buy no more water from the capitalists, having naught where- with to buy. And when the capitalists saw that they had no more profit because no man bought water of them, they were tix)ubled. And they sent forth men in the highways, the byways, and the hedges, crying, "If any thirst let him come to the tank and buy water of us, for it doth overflow." For they said among themselves, "Behold, the times are dull; we must advertise." "'But the people answered, saying : "How can we buy unless ye hire us, for how else shall we have wherewithal to buy? Hire ye ■us, therefore, as before, and we will gladly buy water, for we thirst, and ye will have no need to advertise." But the capitalists said to the people: "Shall we hire you to bring water when the tank, which "is the Market, doth already overflow ? Buy ye, therefore, first water, and when the tank is empty, through your buying, will we hire yon again." And so it was because the capi- talists hired them no more to bring water that the people could not buy the water they had brought already, and because the people could not buy the water they had brought already, the capitalists no more hired them to bring water. And the saying went abroad, "It is a crisis." '"And the thirst of the people was great, for it was not now as it had been in the days of their fathers, when the land was open before them, for every one to seek water for himself, seeing that the capitalists had taken all the springs, and the wells, and the water-wheels, and the vessels and the buckets, so that no man might come by wat«r save from the tank, which was the Market. And the people murmured against the capitalists and said : "Behold, the tank runneth over, and we die of thirst. Give us, therefore, of the water, that we perish not." "'But the capitalists answered: "Not so. The water is ours. Ye shall no£ drink there- of 'unless ye buy it of us with pennies." And they confirmed it with an oath, saying, after their manner, "Business is business." "'But the capitalists were disquieted that the people bought no more water, whereby they had no more any profits, and they spake one to another, saying: "It seemeth that our profits have stopped our profits, and by reason of the profits we have made, we can make no more profits. How is it that our profits are become unprofitable to us, and our gains do make us poor? Let us there- fore send for the soothsayers, that they may interpret this thing unto us; " and they sent for them. "'Now, the soothsayers were men learned in dark sayings, who joined themselves to the capitalists by reason of the water of the capitalists, that they might have thereof and live, they and their children. And they spake for the capitalists unto the people, and did their embassies for them, seeing that the capitalists were not a folk quick of understanding, neither ready of speech. '"And the capitalists demanded of the soothsayers that they should interpret this thing unto them, wherefore it was that the people bought no more water of them, al- though the tank was full. And certain of the soothsayers answered and said, "It is by reason of over-production," and some said, "It is glut;" but the signification of the two words is the same. And others said, "Nay, but this thing is by reason of the spots on the sun." And yet others answered, saying, "It is neither by reason of glut, nor yet of spots on the sun, that this evil hath come to pass, but because of lack of con- fidence." '"And while the soothsayers contended among themselves according to their manner, the men of profit did slumber and sleep, and when they awoke they said to the sooth- sayers : "It is enough. Ye have spoken comfortably unto us. Now go ye forth and speak comfortably likewise unto this people, so that they be at rest and leave us also in peace." "'But the soothsayers, even the men of the dismal science' — for so they were named of EQUALITY 83 some — were loath to go forth to the people lest they should be stoned, for the people loved them not. And they said to the capi- talists— Masters, it is a mystery of our craft that if men be full and thirst not, but be at rest, then shall they find comfort in our speech even as ye. Yet if they thirst and be empty, find they no comfort therein, but rather mock us, for it seemeth that unless a man be full our wisdom appeareth unto him but emptiness." But the capitalists said : "Go ye forth. Are ye notour men to do our embassies? " '"And the soothsayers went forth to the people and expounded to them the mystery of over-production, and how it was that they must needs perish of thirst because there was overmuch water, and how there could not be enough because there was too much. And likewise spoke they unto the people concerning the sun-spots, and also wherefore it was that these things had come upon them by reason of lack of confidence. And it was even as the soothsayers had said, for to the people their wisdom seemed emptiness. And the people reviled them, saying : "Go up, ye bald-heads ! Will ye mock us ? Doth plenty breed famine? Doth nothing come out of much?" And they took up stones to stone them. "'And when the capitalists saw that the people still murmured, and would not give ear to the soothsayers, and because also they feared lest they should come upon the tank and take of the water by force, they brought forth to them certain holy men "(but they were false priests), who spake unto the people that they should be quiet and trouble not the capitalists because they thirsted. And these holy men, who were false priests, testified to the people that this affliction was sent' to them of God for the healing of their souls, and that if they should bear it in patience and lust not after the water, neither trouble the capitalists, it would come to pass that after they had given up the ghost they would come to a country where there should be no capitalists, but an abundance of water. Howbeit, there were certain true prophets of God also, and these had compassion on the people, and would not prophesy for the capitalists, but rather spake constantly against them. "'Now, when the capitalists saw that tho people still murmured and would not be still, neither for the words of the soothsayers nor of the false priests, they came forth themselves unto them, and put the ends of their fingers in the water that overflowed in the tank and wet the tips thereof, and they scattered the drops from the tips of their fingers abroad upon the people who thronged the tank, and the name- of the drops of water was charity, and they were exceed- ing bitter. "'And when the capitalists saw yet again that neither for the words of the soothsayers, nor of the holy men who were false priests, nor yet for tho drops that were called charity would the people be still, but raged th« more, and crowded upon the tank as if they would take it by force, then took they counsel together and sent men privily forth among the people. And the.se men sought out the mightiest among the people and all who had skill in war, and took tiiem apart and spake craftily with them, saying — "'"Come, now, why cast ye not your lot in with the capitalists'? It ye will be their men and serve them against the poople, that they break not in upon the tank, then shall ye have abundance of water, that ye perish not, ye and your children." "'And the mighty men and they who were skilled in war hearkened unto this speech and suffered themselves to be persuaded, for their thirst constrained them, and they went within unto the capitalists and became their men, and staves and swords were put in their hands and they became a defence unto the capitalists, and smote the people when they thronged upon the tank. '"And after many days the water was low in the tank, for the capitalists did make fountains and fish-ponds of the water thereof, and did bathe therein, they and their wives and their children, and did waste the water for their pleasure. "'And when the capitalists saw that the tank was empty, they said, "The crisis is ended;" and they sent forth and hired the people that they should bring water to fill it again. And for the water that the people brought to the tank they received for every bucket a penny, but for the water which the capitalists drew forth from the tank to give again to tho people they received two pennies,- that they might have their profit. And after a time did the tank again overflow even as befoi-e. "'And now, when many times the people had filled the tank until it overflowed, and had thirsted till the water therein had been wasted by the capitalist,', it came to pass that there arose in the land certain men who were called agitators, for that they did stir up the people. And they spake to the people, saying that they should associate, and then would they have no need to be servants of the capitalists and should thirst no more for water. And in the eyes of the capitalists were the agitators pestilent fellows, and tiiey would fain have crucified them, but durst not for fear of the people. "'And the words of the agitators which they spake to the people were on this wise— "'"Ye foolish people, how long will ye be deceived by a lie, and believe to your hurt that which is not ? for behold all these things that have been said unto you by the capi- talists and by the soothsayers are cunningly- devi.sed fables. And likewise the holy men, who say that it is the will of God that ye 84 EQUALITY should always be poor and miserable and athirst, behold ! they do blaspheme God and are liars, whom He will bitterly judge though He forgive all others. How cometh it that ye may not come by the water in the tank ? Is it not because ye have no money? And why have ye no money ? Is it not because ye receive but one penny for every bucket that ye bring to the tank, which is the Market, but must render two pennies for every bucket ye take out, so that the capi- talists may have their profit? See ye not how by this means the tank must overflow, being filled by that ye lack and made to abound out of your emptiness? See ye not also that the harder ye toil, and the more diligently ye seek and bring the water, the worse and not the better it shall be for you by reason of the profit, and that for ever?" '"After this manner spake the agitators for many days unto the people, and none heeded them, but it was so that after a time the people hearkened. _ And they an- swered and said unto the agitators — "' "Ye say truth. It is because of the capi- talists and of their profits that we want, seeing that by reason of them and their profits we may by no means come by the fruit of our labour, so that our labour is in vain, and the more we toil to fill the tank the sooner doth it overflow, and we may receive nothing because there is too much, according to the words of the soothsayers. But behold, the capitalists are hard men and thedr tender mercies are cruel. Tell us if yfe know any way whereby we may deliver ourselves out of our bondage unto them. But if ye know of no certain way of deliverance, we beseech you to hold your peace and let . us alone, that we may forget our misery." '"And the agitators answered and said, "We know a way." '"And the people said, "Deceive us not, for this thing hath been from the beginning, and none hath found a way of deliverance until now, though many have sought it care- fully with tears. But if ye know a way, speak unto us quickly." "'Then the agitators spake unto the people of the way. And they said — "'"Behold, what need have ye at all of these capitalists, that ye should yield them profits upon your labour ? What great thing do they wherefore ye render them this tri- bute ? Lo ! it is only because they do order you in bands and lead you out and in and set your tasks and afterward give you a little of the water yourselves have brought and not thsy. Now, behold the way out of this bondage ! Do ye for yourselves that which is done by the capitalists — namely, the ordering of your labour, and the marshal- ling of your bands, and the dividing of your tasks. So shall ye have no need at all of the capitalists and no more yield to them any profit, but all the fruit of your labour shall ye share as brethren, every one having the same; and so shall the tank never over- flow until every man is full, and would not wag the tongue for more, and aft^erward shall ye with the overflow make pleasant fountains and fish-ponds to delight your- selves withal even a-s did the capitalists ; but these shall be for the delight of all." "'And the people answered, "How shall we go about to do this thing, for it seemeth good to us? " "'And the agitators answered, "Choose ye discreet men to go in and out before you and to marshal your bands and order your labour, and these men shall be as the capi- talists were ; but, behold, they shall not be your masters as the capitalists are, but your brethren and officers who do your will, and they shall not take any profits, but every man his share like the others, that there may be no more masters and servants among you, but brethren only. And from time to "time, as ye see fit, ye shall choose other discreet men in place of the first to order the labour." "'And the people hearkened, and the thing was very good to them. Likewise seemed it not a hard thing. And with one voice they cried out, "So let it be as ye have said, for we will do it ! " "'And the capitalists heard the noise of the shouting and what the people said, and the soothsayers heard it also, and likewise the false priests and the mighty men of war, who were a defence unto the capitalists ; and when they heard they trembled exceedingly, so that their knees smote together, and they said one to another, "It is the end of us! " " ' Howbeit, there were certain true priests of the living God who would not prophesy for the capitalists, but had compassion on the people ; and when they heard the shout- ing of the people and what they said, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy, and gave thanks to God because of the delivernncc. "'And the people went and did all the things that were told them of the agitators to do. And it came to pass as the agitators had said, even according to all their words. And there was no more any thir-st in that land, neither any that was ahungered, nor naked, nor cold, nor in anj' manner of want; and every man said unto his fellow, " My brother," and every woman said unto her companion, "My sister," for so were they with one another as brethren and sisters which do dwell together in unity. And the blessing of God rested upon that land for EQUALITY 85 CHAPTER XXIV I AM SHOWN ALL THE KINGDOMS OF THE EARTH. The boys and girls of the political economy class rose to their foet at the teaclier's word of dismissal, and in the twinkling of an eye the scene which had been absorbing my attention disappeared, and I found myself staring at Dr. Leete's smiling countenance, and endeavouring to imagine how I had come to be where I was. During the greater part, and all the later part of the session of the class, so absolute had been the illusion of being actually present in the schoolroom, and so absorbing the interest of the theme, that I had quite forgotten the extraordinary device by which I was enabled to see and hear the proceedings. Now, as I recalled it, my mind reverted with an impulse of boundless curiosit}' to the electroscope and the processes by which it performed its miracles. Having given me some explanation of the mechanical operation of the apparatus, and the way in which it served the purpose of a prolonged optic nerve, the doctor went on to exhibit its powers on a large scale. During the following hour, without leaving my chair, I made the tour of the earth, and learned by the testimony of my senses that the transformation which had come over Bos- ton since my former life was but a sample of that which the whole world of men had undergone. I had but to name a great city or a famous locality in any country to be at once present there so far as sight and hear- ing were concerned. I looked down on modern New York, then upon Chicago, upon San Francisco, and upon New Orleans, finding each of these cities quite unrecognisable but for the natural features which constituted their setting. I visited London. I heard the Parisians talk French and the Berlinese talk Ger.Tian, and from 8t. Peter.sburg went to Cairo by way of Delhi. One city would be bathed in the noonday sun; over the n«xt I visited, the moon, perhaps, was rising and the stars coming out; while over the third the silence of midnight brooded. In Paris, I remember, it was raining hard, and in Lon- don fog reigned supreme. In St. Peters- burg there was a snow squall. Turning from the contemplation of the changing world of men to the changeless face of Nature, I re- newed my old-time acquaintance with the natural wonders of the earth— the thunder- ing cataracts, the stormy ocean shores, the lonely mountain tops, the great rivers, the glittering splendours of the polar regions, and the desolate places of the deserts. Meanwhile, the doctor explained to me that not only the telephone and electroscope were always connected with a great number of regular stations commanding all scenes of special interest, but that whenever in any part of the world there occurred a spectacle or accident of particular interest, special con- nections were instantly made, so that all mankind could at once see what the situation was for themselves, without need of actual or alleged special artists on the spot. With all my conceptions of time and space reduced to chaos, and well-nigh drunk with wonder, I exclaimed at last — "I can stand no more of this just now! I am beginning to doubt seriously whether I am in or out of the body." As a practical way of settling that ques- tion the doctor proposed a brisk walk, for we had not been out of the house that morn- ing. "Have we had enough of economics for the day ? " he asked as we left the house, "or would you like to attend the afternoon session the teacher spoke of ? " I replied that I wished to attend it by all means. "Very good," said the doctor; "it will doubtless be very short, and what do you say to attending it this time in person ? We shall have plenty of time for our walk, and can easily get to the school before the hour by taking a car from any point. Seeing this is the first time you have used the electro- scope, and have no assurance except its testi- mony that any such school or pupils really exist, perhaps it would help to confirm any impres.sions you may have received to visit the spot in the body." 86 EQUALITY CHAPTER XXV THE STRIKERS Presextlt, as we were crossing Boston Com- mon, absorbed in conversation, a shadow fell athwart the way, and looking up, I saw towering aljove us a sculptured group of heroic size. "Who are these?" I exclaimed. "You ought to know if any one," said the doctor. " They are contemporaries of yours who were making a good deal of disturbance in your day." But, indeed, it had only been as an in- voluntary expression of surprise that I had questioned what the figures stood for. Let me tell you, readers of the twentieth century, what I saw up there on the pedestal, and you will recognise the world-famous gi'oup. Shoulder to shoulder, as if rallied to resist assault, were three figures of men in the garb of the labouring class of my time. They were bareheaded, and their coarse-tex- tured shirts, rolled above the elbow and open at the breast, showed the sinewy arms and chest. Before them, on the ground, lay a pair of shovels and a pickaxe. The central figure, with the right hand extended, palm outward, was pointing to the discarded tools. The arms of the other two were folded on their breasts. The faces were coarse and hard in outline and bristled with unkempt beards. Their expression was one of dogged defiance, and their gaze was fixed with such scowling intensity upon the void space before them that I involuntarily glanced behind me to see what they were looking at. There were two women also in the group, as coarse of dress and features as the men. One was kneeling before the figure on the right, hold- ing up to him with one arm an emaciated, half-clad infant, while with the other she indicated the implements at his feet with an imploring gesture. The second of the women was plucking by the sleeve the man on the left as if to draw him back, while with the other hand she covered her eyes. But the men heeded the women not at all, nor seemed, in their bitter wrath, to know that they were there. " Why," I exclaimed, " these are strikers ! " "Yes," said the doctor, "this is The Strikers, Huntington's masterpiece, con- sidered the greatest group of statuary in the city, and one of the greatest in the country." " Tlujse people are alive ! " I said. " Tliat is expert testimony," replied the doctor. "It is a pity Huntington died too soon to hear it. He would have been pleased." Now, I, in common with the wealthy and cultured class generally of my day, had always held strikers in contempt and abhor- rence, as blundering, dangerous marplots, as ignorant of their own best interests as they were reckless of other people's, and generally as pestilent fellows, whose demonstrations, so long as they were not violent, could not unfor- tunately be repressed by force, but ought always to be condemned, and promptly put down with an iron hand the moment there was an excuse for police interference. There was more or less tolerance among the well- to-do, for social reformers, who, by book or voice, advocated even very radical economic changes so long as they observed the conven- tionalities of speech, but for the striker there were few apologists. Of course, the capitalists emptied on him the vials of their wrath and contempt, and even people who thought they sympathised with the working class shook their heads at the mention of strikes, regarding them as calculated rather to hinder than help the emancipation of labour. Bred as I was in these prejudices, it may not seem strange that I was taken aback at finding such unpromising subjects selected for the highest place in the city. " There is no doubt as to the excellence of the artist's work," I said, "but what was there about the strikers that has made you pick them out of our generation as objects of veneration ? " " We see in them," replied the doctor, " the pioneers in the revolt against private capitalism which brought in the present civi- lisation. We honour them as those who, like Winkelried, ' made way for liberty, and died.' We revere in them the proto-martyrs of co-operative industry and economic equality." "But I can assure you, doctor, that these fellows, at least in my day, had not the slightest idea of revolting against private capitalism as a system. They were very ignorant and quite incapable of grasping so large a conception. They had no notion of getting along without capitalists. All they imagined as possible or desirable was a little better treatment by their employers, a few cents more an hour, a few minutes less work- ing time a day, or maybe merely the dis- charge of an unpopular foreman. The most they aimed at was some petty improvement in their condition, to attain which they did not hesitate to throw the whole industrial machine into disorder." "All which we moderns know quite well," EQUALITY 87 replied the doctor. "Look at those faces. Has the sculptor idealised them ? Are they the faces of philosophers ? Do they not bear out your statement that the strikers, like the working-men generally, were, as a rule, ignorant, narrow-minded men, with no grasp of large questions, and incapable of so great an idea as the overthrow of an immemorial economic order ? It is quite true that until some years after you fell asleep they did not realise that their quaiTel was with private capitalism and not with individual capital- ists. In this slowness of awakening to the full meaning of their revolt they were pre- cisely on a par with the pioneers of all the great liberty revolutions. The minutemen at Concord and Lexington, in 1775, did not realise that they were pointing their guns at the monarchical idea. As little did the third estate of France, when it entered the Con- vention in 1789, realise that its road lay over the ruins of the throne. As little did the pioneers of English freedom, when they be- gan to resist the will of Charles I., foresee that they would be compelled, before they got through, to take his head. In none of these instances, however, has posterity con- sidered that the limited foresight of the pioneers as to the full consequences of their action lessened the world's debt to the crude initiative, without which the fuller triumph would never have come. The logic of the strike meant the overthrow of the irrespon- sible conduct of industry, whether the strikers knew it or not, and we cannot re- joice in the consequences of that overthrow without honouring them in a way which very likely, as you intimate, would surprise them, could they know of it, as much as it does you. Let me try to give you the modern point of view as to the part played by their originals." We sat down upon one of the benches before the statue, and the doctor went on — " My dear Julian, who -was it, pray, that first roused the world of j'our day to the fact that there was an industrial question, and by their pathetic demonstrations of pas- sive resistance to wrong for fifty years kept the public attention fixed on that question till it was settled ? Was it your statesmen, perchance your economists, your scholars, or any other of your so-called wise men? No. It was just those despised, ridiculed, cursed, and hooted fellows up there on that pedestal who, with their, perpetual strikes, would not let the world rest till their wrong, which was also the whole world's wrong, was righted. Once more had God chosen the foolish things of this world to confound the wise, the weak things to confound the mighty. " In order to realise how powerfully these strikes operated to impress upon the people the intolerable wickedness and folly of pri- vate capitalism, you must remember that events are what teach men, that deeds have a far more potent educating influence than any amount of doctrine, and especially so in an age like yours, when the masses had almost no culture or ability to reason. There were not lacking in the revolutionary period many cultured men and women, who, with voice and pen, espoused the workers' cause, and showed them the way out ; but their words might well have availed little but for the tremendous emphasis with ivhich they were confirmed by the men up there, who starved to prove them true. Those rough- looking fellows, who probably could not have constructed a grammatical sentence by their combined efforts, were demonstrating the necessity of a radically new industrial sys- tem by a more convincing argument than any rhetorician's skill could frame. When men take their lives in their hands to resist oppression, as those men did, other men are compelled to give heed to them. We have inscribed on the pedestal yonder, where you .see the lettering, the words, which the action of the group above seems to voice-^p- '"We can bear no more. It is better to starve than live on the terms you give us. Our lives, the lives of our wives and of our children, we set against your gains. If you put your foot upon our neck, we will bite your he&l ! ' "This was the cry," pursued the doctor, "of men made desperate by oppression, to whom existence through suffering had be- come of no value. It was the same cry that in varied form but in one sense has been the watchword of every revolution that has marked an advance of the race — ' Give us liberty, or give us death ! ' and never did it ring out with a cause so adequate, or wake the world to an issue so mighty, as in the mouths of these first rebels against the folly and the tyranny of private capital. "In your age, I know, Julian," the doctor went on in a gentler tone, "it was customary to associate valour with the clang of arms and the pomp and circumstance of war. But the echo of the fife and drum comes very faintly up to us, and moves us not at all. The soldier has had his day, and passed away for ever with the ideal of manhood which he illustrated. But that group yonder stands for a type of self-devotion that ap- peals to us profoundly. Those men risked their lives when they flung down the tools of their trade, as truly as any soldiers going into battle, and took odds as desperate, and not only for themselves, but for their fami- lies, which no grateful country would care for in case of casualty to them. The sol- dier went forth cheered with music, and supported by the enthusiasm of the country, but these others were covered with igno- miny and public contempt, and their failures and defeats were hailed with general ac- clamation. And yet they sought not the lives of others, but only that they might barely live; and though they had first thought 88 EQUALITY of the welfare of themselves, and those nearest them, yet not the less were they fighting the fight of humanity and posterity in striking in the only way they could, and while yet no one else dared strike at all, against the economic system that had the world by the throat, and would never relax its grip by dint of soft vrords, or anything less than disabling blows. The clergy, the economists, and the pedagogues, having left these ignorant men to seek as they might the solution of the social problem, while they themselves sat at ease and denied that there was any problem, were very voluble in their criticisms of the mistakes of the working- men, as if it were possible to make any mis- take in seeking a way out of the social chaos, which could be so fatuous or so criminal as the mistake of not trying to seek any. No doubt, Julian, I have put finer words in the mouths of those men up there than their originals might have even understood, but if the meaning was not in their words it was in their cfeeds. And it is for what they did, not for what they said, that we honour them as proto-martyrs of the industrial republic of to-day, and bring our children, that they may kiss in gratitude the rough-shod feet of those who made the way for us." My experiences since I waked up in this year 2000 might be said to have consisted of a succession of instantaneous mental re- adjustments of a revolutionary character, in which what had formerly seemed evil to me had become good, and what had seemed wisdom had become foolishness. Had this conversation about the strikers taken place anywhere else, the entirely new impression I had received of the part plaj'ed by them in the great social revolution of which I shared the benefit v.-ould simply have been one more of these readjustments, and the process entirely a mental one. But the pres- ence of this wondrous group, the life-likeness of the figures growing on my gaze as I lis- tened to the doctor's words, imparted a pecu- liar personal quality — if I may use the term ^t-o the revulsion of feeling that I experi- enced. Moved by an irresistible impulse, I rose to my feet, and, removing my hat, saluted the grim forms whose living originals I had joined my contemporaries in revil- ing. The doctor smiled bravely. "Do you know, my boy," he said, "it is not often that the whirligig of Time brings round his revenges in quite so dramatic a way as this? " CHAPTER XXVI FOREIGN COMMEECK UNDER PROFITS J PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE, OR BETWEEN THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP SEA We arrived at the Arlington School some time before the beginning of the recitation which we were to attend, and the doctor took the opportunity to introduce me to the teacher. He was extremely interested to learn that I had attended the morning ses- sion, and very desirous to know something of my impressions. As to the forthcoming recitation, he suggested that if the members of the class were aware that they had so dis- tinguished an auditor, it would be likely to embarrass them, and he should therefore say nothing about my presence until the close of the session, when he should crave the privi- lege of presenting his pupils to me person- ally. He hoped I would permit this, as it would be for them the event of a lifetime, which their grandchildren would never tire of hearing them describe. The entrance of the class interrupted our conversation, and, the doctor and myself having taken our seats in a gallery where we could hear and see without being seen, the session at once began. "This morning," said the teacher, "we confined ourselves, for the sake of clearness, to the effects of the profit system upon a nation or community considered as if it were alone in the world and without relations to other communities. There is no way in which such outside relations operated to ne- gative any of the laws of profit which were brought out this morningy but they did operate to extend the effect of those laws in many interesting ways, and without some reference to foreign commerce our review of the profit system would be incomplete. "In the so-called political economies of our forefathers we read a vast deal about the advantages to a country of having an inter- national trade. It was supposed to be one of the great secrets of national prosperity, and a chief study of the nineteenth-century statesmen seems to have been to establish and EQUALITY extend foreign commerce. Now, Paul, will you tell us the economic theory as to the ad- vant-ages of foreign commerce?" "It is based on the fact," said the lad Paul, "that countries differ in climate, natural resources, and other conditions, so that in some it is -wholly impossible or very difficult to produce certain needful things, while it is very easy to produce certain other things in greater abundance than is needed. In former times, also, thoie were marked differences in the grade of civilisation and the condition of the arts in different coun- tries, which still further modified their re- spective powers in the production of wealth. This being so, it might obviously be for the mutual advantage of countries to exchange with one another what they could produce against what they could not produce at all or only with difficulty, and not mea-ely thus secure many things which otherwise they must go without, but also greatly increase the total effectiveness of their industry by applying it to the sorts of production best fitted to their conditions. In ordei', how- ever, that the people of the respective coun- tries should actually derive this advantage or any advantage from foreign exchange, it would be necessary that the exchanges should be carried on in the general interest, for the purpose of giving the people at large the benefit of them, as is done at the present day, when foreign commerce, like other eco- nomic undertakings, is carried on by the governments of the several countries. But there was, of course, no national agency to carry on foreign commerce in that day. The foreign trade, just like the internal processes of production and distribution, was conducted by the capitalists on the profit system. The result was that all the benefits of this fair- sounding theory of foreign commerce were either totally nullified or turned into curses, and the international trade relations of the countries constituted merely a larger field for illustrating the baneful effects of the profit system and its power to turn good to evil and ' shut the gates of mercy on mankind.' " How Profits Nullified -raE Benefit of COMJIERCE. "Illustrate, please, the operation of the profit system in international trade." "Let us suppose," said the boy Paul, "that America could produce grain and other food stuffs with great cheapness and in gi-eater quantities than the people needed. Suppose, on the contrary, that England could produce food stuffs only with difficulty and in small quantities. Suppose, however, that England, on account of various conditions, could pro- duce clothing and hardware much more cheaply and abundantly than America. In such a case it would se<>ni that both countries would be gainers if Americans exchanged the food stuffs which it was so easy for them to produce for the clothing and hardware which it was so easy for the English to produce. The result would appear to promise a clear and equal gain for both people. But this, of course, is on the sup])osition that the exchange should be negotiated by a public agency for the benefit of the respective populations at large. But when, as in those days, the ex- change was negotiated wholly by private capitalists competing for private profits at the expense of the communities, the result was totally different. "The American grain merchant who ex- ported grain to the English would be im- pelled, by the competition of other American grain merchants, to put his price to the English as low as possible, and to do that he would beat down to the lowest possible figure the American farmer who produced the grain. And not only must the American merchant sell as low as his American rivals, but he must also undersell the grain merchants of other grain-producing countries, such as Rus- sia, Egypt, and India. And now let us see how much benefit the English people received from the cheap American grain. We will say that, owing to the foreign food supply, the cost of living declined one half or a third in England. Here would seem a great gain surely ; but look at the other side of it. The English must pay for their grain by supply- ing the Americans with cloth and hardware. The English manufacturers of these things were rivals just as the American grain mer- chants were — each one desirous of capturing as large a part of the American market as he could. He must therefore, if possible, undersell his home rivals. Moreover, like the American grain merchant, the English manu- facturer must contend with foreign rivals. Belgium and Germany made hardv>'are and cloth very cheaply, and the Americans would exchange their grain for these commodities with the Belgians and the Germans unless the English solcl cheaper. Now, the main ele- ment in the cost of making cloth and hard- ware was the wages paid for labour. A pressure was accordingly sure to be brought to bear by every English manufacturer upon his workmen, to compel them to accept lower wages, so that he might undersell his Eng- lish rivals, and also cut under the German and Belgian manufacturers, who were trying to get the American trade. Now can the English workman live on less wages than before? Plainly he can, for his food supply has been greatly cheapened. Presently, there- fore, he finds his wages forced down by as much as the cheaper food supply has cheap- ened his living, and so finds himself jusf where he was to start with before the American trade began. And now look again at the American farmer. He is now getting his imported clothing and tools much cheaper than before, and consequently the lowest living price at which he can afford to sell 90 EQUA1.1TY grain is cor^siderably lower than before the English trade began — lower by so much, in fact, as he has saved on his tools and cloth- ing. Of this, the grain merchant, of course, took prompt advantage, for unless he put his grain into the English market lower than other grain merchants, he would lose his trade, and Russia, Egypt, and India stood ready to flood England with grain if the Americans could not bid below them, and then farewell to cheap cloth and tools ! So down presently went the price the American farmer received for his grain, until the re- duction absorbed all that he had gained by the cheaper imported fabrics and hardware, and he, like his fellow- victim across the sea —the English iron-worker or factory opera- tive — was no better off than he was before English trade had been suggested. "But was he as well off? Was either the American or the English worker as well off as before this interchange of politics began, which, if rightly conducted, would have been so greatly beneficial to both? On the con- trary, both alike were in important ways distinctly worse off. Each had indeed done badly enough before, but the industrial system on which they depended, being limited by the national borders, was com- paratively simple and uncomplex, self-sus- taining, and liable only to local and transient disturbances, the effect of which could be to some extent estimated, possibly remedied. Now, however, the English operatives and the American farmer had alike become depen- dent upon the delicate balance of a complex set of international adjustments liable at any moment to derangements that might take away their livelihood, without leaving them even the small satisfaction of understanding what hurt them. The prices of their labour or their produce were no longer dependent ag before upon established local customs and national standards of li-ving, but had become subject to determination by the pitiless neces- sities of a world-wide competition, in which the American farmer and the English artisan were forced into rivalship with the Indian ryot, the Egyptian fellah, the half-starved Belgian miner, or the German weaver. In former ages, before international trade had become general, when one nation was down another was up, and there was always hope in looking over seas ; but the prospect which the unlimited development of international commerce upon the profit system was opening to mankind in the later part of the nine- teenth century, was that of a world-wide standard of living, fixed by the rate at which life could be supported by the worst-used races. International trade was already show- ing itself to be the instrumentality by which the world-wide plutocracy would soon have established its sway if the great Revolution had tarried." "In the case of the supposed reciprocal trade between England ancl America, which you have used as an illustration," said the teacher, "you have assumed that the trade relation was an exchange of commodities on equal terms. In such a case it appears that the effect of the profit system was to leave the masses of both countries somewhat worse off than they would have been without foreign trade, the gain on both the American and English side inuring wholly to the manufac- turing and trading capitalists. But in fact bo'th countries in a trade relation were not usually on equal terms. The capitalists of one were often far more powerful than those of another, and had a stronger or older economic organisation at their service. In that case what was the result ? "The overwhelming competition of the capitalists of the stronger country crushed out the enterprises of the capitalists of the weaker country, the people of which conse- quently became wholly dependent upon the foreign capitalists for many productions which otherwise would have been produced at home to the profit of home capitalists, and in proportion as the capitalists of the de- pendent country were thus rendered econo- mically incapable of resistance, the capitalists of the stronger country regulated at their pleasure the terms of trade. The American colonies, in 1776, were driven to revolt against England by the oppression resulting from such a relation. The object of founding colonies, which was one of the main ends of seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth- century statesmanship, was to bring new communities into this relation of economic vassalage to the home capitalists, who, having beggared the home market by their profit, saw no prospect of making more ex- cept by fastening their suckers upon outside communities. Great Britain, whose capital- ists were strongest of all, was naturally the leader in this policy, and the main end of her wars and diplomacy for many centuries before the great Revolution was to obtain such colonies, and to secure from weaker nations trade concessions and openings— peaceably if possible, at the mouth of the can- non if necessary." "How about the condition of the masses in a country thus reduced to commercial Tassal- age to the capitalists of another country? Was it necessarily worse than the condition of the masses of the superior country? " "That did not follow at all. We must constantly keep in mind that the interests of the capitalists and of the people were not identical. The prosperity of the capitalists of a country by no means implies prosperity on the part of the population, nor the re- verse. If the masses of the dependent country had not been exploited by foreign capitalists, they would have been by domes- tic capitalists. Both they and the working masses of the superior coimtry were equally the tools and slaves of the capitalists, who did not treat working-men any better on ac- EQUALITY 91 count of being their fellow-countrymen than if they had been foreigners. It was the capi- talists of the dependent country, rather than the masses, who suffered by the suppression of indepciulent business enterprises." Between the Devil and the Deep Sea. "That will do, Paul. — We will now ask some information from you, Helen, as to a point which Paul's last words have suggested. During the eighteenth and nineteenth cen- turies a bitt-er controversy raged among our ancestors between two parties in opinion and politics, calling themselves respectively the Protectionists and the Free Traders, the former of whom held that it was well to shut out the competition of foreign capital- ists in the market of a country by a tariff upon imports, while the latter held that no impediment should be allowed to the entirely free course of trade. What have you to say as to the merits of this controversy?" "Merely," replied the girl called Helen, "that the difference between the two policies, so far as it affected the people at large, reduced itself to the question whether they preferred being fleeced by home or foreign capitalists. Free trade was the cry of the capitalists who felt themselves able to crush those of rival nations if allowed the opportunity to com- pete with them. Protection was the cry of the capitalists who felt themselves weaker than those of other nations, and feared that their enterprises would be crushed and their profits taken away if free competition were allowed. The Free Traders were like a man who, seeing his antagonist is no match for him, boldly calls for a free fight and no favour, while the Protectionist was the man who, seeing himself overmatched, called for the police. The Free Trader held that the natural, God-given right of the capitalist to shear the people anywhere he found them was superior to considerations of race, nation- ality, or boundary lines. The Protectionist, on the contrary, maintained the patriotic right of the capitalist to the exclusive shear- ing of his own fellow-countrymen without interference of foreign capitalists. As to the mass of the people, the nation at large, it was, as Paul has just said, a matter of indifference whether they were fleeced by the capitalists of their own country und6r protection, or the capitalists of foreign countries under free trade. The literature of the controversy between Protectionists and Free Traders makes this very clear. What- ever else the Protectionists failed to prove, they were able to demonstrate that the con- dition of the people in free-trade countries was quite as bad as anywhere else, and, on the other hand, the Free Traders were equally conclusive in the proofs they presented, that the people in protected countries, other things being equal, were no better off than those in free-trade lands. The question of Protection or Free Trade interested the capitalists only. For the people, it was the choice between the devil and tlie deep sea." "Let us have a concrete illustration," said the teacher. "Take the case of England. She was beyond comparison the country of all others in the nineteenth century which had most foreign trade and commanded most foreign markets. If a large volume of foreign trade under conditions practically dictated by its capitalists was under the profit system a source of national prosperity to a country, we should e.xpect to see the mass of the British people at the end of the nineteenth century enjoying an altogether extraordinary felicity and general welfare, as compared with that of other peoples or any former people, for never before did a nation develop so vast a foreign commerce. What were the facts?" " It was common," replied the girl, " for our ancestors, in the vague and foggy way in which they used the terms 'nation'^' and ' national,' to speak of Great Britain as rich. But it was only her capitalists, some scores of thousands of individuals among some forty million people, who were rich. These indeed had increclible accumulations, but the re- mainder of the forty millions— the whole people, in fact, save an infinitesimal fraction — were sunk in poverty. It is said that England had a larger and more hopeless pauper problem than any other civilised nation. The condition of hor working masses was not only more wretched than that of many contemporary people, but was worse, as proved by the most careful economic com- ,parisons, than it had been in the fifteenth century, before foreign trade was thought) of. People do not emigrate from a land where they are well off, but the British people, driven out by want, had found the frozen Canadas and" the torrid zone more hospitable than their native land. As an illustration of the fact that the welfare of the working masses was in no way improved when the capitalists of a country commanded foreign markets, it is interesting to note the fact that the British emigrant was alile to make a better living in English colonies, whose markets were wholly dominated by English capitalists, than he had been at home as the employee of those capitalists. We shall remember also that Malthus, with his doctrine that it was the best thing that could happen to a working-man not to be born, \vas an Englishman, and ba.sed his conclu- sions very logically upon his observations of the conditions of "life for the masses in that country, which had been more successful than any other in any age in monopolising the foreign markets of the world by its commerce. " Or," the girl went on, " take Belgium, that_ old Flemish land of merchant-s. where foreign trade had been longer and more 92 EQUALITY steadily used than in any other European country. In the later part of the nineteenth century the mass of the Belgian people, the hardest-worked population in the world, was said to have been, as a rule, without ade- quate food — to be undergoing, in short, a process of slow starvation. They, like the people of England and the people of Ger- many, are proved, by statistical calculations upon the subject that have come down to us, to have been economically very much better off during the fifteenth and early part of the sixteenth century, when foreign trade was hardly known, than they were in Ihe nineteenth. There was a possibility before foreign trade for profit began, that a popula- tion might obtain some share of the richness of a bountiful land just from the lack of any outlet for it. But with the beginning of foreign commerce, under the profit system, that possibility vanished. Thenceforth every- thing good or desirable, above what might serve for the barest subsistence of labour, was systematically and exhaustively gathered up by the capitalists, to be exchanged in foreign lands for gold and gems, silks, vel- vets, and ostrich plumes for the rich. As Goldsmith had it — ' Around the world each needful product flies For all the luxuries the world supplies.' " " To what has the struggle of the nations for foreign markets in. the nineteenth century been aptly compared? " " To a contest between galleys manned by slaves, whose owners prize. re racing for a In such a race, which crew was likely to fare worse, that of the winning or the losing galley ? " "That of the winning galley, by all means," replied the girl, " for the supposi- tion is that, other conditions being equal, it was the more sorely scourged." "Just so," said the teacher; "and on the same principle, when t^e capitalists of two coimtries contended for the supplying of a foreign market, it was the workers sub- ject to the successful group of capitalists who were most to be pitied, for, other conditions being equal, they were likely to be those whose wages had been cut lowest, and whose general condition was most degraded." " But tell us," said the teacher, " were there not instances of a general poverty in countries having no foreign trade as great as prevailed in the countries you have men- tioned ? ' ' " Dear me, yes ! " replied the girl. " I have not meant to convey any impression that because the tender mercies of the foreign capitalists were cruel, those of the domestic capitalist were any less so. The comparison is merely between the operation of the profit system on a larger or smaller scale. So Ion? as the profit system was retained, it vi-oulci be all one in the end, whether you built a wall around a country and left the people to be exploited exclusively by home capi- talists, or threw the wall down and let in the foreigners." CHAPTER XXVII HOSTILITY OF A SYSTEM OF VESTED INTERESTS TO IMPROVEMENT. " Now, Florence," said the teacher, " with your assistance we will take up the closing' topic in our consideration of the economic system of our fathers — namely, its hostility to invention and improvement. It has been our painful duty to point out numerous respects in which our respected ancestors were strangely blind to the true character and effects of their economic institutions, but no instance perhaps is more striking than this. Far from seeing the necessary an- tagonism between private capitalism and the march of improvement which is so plain to us, they appear to have sincerely believed that their system was peculiarly favourable to the progress of invention, and that its advantage in this respect was so great as to be an important set-off to its admitted ethical defects. Here there is decidedly a broad difference in opinion, but fortunately the facts are so well authenticated that we shall have no difficulty in concluding which view is correct. " The subject divides itself into two branches : First, the natural antagonism of the old system to economic changes ; and, second, the effect of the profit principle to minimise, if not wholly to nullify, the benefit of such economic improvements as were able to over- come that antagonism so far as to get them- EQUAIJTY 93 selves introduced. Now, Florence, tell ua what there was about the old economic sys- tem, the system of private capitalism, which made it constitutionally opposed to changes in methods." " It was," replied the girl," the fact that it consisted of independent vested interests without any principle of co-ordination or combination, the result being that the economic welfare of every individual or group was wholly dependent upon his or its par- ticular vested interest without regard to others or to the welfare of the whole body." " Please bring out your meaning by com- paring our modern system in the respect you speak of with private capitalism." " Our system is a strictly integrated one — that is to say, no one has any economic interest in any part or function of the economic organisation which is distinct from his interest in every other part and function. His only interest is in the greatest possible output of the whole. We have our several occupations, but only that we may work the more efficiently for the common fund. We may become very enthusiastic about our special pursuit, but as a matter of sentiment only, for our economic interests are no more (Iep4?ndent upon our special occupation than upon any other. We share equally in the total product, whatever it is." " How does the integrated character of the economic system affect our attitude toward improvements or inventions of any sort in economic processes?" " We welcome them with eagerness. Why should we not? Any improvement of this sort must necessarily redound to the advan- tage of every one in the nation, and to every one's advantage .equally. If the occupation affected by the invention happens to be our particular employment we lose nothing, though it should make that occupation wholly superfluous. We might in that case feel a little sentimental regret over the passing away of old habits, but that is all. No one's s\ibstantial interests are in any way more identified with one pursuit than another. All are in the service of the nation, and it is the business and interest of the nation to see that every one is provided with other work as soon as his former occupation be- comes unnecessary to the general weal, and under no circumstances is his rate of main- tenance affected. From its first production every improvement in economic processes is therefore an unalloyed blessing to all. The inventor comes bringing a gift of greater wealth or leisure in his hand for every one on earth, and it is no wonder that the people's gratitude makes his reward the most enviable to be won by a public benefactor. " Now, Florence, tell us in what way the multitude of distinct vested interests which made up private capitalism operated to pro- duce an antagonism toward economic inven- tions and improvements " How Progress Antagonised Vested Interests. " As I have said," replied the girl, "every- body's interest was wholly confined to and bound up with the particular occupation he was engaged in. If he was a capitalist, his capital was embarked in it; if he was an artisan, his capital was the knowledge of some particular craft or part of a craft, and he depended for his livelihood on the demand for the sort of work he had learned how to do. Neither as capitalist nor artisan, as em- ployer or employee, had he any economic interest or dependence outside of or larger than his special business. Now, the effect of any new idea,, invention, or discoveiy for economic application is to dispense more or less completely with the process formerly used in that department, and so far to destroy the economic basis of the occupa- tions connected with that business. Under our system, as I have said, that means no loss to anybody, but simply a shifting of workers, with a net gain in wealth or leisure to all; but then it meant ruin to those involved in the change. The capitalist lost his capital, his plant, his investments m.ore or less totally, and the working-men lost their means of livelihood, and were thrown on what you well called the cold charity of the world — a charity usually well below zero ; and this loss without any rebate or com- pensation whatever from the public at large on account of any general benefit that might be received from the invention. It was com- plete. Consequently the most beneficent of inventions was cruel as death to those who had been dependent for living or for profit on the particular occupations it affected. The capitalists grew grey from fear of discoveries which in a day might turn their costly plants to old iron fit only for the junk-shop, and the nightmare of the artisan was some machine which should take bread from his children's mouths by enabling his employer to dispense with his services. "Owing to this division of the economic field into a set of vested personal and group interests wholly without coherency or inte- grating idea, each standing or falling by and for itself, every step in the advance of the arts and sciences was gained only at the cost of an amount of loss and ruin to particular portions of the community such as would be wrought by a blight or pestilence. The march of invention was white with the bleaching bones of innumerable hecatombs of victims. The spinning-jenny replaced the spinning-wheel, and famine stalked through English villages. The railroad supplanted the stage-coach, and a thousand hill towns died while as many sprang up in the valleys, and the farmers of the East were pauperised by the new agriculture of the West. Petro- EQUALITY leum succeeded whale-oil, and a hundred sea- ports withered. Coal and iron were found in the South, and the grass grew in the streets of the Northern centres of iron- making. Electricity succeeded steam, and billions of railroad property were wiped out. But what is the use of lengthening a list which might be made interminable? The rule was always the same : every important invention brought uncompensated disaster to some portion of the people. Armies of bank- rupts, hosts of workers forced into vaga- bondage, a sea of suffering of every sort, made up the price which our ancestors paid for evei-y step of progress. "Afterwards, when the victims had been buried or put out of the way, it was cus- tomary with our fathers to celebrate these industrial triumphs, and on such occasions a common quotation in the mouths of the orators was a line of verse to the effect that — ' Teace hath her victories not less renowned than those of war.' The orators were not wont to dwell on the fact that these victories of what they so oddly called peace were usually purchased at a cost in human life and suffering quite as great as — ^yes, often greater than — those of so-called war. "We have all read of Tamer- lane's pyramid at Damascus made of seventy thousand skulls of his victims. It may be said that if the victims of the various inven- tions connected with the introduction of steam had consented to contribute their skulls to a monument in honour of Stephenson or Arkwright it would dwarf Tamerlane's into insignificance. Tamerlane was a beast, and Arkwright was a genius sent to help men, yet the hideous juggle of the old-time economic system made the benefactor the cause of as much human suffering as the brutal conqueror. It was bad enough when men stoned and crucified those who came to help them, but private capitalism did them a worse outrage still in turning the gifts they brought into ciirses." "And did the workers and the capitalists whose interests were threatened by the pro- gress of invention take practical means of resisting that progress and suppressing the inventions and the inventors? "_ " They did all they could in that way. If the working-men had been strong enough they would have put an absolute veto on inventions of any sort tending to diminish the demand for crude hand labour in their respective crafts. As it was, they did all it was possible for them to accomplish in that direction by trades-union dictation and mob violence; nor can any one blame the poor fellows for resisting to the utmost improvements which improved them out of the means of livelihood. A machine gun would have been scarcely more deadly if turned upon the working-men of that day than a labour-saving machine. In those bitter times a man thrown out of the employ- ment he had fitted himself for might about as well have been shot, and if he were not able to get any other work, as so many were not, he would have been altogether better off had he been killed in battle with the drum and fife to cheer him and the hope of a pension for his family. Only, of course, it was the system of private capitalism, and not the labour-saving machine, which the working-men should have attacked, for with a rational economic system the machine would have been wholly beneficent." " How did the capitalists resist inven- tions? " " Chiefly by negative means, though much more effective ones than the mob violence which the working-men used. The initiative in everj^thing belonged to the capitalists. No inventor could introduce an invention, how- ever excellent, unless he could get capitalists to take it up, and this usually they would not do imless the inventor relinquished to them most of his hopes of profit from the discovery. A much more important hin- drance to the introduction of inventions resulted from the fact that those who would be interested in taking them up were those already carrying on the business the inven- tion applied to, and their interest was in most cases to suppress an innovation which threatened to make obsolete the machinery and methods in which their capital was in- vested. The capitalist had to be _fully assured not only that the invention was a good one in itself, but that it would be so profitable to himself personally as to make up for all the damage to his existing capital, before he would touch it. When inventions wholly did away with processes which had been the basis of profit-charging, it was often suicidal for the capitalist to adopt them. If they could not suppress such inventions in any other way, it was their custom to buy them up and pigeon-hole them. After the Revolution there were found enough of these patents which had been bought up and pigeon-holed in self-protection' by the capi- talists to have kept the world in novelties' for ten years if nothing more had been dis- covered. One of the most tragical chapters in the history of the old ordeV is made up of the difficulties, rebuffs, and lifelong dis- appointments which inventors had to contend with before they could get their discoveries introduced, and the frauds by which in most cases they were swindled out of the profits of them by the capitalists through whom their introduction was obtained. These stories seem, indeed, well-nigh incredible nowadays, when the nation is alert and eager to foster and encourage every stirring of the inventive spirit, and every one with any EQUALITY 95 sort of new idea can command the offices of the administration without cost to safeguard his claim to priority and to furnish him all possible facilities of information, material, and appliances to perfect his conception." "Considering," said the teacher, "that these facts as to the resistance offered by vested interests to the march of improvement must have been even more obvious to our ancestors than to us, how do you account for the belief they soom to have sincerely held that private capitalism as a system was favourable to invention?" "Doubtless," replied the girl, "it was be- cause they saw that whenever an invention was introduced it was under the patronage of capitalists. This was, of course, neces- sarily so because all economic initiative was confined to the capitalists. Our forefathers, observing that inventions when introduced at all were introduced through the machinery of private capitalism, overlooked the fact that usually it was only after exhausting its power as an obstruction to invention that capital lent itself to its advancement. They were in this respect like children who, seeing the water pouring over the edge of a dam and coming over nowhere else, should con- clude that the dam wa? an agency for aiding the flow of the river instead of being an obstruction which let it over only when it could be kept back no longer." "Our lesson," said the teacher, "relates in strictness only to the economic results of the old order, but at times the theme suggests aspects of former social conditions too im- portant to pa.ss without mention. We have seen how instructive was the system of vested interests which underlaid private capitalism to the introduction of improvements and in- ventions in the economic field. But there was another field in which the same influence was exerted with effects really far more im- portant and disastrous. — Tell us, Florence, something of the manner in which the vested interest system tended to resist the advance of new ideas in the field of thought, of morals, science, and religion." "Previous to the great Revolution," the girl replied, "the highest education not being universal as with us, but limited to a small body, the members of this body, known as the learned and professional classes, neces- sarily became the moral and intellectual teachers and leaders of the nation. They moulded the thoughts of the people, set them their standards, and through the control of their minds dominated their material inter- ests and determined the course of civilisa- tion. No such power is now monopolised by any class, because the high level of general education would make it impossible for any class of mere men to lead the people blindly. Seeing, however, that such a power was exer- cised in that day, and limited to .so small a class, it was a most vital point that this class should be qualified to discharge so re- sponsible a duty in a spirit of devotion to the general weal unbiased by distracting motives. But under the system of private capitalism, which made every person and group economically dependent upon and ex- clusively concerned in the prosperity of the occupation followed by himself and his group, this ideal was impossible of attain- ment. The learned class, the teachers, the preachers, writers, and professional men, were only tradesmen after all, just like the shoemakers and the carpenters, and their welfare was absolutely bound up with the demand for the particular sets of ideas and doctrines they represented, and the particular sorts of professional services they got their living by rendering. Each man's line of teaching or preaching was his vested interest — the means of his livelihood. That being so, the members of the learned and profes- sional class were bound to be affected by innovations in their departments precisely as shoemakers or carpenters by inventions af- fecting their trades. It necessarily followed that when any new idea was suggested in religion, in medicine, in science, in eco- nomics, in sociology, and indeed in almost any field of thought, the first question v.-hich the learned body having charge of that field and making a living out of it would ask itself was not whether the idea was good and true and would tend to the general wel- fare, but how it would immediately and directly affect the set of doctrines, traditions, and institutions, with the prestige of which their own personal interests were identified. If it was a new religious conception that had been suggested, the clergyman considered, first of all, how it would affect his sect and his personal standing in it. If it were a new medical idea, the doctor asked first how it would affect the practice of the school he was identified with. If it was a new economic or social theory, then all those whose professional capital was their reputa- tion as teachers in that branch, questioned first how the new idea agreed with the doc- trines and traditions constituting their stock- in-trade. Now, as any new idea, almost as a matter of course, must operate to discredit previous ideas in the same field, it followed that the economic self-interest of the learned classes would instinctively and almost invari- ably be opposed to reform or advance of thought in their fields. "Being human, they were scarcely more to be blamed for involuntarily regarding new ideas in their specialities with aversion than the weaver or the brickmaker for resisting the introduction of inventions calculated to take the bread out of his mouth. And yet cxjnsider what a tremendous, almost insur- mountable, obstacle to hiunan progress was presented by the fact that the intellectual 96 EQUALITY leaders of the nations and the moulders of the people's thoughts, by their economic de- pendence upon vested interests in established ideas, were biased against progress by the strongest motives of self-interest. When we give due thought to the significance of this fact, we shall find ourselves wondering no longer at the slow rate of human advance in the past, but rather that there should have been any advance at all." CHAPTER XXVIII HOW THE PROFIT SYSTEM NULLIFIED THE BENEFIT OF INVENTIONS "The general subject of the hostility of private capitalism to progress," pursued the teacher, "divides itself, as I said, into two branches. First, the constitutional antag- onism between a system of distinct and separ- ate vested interests and all unsettling changes which, whatever their ultimate effect, must be directly damaging to those interests. We will now ask you, Harold, to take up the second branch of the subject — namely, the effect of the profit principle to minimise, if not wholly to nullify, the benefit to the com- munity of such inventions and improy.ements as were able to overcome the antagonism of vested interests so far as to get themselves introduced. The nineteenth century, includ- ing the last quarter of the eighteenth, was marked by an astonishing and absolutely un- precedented number of great inventions in economic processes. To what was this out- burst of inventive genius due? " "To the same cause," replied the boy, "which accounts for the rise of the demo- cratic movement and the i^ea of human equality during the same period — that is to say, the diffusion of intelligence among the masses, which, for the first time becoming scmewhat general, multiplied ten-thousand- fold the thinking force of mankind, and, in the political aspect of the matter, changed the purpose of that thinking from the interest of the few to that of the many." "Our ancestors," said the teacher, "seeing that this outburst of invention took place under private capitalism, assumed that there must be something in that system peculiarly favourable to the genius of invention. Have you anything to say on that point beyond uliat has been said?" "Nothing," replied the boy, "except that by the same rule we ought to give credit to the institutions of royalty, _ nobility, and plutocracy for the democratic idea which, under their fostering influence _ during the same period, grew to flov.'ering in the great Revolution." "I think that will do on that point," answered the- teacher. "We will now ask you to tell us something more particularly of this great period of invention which began in the later part of the eighteenth century." HAROLD STATES THE FACTS. " From the times of antiquity up to the last quarter of the eighteenth century," said the lad, "there had been almost no progress in the mechanical sciences save as to ship- building and arms. From 1780, or there- abouts, dates the beginning of a series of discoveries of sources of power, and their application by machinery to economic pur- poses, which, during the century following, completely revolutionised the conditions of industry and commerce. Steam and coal meant a multiplication of human energy in the production of wealth Avhich was almost incalculable. For industrial purposes it is not too much to say that they transformed man from a pygmy to a Titan. These were, of course, only the greatest factors in a countless variety of discoveries by which prodigious economies of labour were effected in every detail of the arts by which human life is maintained and ministered to. In agriculture, where Nature, which cannot be too much hurried, is a large partner, and wherein, therefore, man's part is less con- trolling than in other industries, it might be expected that the increase of productive energy through human invention would be least. Yet here it was estimated that agri- cultui'al machinery, as most perfectly de- veloped in America, had multiplied some fifteen-fold the product of the individual worker. Tn most sorts of production less directly dependent upon Nature, invention during this period had multiplied the efficiency of labour in a much greater degree, ranging from fifty- and a hundred-fold to several thousand-fold, one man being able to accomplish as much as a small army in all previous ages." EQUALITY 97 "That is to say," said the toaiher, "it would seem that while the needs of the human race had not increased, its power to supply those needs had been indefinitely multiplied. This prodigious increase in the potency of labour was a clear net economic gain for the world, such as the previous history of the race furnished nothing com- parable to. It was as if God had given to man his power of attorney in full, to com- mand all the forces of the universe to serve him. Now, Harold, suppose you had merely been told as much as you have told us con- <'crning the hundred-fold multiplication of the wealth-producing power of the race which took place at this period, and were left with- out further information, to infer for your- self how great a change for the better in the condition of mankind would naturally follow, what would it seem reasonable to suppose?" "It would seem safe to take foi- granted at the least," replied the boy, "that every form of human unhappiness or imperfection resulting directly or indirectly from economic want would be absolutely banished from the earth. That the very meaning of the word poverty would have been forgotten would seem to be a matter-of-course assumption to begin with. Beyond that we might go on and fancy almost anj'thing in the vray of ftniversal diffusion of luxury that we pleased. The facts given as the basis of the specula- tion would justify the wildest day-dreams of universal happiness, so far as material abundance could directly or indirectly minister to it." "Very good, Harold. We know now what to expect when you shall go on to tell us what the historical facts are as to the degree of improvement in the economic condition of the mass of the race, which actually did result from the great inventions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Take the condition of the mass of the people in the advanced countries at the close of the nineteenth century, after they had been en- joying the benefits of coal and steam, and most of the other great inventions for a century, more or less, and. comparing it with their condition, say, in 1780, give us some idea of the change for the better which had taken place in their economic welfare. Doubtless it was something marvellous." "It was a subject of much nice debate and close figuring," replied the boy, "whether ia the most advanced countries there had been, taking one class with another, and dis- regarding mere changes in fashions, any real improvement at all in the economic basis of the great majority of the people." "is it possible that the improvement had been so small that there could be a question raised whether there had been any at all? " "Precisely so. As to the English people in the nineteenth century. Florence has given us the facts in speaking of the effects of foreign commerce. The Engli.sh had not only a greater foreign commerce than any other nation, but had also made earlier and fuller use of the great inventions than any other. She has told us that the sociologists of the time had no difficulty in proving that the economic condition of the English people was more wretched in the later part of the nine- teenth century than it had been centuries previous, before steam had been thought of, .and that this was equally true of the peoples of the Low Countries, and the masses of Germany. As to the working masses of Italy and Spain, they had been in much better economic condition during periods of the Roman Empire than they were in the nineteenth century. If the French were a little better off in the nineteenth than in the eighteenth century, it w^as owing wholly to the distribution of land effected by the French Revolution, and in no way to the great inventions." "How was it in the United States?" " If America," replied the lad, " had shown a notable improvement in the condition of the people, it would not be necessary to ascribe it to the progress of in- vention, for the wonderful economic oppor- tunities of a new country had given them a vast though necessarily temporary advantage over other nations. It does not appear, how- ever, that there was any more agreement of testimony as to whether the condition of the masses had on the whole improved in America any more than in the Old World. In the last decade of the nineteenth century, with a view to allaying the discontent of the wage-earners and the farmers, which was then beginning to swell to revolutionary volume, agents of the United States Govern- ment published elaborate comparisons of wages and prices, in which they argued out a small percentage of gain on the whole in the economic condition of the American artisans during the century. At this distance we can- not, of course, criticise these calculations in detail, but we may base a reasonable doubt of the conclusion that the condition of the masses had very greatly improved, upon the existence of tlie popular discontent which they were published in the vain hope of moderating. It seems safe to assume that the people were better acquainted with their own condition than the sociologists, and it is certain that it was the growing conviction of the American masses during the closing decades of the nineteenth century that they were losing ground economically, and in danger of sinking into the degraded condi- tion of the proletariat and peasantry of tha ancient and contemporary European world. Against the laborious tabulations of the apologists of capitalism we may adduce, aa far superior and more convincing evidence of the economic tendency of the American people during the later part of the nineteenth century, such signs of the times as the growth of beggary and vagabondage to Old 98 EQUALITY World proportions, the embittered revolts of the wage-earners which kept up a constant industrial war, and finally the condition of bankruptcy into which the farming popula- tion was sinking." " That will do as to that point," said the teacher. "In such a comparison as this small margins and nice points of difference are impertinent. It is enough that if the indefinite multiplication of man's wealth- producing power by inventive progress had been developed and distributed with any de- gree of intelligence for the general interest, poverty would have disappeared, and com- fort, if not luxury, have become the uni- ver.sal condition. This being a fact as plain and large as the sun, it is needless to con- sider the hair-splitting debates of the econo- mists as to whether the condition of this or that class of the masses in this or that country was a grain better or two grains worse than it had been. It is enough for the purpose of the argument that nobody anyv\'here in any country pretended that there had been an improvement noticeable enough to make even a beginning toward that complete transformation in the human condi- tion for the better, of which the great in- ventions by universal admission had con- tained the full and immediate promise and potency. " And now tell us, Harold, what our ances- tors had to say as to this astonishing fact — a fact more marvellous than the great inven- tions themselves, namely, their failure to prove of any considerable benefit to mankind. Surely a phenomenon at once so amazing in itself, and involving so prodigious a defeat to the hopes of human happiness, must have set a world of rational beings t-o speculating in a very impassionate way as to what the explanation might be. One would suppose that the facts of this failure with which our ancestors were confronted would have been enough to convince them that there must be something radically and horribly wrong about any economic system which was responsible for it or had permitted it, and that no further argument would have been wanted to induce them to make a radical change in it." " One would think so, certainly," said the boy, "but it did not seem to occur to our great-grandfathers to hold their economic system to any responsibility for the result. As we have seen, they recognised, however they might dispute as to percentages, that the great inventions had failed to make any notable improvement in the human condition, but they never seemed to get so far as to inquire seriously why this was so. In the voluminous works of the economists of the period we find no discussions, much less any attempt to explain, a fact which to our view absolutely overshadows all the other features of the economic situation before the Revolu- tion. And the strangest thing about it all is that their failure to derive any benefit worth speaking of from the progress of invention in no way seemed to damp the enthusiasm of our ancestors about the inventions. They seemed fairly intoxicated with the pride of their achievements, barren of benefit as they had been, and their day-dreams were of further discoveries that to a yet more amaz- ing degree should put the forces of the uni- verse at their disposal. None of them ap- parently paused to reflect that though God might empty His treasure-house for their benefit of its every secret of use and of power, the race would not be a whit the bet- ter off for it, unless they devised some economic machinery by which these dis- coveries might be made to ser^e the general welfare more effectually than they had done before. They do not seem to have realised that so long as poverty remained, every new invention which multiplied the power of wealth production was but one more charge in the indictment against their economic sys- tem as guilty of an imbecility as great as its iniquity. They appear to have wholly over- looked the fact, that until their mighty engines should be devoted to increasing human welfare, they were, and would con- tinue mere curious scientific toys of no more real worth or utility to the race than so many particularly ingenious jumping-jacks. Thi craze for more and more and ever greater and wider inventions for economic purposes, coupled with apparent complete indifference as to whether mankind derived any ultimate benefit from them or not, can only be under- stood by regarding it as one of those strange epidemics of insane excitement which have been known to affect whole populations at certain periods, especially of the middle ages. Rational explanation it has none." "You may well say so," exclaimed the teacher. " Of what use indeed was it that coal had been discovered, when there were still as many fireless homes as ever? Of what use was the machinery by which one man could weave as much cloth as a thousand a century before, when there were as many ragged, shivering human beings as ever ? Of what use was the machmery by which the American farmer could produce a dozen times as much food as his grand- father, when there were more cases of star- vation and a larger proportion of half-fed and badly-fed people in the country than ever before, and hordes of homeless, des- perate vagabonds traversed the land, begging for bread at every door ? They had invented steamships, these ancestors of ours, that were miracles, but their main business was trans- porting paupers from lands where they had been beggared in spite of labour-saving machinery, to newer lands whore, after a short space, they would inevitably be beg- gared again. About the middle of the nine- teenth century the world went wild over the invention of the sewing-machine, and the EQUALITY 99 burden it was to lift from tlie shoulders of the race. Yet, fifty years after, the business of garment-making, which it had been cx- Eected to revolutionise for the better, had ecome a slavery both in America and Europe which, under the name of the ' sweating system,' scandalised even that tough generation. They had lucifer matches instead of flint and steel, kerosene and elec- tricity instead of candles and whale-oil, but the spectacles of squalor, misery, and degra- dation upon which the improved light shone were the same, and only looked the worse for it. What few beggars there had been in America in the first quart€r of the nineteenth century went afoot, while in the last quarter they stole their transportation on trains drawn by steam-engines, but there were fifty times as many beggars. The world travelled sixty miles an hour, instead of five or ten at the begiiming of the century, but it had not gained an inch on poverty, which clung to it as the shadow to the racer." Helen gives the Explax.4tiok of the Facts. "Now, Helen," pursued the teacher, "we want you to explain the facts that Harold has so clearly brought out. We want you to tell us why it was that the economic condi- tion of humanity derived but a barely per- ceptible advantage at most, if indeed any at all, from an inventive progress which, by its indefinite multiplication of productive energy, should, by every rule of reason, have com- pletely transformed for the better the economic condition of the race, and wholly banished want from earth. What was there about the old system of private capitalism to account for a fiasco so tremendous ? " "It was the operation of the profit prin- ciple," replied the girl Helen. " Please proceed with the explanation." " The great economic inventions which Harold has been talking about," said the girl, " were of the class of what were called labour-saving machines and devices — that is to say, they enabled one man to produce more than before with the same labour, or to produce the same as before with less labour. Under a collective administration of industry in the equal general interest like ours, the effect of any such invention would be to increase the total output to be shared equally among all, or, if the people preferred and so voted, the output would remain what it was, and the saving of labour be appro- priated as a dividend of leisure to be equally enjoyed by all. But under the old system there was, of course, no collective adminis- tration. Capitalists were the administrators, being the only persons who were able to carry on extensive operations or take the initiative in economic enterprises, and in what they did, or did not do, they had no regard to the public interest or the general gain, but to their own profit only. The only motive which could induce a capitalist to adopt an invention was the idea of increasing his profits, either by getting a larger pro- duct at the same labour cost, or else getting the same product at a reduced labour cost. We will take the first case. Suppose a capi- talist, in adopting labour-saving machinery, calculated to keep all his former employees and make his profit by getting a larger pro- duct with the same labour cost. Now, when a capitalist proposed to increase his output without the aid of a machine he had to hire more workers, who nuist be paid wages, to be afterward expended in purchasing pro- ducts in the market. In this case, for every increase of product there was some increase, although not at all an cc(ual one, in the buy- ing power of the community. But when the capitalist increased his output by the aid of machinery, with no increase in the number of workers employed, there was no corre- sponding increase of purchasing power on the part of the community to set on against the increased product. A certain amount of pur- chasing power went, indeed, in wages to the mechanics who constructed the labour-saving machines, but it was small in comparison with the increase in the output which the capitalist expected to make by means of the machinery, otherwise it would have been no object to him to buy the machine. The in- creased product would therefore tend directly to glut yet more the always glutted market ; and if any considerable number of capitalists should introduce machinery in the same way, the glut would become intensified into a crisis and general stoppage of production, "In order to avert or minimise such a disaster, the capitalists could take one of two courses. They could, if they chose, reduce the price of their increased machine product, so that the purchasing power of the community, which had remained sta- tionary, could take it up at least as nearly as it had taken up the lesser quantity of higher-priced product before the machinery was introduced. But if the capitalists did this, they would derive no additional profit whatever from the adoption of the machinery, the whole benefit going to the community. It is scarcely necessary to say that this was not what the capitalists were in business for. The other course before them was to keep their product where it was before introducing the machine, and to realise their profit by discharging the workers, thus saving on the labour cost of the output. This was the course most commonly taken, because the glut of goods was generally so threatening that, except when inventions opened up wholly new fields, capitalists were careful not greatly to increase outputs. For example, if the machine enabled one man to do two men's work, the capitalist would discharge half of his force, put the saving in labour cost in his pocket, and still produce ;s many 100 EQUALITY goods as ever. Moreover, there was another advantage about this plan. The discharged workers swelled the numbers of the unem- ployed, who were underbidding one another for the opportunity to work. The increased desperation of this competition made it pos- sible presently for the capitalist to reduce the wages of the half of his former force which he still retained. That was the usual result of the introduction of labour-saving machinery : first, the discharge of workers, then, after more or less time, reduced wages for those who were retained." "If I understand you, then," said the teacher, "the effect of labour-saving inven- tions was either to increase the product without any corresponding increase in the purchasing power of the community, thereby aggravating the glut of goods, or else to positiveJy decrease the purchasing-power of the community, through discharges and wage reductions, while the product remained the same as before. That is to say, the net result of labour-saving machinery was to in- crease the difference between the production and consumption of the community which remained in the hands of the capitalists as profit." "Precisely so. The only motive of the capitalist in introducing labour-saving machinery was to retain as pi^ofit a larger share of the product than before by cutting down the share of labour — that is to say, labour-saving machinery which should have banished poverty from the world became the means under the profit system of impoverish- ing the masses more rapidly than ever." "But did not the competition among the capitalists compel them to sacrifice a part of these increased profits in reductions of prices in order to get rid of their goods? " "Undoubtedly; but such reductions in price would not increase the consuming power of the people except when taken out of pro- fits, and, as John explained to us this morn- ing, when capitalists were forced by competi- tion to reduce their prices, they saved their profits as long as possible by making up for the reductions in price by debasing the equality of the goods, or cutting down wages, until the public and the wage-earners could be cheated and squeezed no longer. Then only did they begin to sacrifice profits, and it was then too late for the impoverished con- sumers to respond by increasing consumption. It was always, as John told us, in the countries where the people were poorest that the prices were lowest, but without benefit to the people." The American Farmer and Machinery. "And now," said the teacher, "I want to askyou something about the effect of labour- saving inventions upon a class of so-called capitalists who made up the greater half of the AmericTn people— I mean the farmers. In so far as they owned their farms and tools, however encumbered by debts and mortgages, they were technically capitalists, although themselves quite as pitiable victims of the capitalists as were the proletarian artisans. The agricultural labour-saving in- ventions of the nineteenth century in America were something simply marvellous, enabling, as we have been told, one man to do the work of fifteen a century before. Neverthe- less, the American farmer was going straight to the dogs all the while these inventions were being introduced. Now, how do you account for that? Why did not the farmer, as a sort of capitalist, pile up his profits on labour-saving machinery like the other capitalists? " "As I have said," replied the girl, "the profits made by labour-saving machinery re- sulted from the increased productiveness of the labour employed, thus enabling the capitalist either to turn out a greater product with the same labour cost, or an equal pro- duct with a less labour cost, the workers supplanted by the machine being discharged. The amount of profits made was therefore dependent on the scale of the business carried on— that is, the number of workeis em- ployed, and the consequent figure which labour cost made in the business. When farming was carried on upon a very large scale, as were the so-called bonanza farms in the United States of that period, consist- ing of twenty to thirty thousand acres of land, the capitalists conducting them did for a time make great profits, which were directly owing to the labour-saving agricul- tural machines, and would have been impos- sible without them. These machines enabled them to put a greatly-increased product on the market with small increase of labour cost, or else the same product at a great decrease of labour cost. But the mass of the American farmers operated on a small scale only, and employed very little labour, doing largely their own work. They could therefore make little profit, if any, out of labour-saving machinery by discharging employees. The only way they could utilise it was not by cutting down the expense of their output, but by increasing the amount of the output through the increased efficiency of their own labour. But seeing that there had been no increase meanwhile in the purchasing power of the community at large, there was no more money demand for their products than before, and consequently if the general body of farmers through labour-saving machinery increased their output, they could dispose of the greater aggregate only at a reduced price, so that in the end they would get no more for the greater output than for the less. Indeed, they would not get so much, for the effect of even a small surplus when held by weak capitalists who could not keep it back, but must press for sale, had an effect to reduce the marlcet price quite out of propor- EQUALITY 101 tion to the amount of the surplus. In the United States the mass of these small farmers was so great, and their pressure to sell so desperate, that in the later part of the century they destroyed the market, not only for themselves, but finally even for the great capitalists who conducted the great farms." "The conclusion is, then, Helen," said the teacher, "that the net effect of labour-saving machinery upon the mass of small farmers in the United States was ruinous." "Undoubtedly," replied the girl. "This is a case in which the historical facts abso- lutely confirm the rational theory. Thanks to the profit system, inventions which multi- plied the productive power of the farmer fiftocn-fold made a bankrupt of him, and so long as the profit system was retained there was no help for him." "Were farmers the only class of small capitalists who were injured rather than helped by labour-saving machinery?" "The rule was the same for all small capitalists, whatever business they were en- gaged in. Its basis, as I have said, was the fact that the advantage to be gained by the capitalists from introducing labour-saving machinery was in proportion to the amount of labour which the machinery enabled them to dispense with — that is to say, was de- pendent upon the scale of their business. If th-j scale of the capitalist's operations was so small that he could not make a large saving in reduced labour cost by introducing machinery, then the introduction of such machinery put him at a crushing disadvan- tage as 'compared with larger capitalists. Labour-saving machinery was in this way one of the most potent of the influences which, toward the close of the nineteenth century, made it impossible for the small capitalists in any field to compete with the great ones, and helped to concentrate the economic dominion of the world in few and ever fewer hands." "Suppose, Helen, that the Revolution had not come, that labour-saving machinery had continued to be invented as fast as ever, and that the consolidation of the great capital- ists' interests, already foreshadowed, had been complet-ed, so that the waste of profits in competition among themselves had ceased, what wotdd have been the result? " "In that case," replied the girl, "all the wealth that had been wasted in commercial rivalry woidd have been expended in luxury in addition to what had been formerly so ex- pended. The new machinery year by year would have gone on making "it possible for a smaller and ever smaller fraction of the population to produce all the necessaries for the support of mankind, and the rest of the world, including the great mass of the workers, would have found employment in unproductive labour to provide the materials of luxury for the rich or in personal services to them. The world would thus come to be divided into three classes — a master caste, very limited in numbers; a vast body of un- productive workers employed in ministering to the luxury and pomp of the master caste ; and a small body of strictly productive workers, which, owing to the perfection of machinery, would be able to provide for the needs of all. It is needless to say that all save the masters would be at the minimum point as to means of subsistence. Decaying empires in ancient times have often presented such spectacles of imperial and aristocratic splendour, to the supply and maintenance of which the labour of starving nations was de- voted. But no such spectacle ever presented in the past would have been comparable to that which the twentieth century would have witnessed if the great Revolution had per- mitted private capitalism to complete its evolution. In former ages the great mass of the population has been necessarily em- ployed in productive labour to supply the needs of the world, so that the portion of the working force available for the service of the pomp and pleasures of the masters as unpro- ductive labourers has always been relatively small. But in the plutocratic empire we are imagining, the genius of invention, through labour-saving machinery, would have enabled the masters to devote a greater proportion of the subject population to the direct service of their state and luxury than had been possible under any of the historic despotisms. The abhorrent spectacles of men enthroned as gods above abject and worshipping masses, which Assyria, Egypt, Persia, and Rome exhibited in their day, would have been eclipsed." "That will do, Helen," said the teacher. "With your testimony we will wind up our review of the economic system of private capitalism which the great Revolution abolished for ever. There are, of course, a multitude of other aspects and branches of the subject which we might take up, but the study would be as unprofitable as depressing. We have, I think, covered the essential points. If you understand why and how profits, rent, and interest operated to limit the consuming power of most of the com- munity to a fractional part of its productive power, thereby in turn correspondingly crip- pling the latter, you have the open secret of the poverty of the world before the Revolu- tion, and of the impossibility of any im- portant or lasting improvement from any source whatever in the economic circumstances of mankind, until and unless private capi- talism, of which the profit system with rent and interest were necessary and inseparable parts, should be put an end to." 102 EQUALITY CHAPTER XXIX RECEIVE AK OVATION. " And now," the teacher v,-ent on, glancing at the galleiy, where the doctor and I had been sitting unseen, " I have a great surprise for you. Among those who have listened to your recitation to-day, both in the forenoon and afternoon, has been a certain personage whose identity you ought to be able to infer when I say that, "of all persons now on earth, he is absolutely the one best able, and the only one fully able, to judge how accurate your portrayal of nineteenth-century condi- tions has been. Lest the knowledge should disturb your equanimity, I have refrained from telling you, until the present moment, that we have present with us this afternoon a no less distinguished visitor than Julian West, and that with great kindness he has consented to permit me to present you to him." I had assented, rather reluctantly, to the teacher's request, not being desirous of expos- ing myself unnecessarily to curious staring. But I had yet to make the acquaintance of twentieth-century boys and girls. When they came around me, it was easy to see, in the wistful eyes of the girls and the moved faces of the boys, how deeply their imagina- tions were stirred by the suggestions of my presence among them, and how far their sentiment was from one of conmion or frivo- lous curiosity. The interest they showed in me was so wholly and delicately sympathetic that it could not have offended the most sensitive temperament. This had indeed been the attitude of all the persons of mature years whom I had met, but I had scarcely expected the same considerateness from school children. I had not, it seemed, sufficiently allowed for the influence upon manners of the atmosphere of refinement which surrounds the child of to- day from the cradle. These young people had never seen coarseness, rudeness, or brusqueness on the part of any one. _ Their confidence had never been abused, their sym- pathy wounded, or their suspicion excited. Having never imagined such a thing as a person socially superior or inferior to them- selves, they had never learned but one sort of manners. Having never had any occasion to create a false or deceitful impression, or to accomplish anything by indirection, it was natural that they should not know what affectation was. Truly, it is these secondary consequences, these moral and social reactions of economic equality to create a noble atmosphere of human intercourse, that, after all, have been the greatest contribution which the principle has made to human happiness. At once I found myself talking and jest- ing with the young people as easily as if I had always known them, and what with their interest in what I told them of the old-time schools, and my delight in their naive com- ments, an hour slipped away imnoticed. Youth is always inspiring, and the atmo- sphere of these fresh, beautiful, ingenuous lives was like a wine bath. Florence ! Esther ! Helen ! Marion ! Mar- garet ! George ! Robert ! Harold ! Paul ! — Never shall I forget that group of star-eyed girls and splendid lads, in whom I first made acquaintance with the boys and girls of the twentieth century. Can it be that God sends sweeter souls to earth now that the world is so much fitter for them ? CHAPTER XXX WHAT UNIVERS.4L CULTURE MEAX3 It was one of those Indian summer after- next station, and set forth in the general noons when it seems sinful waste of oppor- direction of home, indulging ourselves in as tunity to spend a needle.'^s hour within, many deviations from the route as pleased Being in no sort of hurry, the doctor and I our fancy. Presently, as we rolled noise- chartered a m.otor-carriage for two at the lessly over the .smooth streets, leaf-strewn EQUALITY 103 from the bordering colonnades of trees, I began to exclaim about the precocity of school children who, at the age of thirteen or fourteen, were able to handle themes usually reserved in my day for the college and university. This, however, the doctor made light of. "Political economy," he said, "from the time the world adopted the plan of equal sharing of labour and its results, became a science so simple that any child who knows the proper way to divide an apple with his little brothers has mastered the secret of it. Of course, to point out the fallacies of a false political economy is a very simple m<' tier also, when one has only to compare it with the true one. "As to intellectual precocity in general," pursued the doctor, "I do not think it is particularly noticeable in our children as com- pared with those of your day. We certainly make no effort to develop it. A bright school child of twelve in the nineteenth cen- tury would probably not compare badly as to acquirements with the average twelve-year- old in our schools. It would be as you com- pared them ten years later that the differ- ence in the educational systems would show its effect. At twenty-one or twenty-two the average youth would probably in your day have been little more advanced in education than at fourteen, ha\ing probably left school for the factory or farm at about that age, or a couple of years later, unless perhaps he happened to be one of the children of the rich minority. The corresponding child under our system would have continued his or her education without break, and at twenty-one have acquired what you used to call a college education." "The extension of the educational machinery necessary to provide the higher education for all must have been enormous," I said. "Our primary-school system pro- vided the rudiments for nearly all children, but not one in twenty went as far as the grammar-school, not one in a hundred as far as the high-school, and not one in a thousand ever saw a college. The great universities of my day — Harvard, Yale, and the rest — must have become small cities in order to receive the students flocking to them." " They would need to be very large cities, certainly," replied the doctor, "if it were a question of their undertaking the higher education of our youth, for every year we graduate not the thousands or tens of thou- sands that made up your annual grist of college graduates, but millions. For that very reason — that is, the numbers to be dealt with — we can have no centres of the higher education any more than you had of the primary education. Every community has its university just as formerly its common schools, and has in it more students from the vicinage than one of ^our great univer- sities could collect with its drag net from the ends of the earth." "But does not the reputation of particulai teachecs attract students to special universi- ties? " "That is a matter easily provided for," replied the doctor. "The perfection of oui- telephone and electroscope system makes it possible to enjoy at any distance the instruc- tion of any teacher. One of much popu- larity lectures to a million pupils in a whisper, if he happens to be hoarse, much more easily than one of your professors could talk to a class of fifty when in good voice." "Really, doctor," said 1, "there is no fact about your civilisation that seems to open so many vistas of possibility and solve before- hand so many possible dilliculties in the ar- rangement and operation of your social system as this universality of culture. 1 am bound to say that nothing that is rational seems impossible in the way of social ad- justments when once you a.«sume the exist- ence of that condition. My own contem- poraries fully recognised in theory, as you know, the importance of popular education to secure good government in a democracy ; but our system, which barely at best taught the masses to spell, was a farce indeed com- pared with the popular education of to-day." "Necessarily so," replied the doctor. "The basis of education is economic, requir- ing as it does the maintenance of the pupil without economic return during the educa- tional period. If the education is to amount to anything, that period must cover the years of childhood and adolescence to the age of at least twenty. That involves a very large expenditure, which not one parent in a thousand was able to support in your day. The State might have assumed it, of course, but that would have amounted to the rich supporting the children of the poor, and naturally they would not hear of that, at least beyond the primary grades of educa- tion. And even if there had been no money question, the rich, if they hoped to retain their power, would have been crazy to pro- vide for the masses destined to do their dirty work a culture which would have made them social rebels. For these two reasons your economic system was incom- patible with any popular education worthy of the name. On the other hand, the first effect of economic equality was to provide equal educational advantages for all, and the best the communitj' could afford. One of the most interesting chapters in the history of the Revolution is that which tells how at once after the new order was established the young men and women under twenty-one years of age, who had been working in fields or factories, perhaps since childhood, left their work and poured back into the schools and colleges as fast as room could be made for them, so that they might as far as pos- sible repair their early loss. AH alike recog- 104 EQUALITY nised, now that education hJld been made economically possible for all, that it was the greatest boon the new order had brought. It recorded also in the books that not only the youth, but the men and women, and even the elderly who had been without edu- cational advantages, devoted all the leisure left from their industrial duties to making up, as far as possible, for their lack of earlier advantages, that they might not be too much ashamed in the presence of a rising generation to be composed altogether of college gradu- ates. "In speaking of our educational system as it is at present," the doctor went on, " I should guard you against the possible mis- take of supposing that the course which ends at twenty-one complet-es the educational cur- riculum of the average individual. On the contrary, it is only the required minimum of culture which society insists that all youth shall receive during their minority to make them barely fit for citizenship. We should consider it a very meagre education indeed that ended there. As we look at it, the gi'aduation from the schools at the attain- ment of majority means merely that the graduate has reached an age at which he can be presumed to be competent, and has the right of an adult to carry on his further education without the guidance or compul- sion of the State. To provide means for this end the nation maintains a vast system of what you would call elective post-gradu- ate courses of study in every branch of science, and these are open freely to every one to the end of life to be pursued as long or as briefly, as constantly or as intermit- tently, as profoundly or superficially, as desired. "The mind is really not fit for many most important branches of knowledge, the taste for them does not awake, and the intellect is not able to grasp them, until mature life, when a month of application will give a com- prehension of a subject which years would have been wasted in trying to impart to a youth. It is our idea, so far as possible, to postpone the serious study of such branches to the post-graduate schools. Young people must get a smattering of things in general, but really theirs is not the time of life for ardent and effective study. If you would see enthusiastic students to whom the pursuit of knowledge is the greatest joy of life, you must seek them among the middle-aged fathers and mothers in the post-graduate schools. "For the proper use of these opportunities for the lifelong pursuit of knowledge we find the leisure of our lives, which seems to you so ample, all too small. And yet that leisure, vast as it is, with half of every day and half of every year and the whole later half of life sacred to personal uses — even the aggregate of these great spaces, growing greater with every labour-saving invention. which are reserved for the higher uses of life, would seem to us of little value for in- tellectual culture, but for a condition com- manded by almost none in your day, but secured to all by our institutions. I mean the moral atmosphere of serenity resulting from an absolute freedom of mind from dis- turbing anxieties and carking cares concern- ing our material welfare or that of those dear to us. Our economic system puts us in a position where we can follow Christ's maxim, so impossible for you, to ' take no thought for the morrow.' You must not understand, of course, that all our people are students or philosophers, but you may understand that we are more or less assiduous and systematic students and school-goers all our lives." "Really, doctor," I said, "I do not re- member that you have ever told me anything that has suggested a more complete and striking contrast between your age and mine than this about the persistent and growing development of the purely intellectual in- terests through life. In my day there was, after all, only si.x or eight years' difference in the duration of the intellectual life of the poor man's son drafted into the factory at fourteen and the more fortunate youth's who went to college. If that of tlie one stopped at fourteen, that of the other ceased about as completely at twenty-one or twenty-two. In- stead of being in a position to begin his real education on graduating from college, that event meant the close of it for the average student, and was the high-water mark of his life, so far as concerned the culture and knowledge of the sciences and humanities. In these respects the average college man never afterward knew so much as on his graduation day. For immediately thereafter, unless of the richest class, he must needs plunge into the turmoil and strife of busi- ness life, and engage in the struggle for the material means of existence. Whether he failed or succeeded, made little difference as to the effect to stunt and wither his intellec- tual life. He had no time and could com- mand no thought for anything else. If he failed, or barely avoided failure, perpetual anxiety ate out his heart; and if he suc- ceeded, his success usually made him a grosser and more hopelessly self-satisfied materialist than if he had failed. There was no hope for his mind or soul either way. If at the end of life his efforts had won him a little breathing space, it could be of no high use to him, for the spiritual and intellectual parts had become atrophied from disuse, and were no longer capable of responding to opportunity. "And this apology for an existence," said the doctor, "was the life of those whom you counted most fortunate and most successful — of those who w-ere reckoned to have won the prizes of life. Can you be surprised that we look back to the great Eevolution as a sort of second creation of man, inasmuch as it added EQUALITY 105 the conditions of an adequate mind and soul life to the bare physical existence under more or less agreeable conditions, which was about all the life the most of human beings, rich or poor, had up to that time known '! The effect of the struggle for existence in arresting, with its engrossments, the intel- lectual development at the very threshold of adult life, would have been disastrous enough had the character of the struggle been morally unobjectionable. It is when we come to consider that the struggle was one which not only prevented mental culture, but was utterly withering to the moral life, that we fully realise the unfortunate condition of the race before the Revolution. Youth is visited with noble aspirations and high dreams of duty and perfection. It sees the world as it should be, not as it is; and it is well for the race if the institutions of society are such as do not offend these moral en- thusiasms, but rather tend to conserve and develop them through life. This, I think, we may fully claim the modern social order does. Thanks to an economic system which illustrates the highest ethical idea in all its workings, the youth going forth into the world finds it a practice school for all the moralities. He finds full room and scope in its duties and occupations for every generous enthusiasm, every unselfish aspii-ation he ever cherished. He cannot possibly have formed a moral idea higher or completer than that which dominates our industrial and com- mercial order. "Youth was as noble in your day as now, and dreamed the same great deams of life's possibilities. But when the young man went forth into the world of practical life it was to find his dreams mocked and his ideals derided at every turn. He found himself compelled, whether he would or not, to take part in a fight for life, in which the first condition of success was to put his ethics on the shelf and cut the acquaintance of his conscience. You had various terms with which to describe the process whereby the young man, reluctantly laying aside his ideals, accepted the conditions of the sordid struggle. You described it as a ' learning to take the world as it is,' 'getting over roman- tic notions,' ' becoming practical,' and all that. In fact, it was nothing more nor less thaji the debauching of a soul. Is that too much to say? " "It is no more than the truth, and we all knew it," I answered. "Thank God, that day is over for ever! The father need now no longer instruct the son in cynicism lest he should fail in life, nor the mother her daughter in worldly wis- dom as a protection from generous instinct. The parents are worthy of their children and fit to associate with them, as it seems to us they were not and could not be in your day. Life is all the way through as spacious and noble as it seems to the ardent child standing on the threshold. The ideals of perfection, the enthusiasms of self-devotion, honour, love, and duty, which thrill the boy and girl, no longer yield with advancing years to baser motives, but continue to animate life to the end. You remember what Wordsworth said — ' Heaven lies about us in our infancy. Shades of the prison-house begin to close Upon the growing boy. ' I think if he were a partaker of our life he would not have been moved to extol childhood at the expense of maturity, for life grows ever wider and higher to the last." CHAPTER XXXI 'neither in this mountain, nor at JERUSALEM." Thk next morning, it being again necessary for Edith to report at her po.st of duty, I accompanied her to the railway station. While we stood waiting for the train, my attention was drawn to a distinguished-look- ing man who alighted from an incoming car. He appeared by nineteenth-century standards about sixty years old, and v/as therefore pre- sumably eighty or ninety, that being about the rate of allowance I have found it neces- sary to make in estimating the ages of my new contemporaries, owing to the slower advent of signs of age in these times. On speaking to Edith of this person, I was much interested when she informed mc that he was no other than Mr. Barton, whose sermon by telephone had so impressed me on the first Sunday of my new life, as set forth in "Looking Backward." Edith had just time to introduce me before taking the train. As we left the station together, I said to my companion that if he would excuse the 106 EQUALITY inquiry I should be interested to know what particular sect or religious body he repre- sented. "My dear Mr. West," was the reply, "your question suggests that my friend Dr. Leete has not probably said much to you about the modern way of regarding religious matters." "Our conversation has turned but little on that subject," I answered; "but it will not surprise me to learn that your ideas and practices are quite different from those of my day. Indeed, religious ideas and ecclesiastical institutions were already at that time undergoing such I'apid and radical de- composition that it was safe to predict if religion v/ere to survive another century it would be under very different forms from any the past had known." "You have suggested a topic," said my companion, "of the greatest possible intei'est to me. If you have nothing else to do, and would like "to talk a little about it, nothing would give me more pleasure." Upon receiving the assurance that I had absolutely no occupation except to pick up information about the twentieth century, Mr. Barton said^ "Let us, then, go into this old church, which you will no doubt have already recog- nised as a relic of your time. There we can sit comfortably while W3 talk, amid sur- roundings well fitted to our theme." I then perceived that we stood before one of the last century church buildings which have been preserved as historical monuments, and, moreover, as it oddly enough fell out, that this particular church was no other than the one my family had alwaj's attended, and I as well — that is, whenever I attended any church, which was not often. "What an extraordinary coincidence!" ex- claimed Mr. Barton, when I told him this ; "who would have expected it? Naturally, when you revisit a spot so fraught with affecting associations, you will wish to be alone. You must pardon my involuntary in- discretion in proposing to turn in here." "Eeally," I replied, "the coincidence is interesting merely, not at all affecting. Young men of my day did not, as a rule, take their church relations very seriously. I shall be interested to see how the old place looks. Let us go in, by all means." The interior proved to be quite unchanged in essential particulars since the last time I had been within its walls, more than a cen- tury before. That last occasion, I well re- membered, had been an Easter service, to which I had escorted some pretty country cousins who wanted to hear the music and see the flowers. No doubt the processes of decay had rendered necessary many restora- tions, but they had btcn carried out so as to preserve completely the original effects. Leading the way down the main aisle, I paused in front of the family pew. "This, Mr. Barton," I said, "is, or was, my pew. It is true that I am a little in arrears on pew rent, but I think I may ven- ture to invite you to sit with me." I had truly told Mr. Barton that there was very little sentiment connected with such church relations as I had maintained. They were indeed merely a matter of family tradi- tion and social propriety. But in another way I found myself not a little moved, as, dropping into my accustomed place at the head of the pew, I looked about the dim and silent interior. As my eye roved from pew to pew my imagination called back to life the men and women, the young men and maidens, who had been wont of a Sunday, a hundred years before, to sit in those places. As I recalled their various activities, ambitions, hopes, fears, envies, and intrigues, all dominated, as they had been, by the idea of money possessed, lost, or lusted after, I was impressed not so much with the personal death which had come to these my old ac- quaintances as by the thought of the com- pleteness with which the whole social scheme in which they had lived and moved and had their being had passed away. Not only were they gone, but their world was gone, and its place knew it no more. How strange, how artificial, how grotesque that v/orld had been ! — and yet to them and to me, while I was one of them, it had seemed the only possible mode of existence. Mr. Barton, with delicate respect for my absorption, waited for me to break the silence. "No doubt," I said, "since you preserve our churches as curiosities, you must have better ones of your own for use? " " In point of fact," my companion replied, "we have little or no use for churches at all." "Ah, yes ! I had forgotten for the moment that it was by telephone I heard your sermon. The telephone, in its present perfec- tion, must indeed have quite dispensed with the necessity of the church as an audience- room." "In other words," replied Mr. Barton, "when we assemble now we need no longer bring our bodies with us. It is a curious paradox that while the telephone and elec- troscope, by abolishing distance as a hind- rance to sight and hearing, have brought mankind into a closeness of sympathetic and intellectual rapport never before imagined, they have at the same time enabled indi- viduals, although keeping in closest touch with everything going on in the world, to enjoy, if they choose, a physical privacy such as one had to be a hermit to command in your day. Our advantages in this respect have so far spoiled us that being in a crowd, which was the matter-of-course penalty you had to pay for seeing or hearing anything interest- ing, would seem too dear a price to pay for almost any enjoyment." EQUALITY 107 "I can imagine," I said, "that ecclesiasti- cal institutions must have been affected in other ways besides the disuse of church buildings, by the general adaptation of the telephone system to religious teaching. In my day, the fact that no speaker could reach by voice more than a small group of hearers made it nocessary to have a veritable army of preachers — some fifty thousand, say, in the United Stat-es alone — in order to instruct the population. Of these, not one in many hundreds was a person who had anything to utter really worth hearing. For example, wo will say that fifty thousand clergymen preached every Sunday as many sermons to as many congregations. Four-fifths of these sermons were poor, half of the rest perhaps fair, some of the others good, and a few score, possibly, out of the whole really of a fine class. Now, nobody, of course, would hear a poor discourse on any subject when he could just as easily hear a fine one, and if we had perfected the telephone system to the point you have, the result would have been, the first Sunday after its introduction, that everybody who wanted to hear a sermon would have connected with the lecture rooms or churches of the fe^v widely-celebrated prea-chers, and the rest would have had no hearers at all, and presently have been obliged to seek new occupations." Mr. Barton was amused. "You have, in fact, hit," he said, "upon the mechabical side of one of the most important contrasts • between your times and ours — namely, the modern suppression of mediocrity in teach- ing, whether intellectual or religious. Being able to pick from the choicest intellects, and most inspired moralists and seers of the generation, everybody of course agrees in re- garding it a v/aste of time to listen to any who have less weighty messages to deliver. When you consider that all are thus able to obtain the best inspiration the greatest minds can give, and couple this with the fact that, thanks to the universality of the higher edu- cation, all are at least pretty good judges of what is Inst, you have the secret of what might be called at once the strongest safe- guard of the degree of civilisation we have attained, and the surest pledge of the highest possible rate of progress toward ever better conditions — namely, the leadership of moral and intellectual genius. To one like you, educated according to the ideas of the nine- teenth century as to what democracy meant, it may seem like a paradox that the equidising of e'conomio and educational conditions, which has perfected democracy, should have resulted in the most perfect aristocracy, or government by the best, that could be con- ceived ; yet what result could be more matter- of course ? The people of to-day, too intel- ligent to be misled or abused for selfish ends even by demigods, are ready, on the other hand, to comprehend and to' follow with en- thusiasm every better leading. The result is, that our greatest men and women wield to- day an unselfish empire, more absolute than your czars dreamed of, and of an extent to make Alexander's conquests seem provincial. There are men in the world who when they choose to appeal to their fellow-men, by the bare announcement are able to command the simultaneous attention of one to five or eight hundred millions of people. In fact, if the occasion be a great one, and the speaker worthy of it, a world-wide silence i-eigns as in their various places, some beneath the sun and others under the stars, some by the light of dawn and others at sunset, all hang on the lips of the teacher. Such power would have seemed, perhaps, in your day dangerous, but when you consider that its tenure is conditional on the wisdom and un- selfishness of its exercise, and would fail with the first false note, you may judge that it is a dominion as safe as God's." "Dr. Leete," I said, "has told me some- thing of the way in which the universality of culture, combined with your scientific ap- pliances, has made physically possible this leadership of the best; but, I bfeg your pardon, how could a speaker address num- bers so vast as you. speak of unless the pente- costal miracle were repeated ? Surely the audience must be limited at least by the number of those understanding one language." "Is it possible that Dr. Leete has not told you of our universal language ? " "I have heard no language but English." "Of course, everybody talks the language of his own country with his countrymen, but with the rest of the world he talks the general language — that is to say, we have nowadays to acquire but two languages to talk to all peoples —our own, and the uni- versal. We may learn as many more as we please, and we usually please to learn many, but these two are alone needful to go all over the world, or to speak across it without an interpreter. A niunber of the smaller nations have wholly abandoned their national tongue, and talk only the general language. The greater nations, which have fine litera- ture embalmed in their languages, have been more reluctant to abandon them, and in this way the smaller folks have actually had a certain sort of advantage over the greater. The tendency, however, to cultivate but one language as a living tongue, and to treat all the others as dead or moribund, is in- creasing at such a rate that if you had slept through another generation you might have found none but philologicaTexperts able to talk with you." "But even with the universal telephone and the universal language," I .said, "there still remains the ceremonial and ritual side of religion to be considered. For the pra( tice of that I should suppose the piously inclined would still need churches to assemble in, however able to dispen.se with them for pur- poses of insfni.tion." 108 EQUALITY "If any feel that need, there is no reason why they should not have as many cliurches as they wish, and assemble as often as they see fit. I do not know but there are still those who do so. But with a high grade of intelligence become universal the world was bound to outgrow the ceremonial side of religion which, with its forms and symbols, its holy times and places, its sacrifices, feasts, fasts, and new moons, meant so much in the child-time of the race. The time has now fully come which Christ foretold in that talk with the woman by the well of Samaria when the idea of the Temple, and all it stood for, would give place to the wholly spiritual religion, without respect of times or places, which he declared most pleasing to God." "With the ritual and ceremonial side of religion outgrown," said I, "with church at- tendance become superfluous for purposes of instruction, and everybody selecting his own preacher on personal grounds, I should say that sectarian lines must have pretty nearly disappeared." "Ah, yes!" said Mr. Barton, "that re- minds me that our talk began with your in- quiry as to what religious sect I belonged to. It is a very long time since it has been cus- tomary for people to divide themselves into sects and classify themselves under different names on account of variations of opinion as to matters of religion." "Is it possible," I exclaimed, "that you mean to say people no longer quarrel over religion? Do you actually tell me that human beings have become capable of enter- taining different opinions about the next world without becoming enemies in this ? Dr. Leete has compelled me to believe a good many miracles, but this is too much." "I do not wonder that it seems rather a startling proposition, at first statement, to a man of the nineteenth century," replied Mr. Barton. "But, after all, who was it who fitarted and kept up the quarrelling over re- ligion in former days?" "It was, of course, the ecclesiastical bodies — the priests and preachers." i "But they were not many. How were they able to make so much trouble?" i "On account of the masses of the people who, being densely ignorant, were corre- spondingly superstitious and bigoted, and were tools in tne hands of the ecclesiastics.", "But there was a minority of the cultured. Were they bigoted also ? Were they tools of the ecclesiastics? " " On the contrary, they always held a calm and tolerant attitude on religious questions, and were independent of the priesthoods. If they deferred to ecclesiastical influence at all, it was because they held it needful for the purpose of controlling the ignorant popu- lace." "Very good, _ You have explained your miracle. There is no ignorant populace now for whose sake it is necessary for the more intelligent to make any compromises with truth. Your cultured class, with their tolerant and philosophical view of religious differences, and the criminal folly of quarrel- ling about them, ha^ become the only class there is." "How long is it since people ceased to call themselves Catholics, Protestants, Baptists, Methodists, and so on?" "That kind of classification may be said to have received a fatal shock at the time of the great RevQlution, when sectarian demar- cations and doctrinal differences, already fallen into a good deal of disregard, were completely swept away and forgotten in the passionate impulse of brotherly love which brought men together for the founding of a nobler social order. The old habit might possibly have revived in time had it not been for the new culture, which, during the first generation subsequent to the Revolution, de- stroyed the soil of ignorance and superstition which had supported ecclesiastical influence and made its recrudescence impossible for evermore. "Although, of course," continued my com- panion, "the universalising of intellectual culture is the only cause that needs to be considered in accounting for the total disap- pearance of religious sectarianism, yet it will give you a more vivid realisation of the gulf fixed between the ancient and the modern usages as to religion if you consider certain economic conditions, now wholly passed away, which in your time buttressed the • power of ecclesiastical institutions in very substantial ways. Of course, in the first place, church buildings v/ere needful to preach in, and equally so for the ritual and ceremonial side of religion. Moreover, the sanction of religious teaching depending chiefly on the authority of tradition instead of its own reasonableness, made it necessary for any preacher who would command hearers to enter the service of some of the estab- lished sectarian organisations. Religion, in a word, like industry and politics, was capitalised by greater or smaller corporations which exclusively controlled the plant and machinery, and conducted it for the prestige and power of the firms. As all those who desired to engage in politics or industry were obliged to do so in subjection to the indi- viduals and corporations controlling the machinery, so was it in religious matters likewise. Persons desirous of entering on the occupation of religious teaching could do so only by conforming to the conditions of some of the organisations controlling the machinery, plant, and good-will of the busi- ness — that is to say, of some one of the groat ecclesiastical corporations. To teach religion outside of these corporations, when not posi- tively illegal, was a most difficult under- taking, however great the ability of the teacher — as difficult, indeed, as it was to get on in politics without wearing a party badge, EQUALITY 109 or to succeed in business in opposition to the gieat capitalists. The would-be religions teacher had to attach himself, therefore, to some one or other of the sectarian organisa- tions, whose mouthpiece he must consent to be, as the condition of obtaining any hearing at all. The organisation might be hier- archical, in which case he took his instruc- tions from above, or it might be congrega- tional, in which case he took his orders from below. The one method was monarchical, the other democratic, but one as inconsistent as the other with the office of the religious teacher, the first condition of which, as we look at it, should be absolute spontaneity of feeling and liberty of utterance. "It may be said that the old ecclesiastical system depended on a double bondage : first, the intellectual subjection of the masses through ignorance to their spiritual directors ; and, secondly, the bondage of the directors themselves to the sectarian organisations, which as spiritual capitalists monopolised the opportunities of teaching. As the bondage was twofold, so also was the enfranchise- ment — a deliverance alike of the people and of their teachers, who, under the guise of leaders, had been themselves but puppets. Nowadays preaching is as free as hearing, and as open to all. The man who feels a special calling to talk to his fellows upon religious themes has no need of any other capital than something worth saying. Given this, without need of any further niachinery than the free telephone, he is able' to com- mand an audience limited only by the force and fitness of what he has to say. He now does not live by his preaching. His business is not a distinct profession. He does not belong to a class apart from other citizens, either by education or occupation. It is not needful for any purpose that he should do so. The higher education which he shares with all others furnishes ample intellectual equipment, while the abundant leisure for personal pursuits with which our life is in- terfused, and the entire exemption from public duty after forty-five, give abundant opportunity for the exercise of his vocation. In a word, the modern religious teacher is a prophet, not a priest. The sanction of his words lies not in any human ordination or ecclesiastical exequatur, but, even as it was with the prophets of old, in such response as his words may hSve power to evoke from human hearts." "If people," I suggested, "still retaining a taste for the old-time ritual and ceremonial observances and face-to-face preaching, should desire to have churches and clergy for their special service, is there anything to prevent it? " "No, indeed. Liberty is the first and last word of our civilisation. It is perfectly con- sistent with our economic system for a group of individuals, by contributing out of their incomes, not only to rent buildings for group purposes, but, by indemnifying the nation tor the loss of an individual's public service, to secure him as their special minister. Though the state will enforce no private contracts of any sort, it does not forbid them. The old ecclesiastical system was, for a time after the Revolution, kept up by remnants in this way, and might be until now if anybody had wished. But the contempt into which the hireling relation had fallen at once after the Eevolution soon made the position of such hired clergymen intolerable, and presently there were none who would demean themselves by entering upon so despised a relation, and none, indeed, who would have spiritual service, of all others, on such terms." "As you tell the story," I said, "it seems very plain how it all came about, and could not have been otherwise; but you can per- haps hardly imagine how a man of the nine- teenth century, accustomed to the vast place occupied by the ecclesiastical edifice and in- fluence in human affairs, is affected by the idea of a world getting on without anything of the sort." "I can imagine something of your sensa- tion," replied my companion, "though doubt- less not adequately. And yet I must say that no change in the social order seems to us to have been more distinctly foreshadowed by the signs of the times in your day than precisely this passing away of the ecclesias- tical system. As you yourself observed, just before we came into this church, there was then going on a general deliquescence of dog- matism which made your contemporaries wonder what was going to be left. The in- fluence and authority of the clergy were rapidly disappearing, the sectarian lines were being obliterated, the creeds were falling into contempt, and the authority of tradition was being repudiated. Surely if anything could be safely predicted it was that the religious ideas and institutions of the world were approaching some great change." "Doubtless," said I, "if the ecclesiastics of my day had regarded the result as merely depending on the drift of opinion among men, they would have been inclined to give up all hope of retaining their influence, but there was another element in the case which gave them courage." "And what was that?" "The women. They were in my day called the religious sex. The clergy generally were ready to admit that so far as the interest of the cultured class of men, and indeed of the men generally, in the churches went, they were in a bad way, but they had faith that the devotion of the women would save the cause. Woman was the sheet-anchor of the Church. Not only were women the chief at- tendants at religious functions, but it was largely through their influence on the men that the latter tolerated, even so far as they no EQUALITY did, the ecclesiastical pretensions. Now, were not our clergymen justified in counting on the continued support of women, whatever the men might do? " "Certainly they would have been if woman's position was to remain unchanged, but, as you are doubtless by this time well aware, "the elevation and enlargement of woman's sphere in all directions was perhaps the most notable single aspect of the Revo- lution. When women were called the re- ligious sex it would have been indeed a high ascription if it had been meant that they were the more spiritually minded, but that was not at all what the phrase signified to those who used it : it was merely intended to put in a complimentary way the fact that women in your day were the docile sex. Less educated, as a rule, than men, unaccus- tomed to responsibility, and trained in habits of subordination and self-distrust, they leaned in all things upon precedent and authority. Naturally, therefore, they still held to the principle of authoritative teach- ing in religion long after men had generally rejected it. All that was changed with the Revolution, and indeed began to change long before it. Since the Revolution there has been no difference in the education of the sexes nor in the independence of their economic and social position, in the exercise of responsibility or experience in the prac- tical conduct of affairs. As you might natur- ally infer, they are no longer, as formerly, a peculiarly docile class, nor have they any more toleration for authority, whether in religion, politics, or economics, than their brethren. In every pursuit of life they join with inen on equal terms, including the most important and engrossing of all our pursuits —the search after knowledge concerning the nature and destiny of man and his relation to the spiritual and material infinity of which he is a part." CHAPTER XXXII ERITIS SICTJT DEtFS "I INFER, then," I said, "that the disap- pearance of religious divisions and the priestly caste has not operated to lessen the general interest in religion." "Should you have supposed that it would so operate ? " " I don't know. I never gave much thought to such matters. The ecclesiastical class represented that they were very essen- tial to the conservation of religion, and the rest of us took it for granted that it was 80." " Every social institution which has existed for a considerable time," replied Mr. Bar- ton, " has doubtless performed some func- tion which was at the time more or less useful and necessary. Kings, ecclesiastics, and capitalists — all of them, for that ihatter, merely different sorts of capitalists — have, no doubt, in their proper periods, performed functions which, however badly discharged, were necessary and could not then have been discharged in any better manner. But just as the abolition of royalty was the beginning of decent government, just as the abolition of private capitalism was the beginning of effective wealth production, so the disappear- ance of church organisation and machinery, or ecclesiastical capitalism, was the beginning of a world-awakening of impassioned interest in the vast concerns covered by the word religion. " Necessary as may have been the subjec- tion of the race to priestly authority in the course of human evolution, it was the form of tutelage which, of all others, was most calculated to benumb and deaden the facul- ties affected by it, and the collapse of eccle- siasticism presently prepared the way for an enthusiasm of interest in the great problems of human nature and destiny which would have been scarcely conceivable by the worthy ecclesiastics of your day who, with such painful efforts and small results, sought to awake their flocks to spiritual concerns. The lack of general interest in these questions in your time was the natural result of their monopoly as the special province of the priestly class whose members stood as inter- preters between man and the mystery about him, undertaking to guarantee the spiritual welfare of all who would trust them. The decay of priestly authority left every soul face to face with that mystery, with the re- sponsibility of its interpretation upon him- self. The collapse of the traditional theologies relieved the whole subject of man's relation with the infinite from the oppres- sive effect of the false finalities of dogma which had till then made the most bound- EQUALITY 111 less of sciences the most cramped and narrow. Instead of the mind-paralysing worship of the past and the bondage of the present to that which is written, the convic- tion took hold on men that there was no limit to what they might know concerning their nature and destiny, and no limit to that destiny. The priestly idea that the past was diviner than the present, that God was behind the race, gave place to the be- lief that we should look forward and not backward for inspiration, and that the pre- sent and the future promised a fuller and more certain knowledge concerning the soul and God than any the past had attained." "Has this belief," I asked, "been thus far practically confirmed by any progress actually made in the assurance of what is true as to these things ? Do you consider that you really know more about them than we did, or that you know more positively the things which we merely tried to be- lieve ? " Mr. Barton paused a moment before re- plying. "You remarked a little while ago," he said, "that your talks with Dr. Leete had as yet turned little on religious matters. In introducing you to the modern world it was entirely right and logical that he should dwell at first mainly upon the change in economic systems, for that has, of course, furnished the necessary material basis for all the other changes that have taken place. But I am sure that you will never meet any- one who, being asked in what direction the progress of the race during the past century has tended most to increase human happi- ness, would not reply that it had been in the science of the soul and its relation to the Eternal and Infinite. "This progress has been the result not merely of a more rational conception of the subject, and complete intellectual freedom in its study, but largely also of social conditions which have set us almost wholly free from material engrossments. We have now for nearly a century enjoyed an economic wel- fare which has left nothing to bo wished for in the way of physical satisfactions, especially as in proportion to the increase of this abundance there has been through culture a development of simplicity in taste which re- jects excess and surfeit, and ever makes less and less of the material side of life, and more of the mental and moral. Thanks to this co-operation of the material with the moral evolution, the more we have the less we need. Long ago it came to be recognised that on the material side the race had reached the goal of its evolution. We have practically lost ambition for further progress in that direction. The natural result has been that for a long period the main ener- gies of the intellect have been concentrated upon the possibilities of the spiritual evolu- tion of mankind for which the completion of its material evolution has but prepared the beginning. What we have so^ar learned we are convinced is but the first faint inkling of the knowledge we shall attain to ; and yet if the limitations of this earthly state were such that we might never hope here to know more than now we should not repine, for the knowledge we have has sufficed to turn the shadow of death into a bow of promise and distil the saltness out of human tears. You will observe, as you shall come to know more of our literature, that one respect in which it differs from yours is the total lack of the tragic note. This has very naturally fol- lowed, from a conception of our real life, as having an inaccessible security, ' hid in God,' as Paul said, whereby the accidents and vicissitudes of the personality are reduced to relative triviality. "Your seers and poets in exalted moments had seen that death was but a step in life, but this seemed to most of you to have been a hard saying. Nowadays, as life ad- vances towards its close, instead of being shadowed by gloom, it is marked by an access of impassioned expectancy which would cause the young to envy the old, but for the knowledge that in a little while the same door will be opened to them. In your day the undertone of life seems to have been one of unutterable sadness, which, like the moaning of the sea to those who live near the ocean, made itself audible whenever for a moment the noise and bustle of petty en- grossments ceased. Now this undertone is so exultant that we are still to hear it." " If men go on," I said, " growing at this rate in the knowledge of divine things and the sharing of the divine life, what will they yet come to ? " Mr. Barton smiled. "Said not the serpent in the old story, ' If you eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge you shall be as gods ' ? The promise was true in words, but apparently there was some mistake about the tree. Per- haps it was the tree of selfish knowledge, or else the fruit was not ripe. The story is obscure. Christ later said the same tiling when He told men that they might be the sons of God. But He made no mistake as to the tree He showed them, and the fruit was ripe. It was the fruit of love, for universal love is at once the seed and fruit, cause and effect, of the highest and completest know- ledge. Through boundless love man becomes a god, for thereby is he made conscious of his oneness with God, and all thing? are put under his feet. It has been only since the great Revolution brought in the era of human brotherhood that mankind has been able to eat abundantly of this fruit of the true tree of knowledge, and thereby grow more and more into the consciousness of the divine soul as the essential self and the true hiding of our lives. Yes, indeed, we lla EQUALITY shall be gods. The motto of the modern civilisation is ' Eritis sicut Dens.'" "You speak* of Christ. Do I understand that this modern religion is considered by you to be the same doctrine Christ taught ? " " Most certainly. It has been taught from the beginning of history, and doubtless earlier, but Christ's teaching is that which has most fully and clearly come down to us. It was the doctrine that He taught, but the world could not then receive it save a few, nor indeed has it ever been possible for the vjorld in general to receive it, or even to understand it, until this present century." " Why could not the world receive earlier the revelation it seems to find so easy of comprehension now ? " "Because," replied Mr. Barton, "the prophet and revealer of the soul and of God, which are the same, is love, and until these latter days the world refused to hear love, but crucified Him. The religion of Christ, depending as it did upon the experience and intuitions of the unselfish enthusiasms, could not possibly be accepted or understood generally by a world which tolerated a social system based upon fratricidal struggle as the condition of existence. Prophets, messiahs, seers, and saints might indeed for themselves see God face to face, but it was impossible that there should be any general apprehen- sion of God as Christ saw Him until social justice had brought in brotherly love. Man must be revealed to man as brother before God could be revealed to him as Father. Nominally, the clergy professed to accept and repeat Christ's teaching that God is a loving Father, but of course it was simply impossible that any such idea should actu- ally germinate and take root in hearts as cold and hard as stone toward their fellov/- beings, and sodden with hate and suspicion of them. ' If a man love not his brother whom he hath seen, how shall he love God whom he hath not seen ? ' The priests deafened their flocks with appeals to love God, to give their hearts to Him. They should have rather taught them, as Christ did, to love their fellow-men, and give their hearts to them. Hearts so given the love of God would presently enkindle, even as, according to the ancients, fire from heaven might be depended on to ignite a sacrifice fitly prepared and laid. "From the pulpit yonder, Mr. West, doubt- less you have many times heard these words and many like them repeated, 'If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and His love is perfected in us ' ; ' He that loveth his brother dwelleth in the light'; 'If any man say I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar ' ; ' He that loveth not his brother, abideth in death ' ; ' God is love, and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God'; 'Every one that lovetJi knoweth God ' ; ' He that loveth not knoweth not God.' "Here is the very distillation of Christ's teaching as to the conditions of entering on the divine life. In this we find the suffi- cient explanation why the revelation which came to Christ so long ago and to other illumined souls could not possibly be received by mankind in general so long as an in- human social order made a wall between man and Grod, and why, the moment that wall was cast down, the revelation flooded the earth like a sunburst. '"If we love one another, God dwelleth in us,' and mark how the words were made good in the way by which at last the race found God ! It was not, remember, by directly, purposely, or consciously seeking God. The great enthusiasm of humanity which over- threw the old order and brought in the fraternal society was not primarily or con- sciously a Godward aspiration at all. It was essentially a humane movement. It was a melting and flowing foi'th of men's hearts toward one another, a rush of contrite, re- pentant tenderness, an impassioned impulse of mutual love and self-devotion to the com- monweal. But ' if we love one another, God dwelleth in us,' and so men found it. It appears that there came a moment, the most transcendent moment in the history of the race of man, when with the fraternal glow of this world of new-found embracing brothers there seems to have mingled the in- effable thrill of a divine participation, as if the hand of God were clasped over the joined hands of men. And so it has continued to this dav, and shall for evermore." EQUALITY 113 CHAPTER XXXIII SEVERAL IMPORTANT MATTERS OVERLOOKED After dinner the doctor said that he had an excursion to suggest for the afternoon. "It has often occurred to me," he went on, "that when you shall go out into the world and become familiar with its features by your own observation, you will, in looking back on these preparatory lessons I have tried to give you, form a very poor impres- sion of my talent as a pedagogue. I am very much dissatisfied myself with the method in which I have developed the subject, which, instead of having been philosophically con- ceived as a plan of instruction, has been merely a series of random talks, guided rather by your own curiosity than any scheme on my part." •' I am very thankful, my dear friend and teacher," I replied, "that you have spared mo the philosophical method. Without boasting that I have acquired so soon a complete understanding of your modern system, I am very sure that I know a good deal more about it than I otherwise should, for the very reason that you have so good- naturedly followed the lead of my curiosity instead of tying me to the' tailboard of a method." "I should certainly like to believe," said the doctor, "that our talks have been as instructive to you as they have been delight- ful to me, and if I have made mistakes it should be remembered that perhaps no in- structor ever had or is likely to have a task quite so large as mine, or one so unex- pectedly thrust upon him, or, finally, one which, being so large, the natural curiosity of his pupil compelled him to cover in so short a time." "But you were speaking of an excursion for this afternoon." "Yes," said the doctor. "It is a sugges- tion in the line of an attempt to remedy some few of my too probable omissions of important things in trying to acquaint you with how we live now. What do you say to chartering an air car this afternoon for the purpose of taking a bird's-eye view of the city and environs and seeing what its various aspects may suggest in the way of features of present-day civilisation which we have not touched upon? " The idea struck me as admirable, and we at once proceeded to put it in execution. In these brief and fragmentary reminis- cences of my first experiences in the modern v/orld it is, of course, impossible that I should refer to one in a hundred of tie start- ling things which happened to me. Still, KQUALITy even with that limitation, it may seem strange to my readers that I have not had more to say of the wonder excited in my mind by the number and character of the great mechanical inventions and applications unknown in my day, which contribute to the material fabric and actuate the mechan- ism of your civilisation. For example, al- though this was very far from being my first air trip, I do not think that I have before referred to a sort of experience which to a representative of the last century must naturally have been nothing less than astounding. I can only say, by way of ex- planation of this seeming indifference to the mechanical wonders of this age, that had the.y been ten times more marvellous, they would still have impressed me with infinitely less astonishment than the moral revolution illustrated by your new social order. This, I am sure, is what would be the experience of any man of my time under my circumstances. The march of scientific dis- covery and mechanical invention during the last half of the nineteenth century had already been so great, and was proceeding ao rapidly, that we were prepared to expect almost any amount of development in the same lines in the future. Your submarine shipping we had distinctly anticipated, and even partially realised. The discovery of the electrical powers had made almost any mechanical conception seem possible. As to navigation of the air, we fully expected that would be somehow successfully solved by our grandchildren, if not by our children. If, indeed, I had not found men sailing the air, I should have been distinctly disap- pointed. But while we were prepared to expect well- nigh anything of man's intellectual develop ment and the perfecting of his mastery over the material world, we were utterly sceptical as to the possibility of any large moral im- provement on his part. As a moral being, we believed that he had got his growth, as the saying was, and would never in this world at least attain to a nobler stature. Asa philo- sophical proposition, we recognised as fully as you do that the golden rule would afford the basis of a social life in which every one would be infinitely happier than anybody was in our world, and that the true interest of all would be furthered by establishing such a social order; but v.e held, at the same time, that the moral basene.^s and self-blinding sel- fishness of man would for ever prevent him from realising such an ideal. In vain had he been endowed with a god-like intellect; it 114 EQUALITY would not avail him for any of the higher uses of life, for an ineradicable moral per- verseness would always hinder him from doing as well as he knew, and hold him in hopeless sxibjection to the basest and most Buicidal impulses of his nature. "Impossible; it is against human nature ! " was the cry which met and for the most part overbore and silenced every prophet or teacher who sought to rousa the world to discontent with the reign of chaos, and awaken faith in the possibility of a kingdom of God on earth. Is it any wonder, then, that one like me, bred in that atmosphere of moral despair, should pass over with comparatively little attention the miraculous material achieve- ments of this age, to study with ever-grov.'ing awe and wonder the secret of your just and joyous living ? As I look back I see now how truly this base view of human nature was the greatest infidelity to God and man which the human race ever fell into; but, alas! it was not the infidelity which the churches condemned, but rather a sort which their teachings of man's hopeless depravity were calculat-ed to implant and confirm. This very matter of air navigation of which I was speaking suggests a striking illustra- tion of the strange combination on the part of my contemporaries of unlimited faith in man's material progress with total unbelief in his moral possibilities. As I have said, we fully expected that posterity would achieve air navigation, but the application of the art most discussed was its use in war to drop dynamite bombs in the midst of crowded cities. Try to realise that if you can. Even Tennyson, in his vision of the future, saw nothing more. You remember how he " Heard the hoayciis filled with shouting, ' And there rained a ghastly dew From the nation's airy navies, Grappling in the central blue." How iBE People hold the Reins. "And now," said the doctor, as he checked the rise of our car at an altitude of about one thousand feet, "let us attend to our lesson. What do you see down there to suggest a question?" "Well, to begin with," I said, as the dome of the Statehouse caught my eye, "what on earth have you stuck up there ? It looks for all the world like one of those self-steering windmills the farmers in my day used to pump up water with. Surely that is an odd Bort of ornament for a public building." "It is not intended as an ornament, but a symbol," replied the doctor. "It repre- sents the modern ideal of a proper system of government. The mill stands for the machinery of administration, the wind that drives it symbolises the public will, and the rudder that always keeps the vane of the mill before the wind, however suddenly or completely the wind may change, stands for the method by which the administration is kept at all times responsive and obedient to every mandate of the people, though it be but a breath. "I have talked to you so much on that subject that I need enlarge no further on the impossibility of having any popular government worthy of the name which is noL based upon the economic quality of the citizens with its implications and conse- quences. No constitutional devices or clever- ness of parliamentary machinery could have possibly made popular government anything but a farce, so long as the private economic interest of the citizen was distinct from and opposed to the public interest, and the so- called sovereign people ate their bread from th3 hand of capitalists. Given, on the other hand, economic unity of private interests with public interest, the complete independ- ence of every individual on every other, and universal culture to cap all, and no imperfec- tion of administrative machinery could pre- vent the government from being a good one. Nevertheless, we have unproved the machinery as much as we have the motive force. You used to vote once a j'ear, or in two years, or in six years, as the case might be, for those who were to rule over you till the next election, and those rulers, from the moment of their election to the term of their offices, were as irresponsible as Czars. They were far more so, indeed, for the Czar at least had a supreme motive to leave his inheritance unimpaired to his son, while these elected tyrants had no in- terest except in making the most they could out of their power while they held it.* "It appears to us that it is an axiom of democratic government that power should never be delegated irrevocably for an hour, but should always be subject to recall by the delegating power. Public officials are nowa- days chosen for a term as a matter of con- venience, but it is not a term positive. They are liable to have their powers revoked at any moment by the vote of their principals; neither is any measure of more than merely routine character ever passed by a repx'esen- tative body without reference back to the people. The vote of no delegate upon any important measure can stand until his prin- cipals — or constituents, as you used to call them — have had the opportunity to cancel it. An elected agent of the people" who offended the sentiment of the electors would be dis- placed, and his act repudiated the next day. You may infer that under this system tiio agent is solicitous to keep in contact with his principals. Not only do these precautions exist against irresponsible legislation, but tlio original proposition of measures comes from the people more often than from their repre- sentatives. EQUALITY 115 "So complete througn our telephone sys- tem has the most complicated sort of voting become, that the entire nation is organised 6o as to be able to proceed almost like ono parliament if needful. Our representative bodies, corresponding to your former Con- gresses, Legislatures, and Parliaments, are under this system reduced to the exercise of the functions of what you used to call con- gressional committees. The people not only nominally but actually govern. We have a democracy in fact. " We take pains to exercise this direct and constant supervision of our affairs not be- cause we suspect or fear our elected agents. I'nder our system of indefeasible, unchange- able, economic equality there is no motive or opportunity for venality. There is no motive for doing evil that could be for a moment set against the overwhelming motive of deserving the public esteem, which is in- deed the only possible object that nowadays could induce any one to accept ofDce. All our vital interests are secured beyond dis- turbance by the very framework of society. We could safely turn over to a selected body of citizens the management of the public affairs for their lifetime. The reason wc do not is that we enjoy the exhilaration of con- ducting the government of affairs directly. You might compare us to a wealthy man of your day who, though having in his service any number of expert coachmen, preferred to handle the reins himself for the pleasure of it. You used to vote perhaps once a year, taking five minutes for it, and grudging the time at that as lost from your private busi- ness, the pursuit of which you call, I be- lieve, 'the main chance.' Our private busi- ness is the public business, and we have no other of importance. Our ' main chance ' is the public welfare, and we have no o'ther chance. We vote a hundred times perhaps in a year, on all manner of questions, from the temperature of the public baths or the plan to be selected for a public building, to the greatest questions of the world union, and find the exercise at once as exhilarating as it is in the highest sense educational. "And now, Julian, look down again and see if you do not find some other feature of the scene to hang a question on." The Little Wars and the Great War. "I observe," I said, "that the harbour forts are still there. I suppose you retain them, like the specimen tenement houses, as historical evidences of the barbarism of your ancestors, my contemporaries." "You must not be offended," said the doctor, "if I say that we really have to keep a full assortment of such exhibits, for fear the children should flatly refu.^e to believe the accounts the books give of the unaccount- able antics of their great-grandfathers." "The guarantee of international peace which the world union has brought," I said, "must surely be regarded by your people as one of the most signal achievements of the new order, and yet it strikes mo i have beard you say very little about it." "Of course," said the doctor, "it is a great thing in itself, but so incomparably less im- portant than the abolition of the economic war between man and man that wc regaFd it as merely incidental to the latter. Nothing is much more astonishing about the mental operations of your contemporaries than the fuss they made about the cruelty of your occasional international wars while seemingly oblivious to the horrors of the battle for ex- istence in which you .all were perpetually involved. From our point of view, your ware, while of course very foolish, were compara- tively humane and altogether peCly exhibi- tions as contrasted with the fratricidal economic struggle. In the wars only men took part — strong, selected men, comprising but a very small part of the total population. There were no women, no children, no old people, no cripples allowed to go to war. The wounded were carefully looked after, whether by friends or foes, and nursed back to health. The rules of war forbade unneces- sary cruelty, and at any time an honourable surrender, with good treatment, was open to the beaten. The battles generally took place on the frontiers, out of sight and sound of the masses. Wars were also very rare, often not one in a generation. Finally, the senti- ments appealed to in international conflicts were, as a rule, those of courage and self- devotion. Often, indeed generally, the causes of the wars were unworthy of the sentiments of self-devotion which the fight- ing called out, but the sentiments themselves belonged to the noblest order. "Compare with warfare of this character the conditions of tho economic struggle for existence. That was a war in which not merely small selected bodies of combatants took part, but one in which the entire popu- lation of every country, excepting the in- considerable groups of the rich, were forcibly enlisted and compelled to serve. Not only did women, children, the aged and crippled have to participate in it, but the weaker the combatants the harder the conditions under which they must contend. It was a war in which there was no help for the wounded, no quarter for the vanquished. It was a war not on far frontiers, but in every city, every street, and every house, and its wounded, broken, and dying victims lay underfoot everywhere and shocked the eye in every direction that it might glance with some new form of misery. The ear could not escape the lamentations of the stricken and their vain cries for pity. And this war came not once or twice in a century, lasting for a few red weeks or months or years, and giving way again to peace, as did the battles of the E 2 116 EQUALITY soldiers, but was perennial and perpetual, truceless, lifelong. Finally, it was a war which neither appealed to nor developed any noble, any generous, any honourable senti- ment, but, on the contrary, set a constant premium on the meanest, falsest, and most cruel propensities of human nature. "As we look back upon your era, the sort of fighting those old forts down there stood for - seems almost noble and barely tragical at all, as compared with the awful spectacle of the struggle for existence. "We even are able to sympathise with the declaration of some of the professional Boldiers of your age that occasional wars, with their appeals, however false, to the generous and self-devoting passions, were absolutely necessary to prevent your society, otherwise so utterly sordid and selfish in ils ideals, from dissolving into absolute putres- cence." "It is to be feared," I was moved to ob- serve, "that posterity has not built so high a monument to the promoters of fhe universal peace societies of my day as they expected." "They were well meaning enough so far as they saw, no doubt," said the doctor, "but seem to have been a dreadfully short-sighted and purblind set of people. Their efforts to stop wars between nations, while tranquilly ignoring the world-wide economic struggle for existence which cost more lives and suffer- ing in any one month than did the inter- national wars of a generation, was a most striking case of straining at a gnat and swal- lowing a camel. "As to the gain to humanity which has come from the abolition of all war or pos- sibility of war between nations of to-day, it seems to us to consist not so much in the mere prevention of actual bloodshed as in the dying out of the old jealousies and ran- cours which used to embitter peoples against one another almost as much in peace as in war, and the growth in their stead of a fraternal sympathy and mutual good-will, unconscious of any barrier or race or country." The Old Patriotism and the New As the doctor was speaking, the waving folds of a flag floating far below caught my eye. It was the Star-spangled Banner. My heart leaped at the sight and my eyes grew moist. "Ah!" I exclaimed, "it is Old Glory!" for so it had been a custom to call the flag in the days of the Civil War and after. "Yes," replied my companion, as his eyes followed my gaze; "but it wears a liew glory now, because nowhere in the land it floats over is there found a human being oppressed or suffering any want that human aid can relieve. "The Americans of your day," he con- tinued, "were extremely patriotic after their fashion, but the difference between the old and the new patriotism is so great that it scarcely seems like the same sentiment. In your day and ever before, the emotions and associations of the flag were chiefly of the martial sort. Self-devotion to the nation in war witli other nations was the idea most commonly conveyed by the word ' patriotism ' and its derivatives. Of course, that must be so in ages when the nations had constantly to stand ready to fight one another for their e> istence. Ikit the result was that the senti- ment of national solidarity was arrayed again.st the sentiment of human solidarit3^ A lesser social enthusiasm was set in opposi- tion to a greater, and the result was neces- sarily full of moral contradictions. Too often what was called love of country might better have been described as hate and jealousy of other countries, for no better reason than that there were other and bigoted prejudices against foreign ideas and institutions — often far better than domestic ones — for no other reason than that they were foreign. This sort of patriotism was a most potent hindrance for countless ages to the progress of civilisation, opposing to the spread of new ideas barriers higher than mountains, broader than rivers, deeper than seas. "The new patriotism is the natural out- come of the new social and international conditions which date from the great Revo- lution. Wars, which were already growing infrequent in your day, were made impossible by the rise of the world union, and for generations have now been unknown. The old blood-stained frontiers of the nations have become scarcely more than delimita- tions of territory for administrative conveni- ence, like the State lines in the American Union. Under these circumstances inter- national jealousies, suspicions, animosities, and apprehensions have died a natural death. The anniversaries of battles and triumphs over other nations, by v.'hich the antique patriotism was kept burning, have been long ago forgotten. In a word, patriotism is no lonp;er a martial sentiment, and is quite without warlike associations. As the flag has lost its former significance as an emblem of outward defiance, it has gained a new mean- ing as the supreme symbol of internal con- cord and mutuality; it has become the visible sign of the social solidarity in which the welfare of all is equally and impregnably secured. The American, as he now lifts his eyes to the ensign of the nation, is not re- minded of its military prowess as compared with other nations, of its past triumphs in battle and possible future victories. To him the waving folds convey no such suggestions. They recall rather the compact of brother- hood in which he stands pledged with all his countrymen mutually to safeguard the equal dignity and welfare of each by the might of all. EQUALITY 117 "The idea of the old-time patriots was that foreigners were the only people at whose hands the Hag could suffer dishonour, and the report of any lack of etiquette toward it on their part used to excite the people to a patriotic frenzy. That sort of feeling would be simply incomprehensible now. As we look at it, foreigners have no power to insult the flag, for they have nothing to do with it, nor with what it stands for. Its honour or dishonour must depend upon the people ,whose plighted faith one to another it repre- sents, to maintain the social contract. To thf old-time patriot there was nothing incon- gruous in the spectacle of the symbol of the national unity floating over cities reeking •with foulest oppressions, full of prostitution, beggary, and dens of nameless misery. Ac- cording to the modern view, the existence of a single instance in any corner of the land where a citizen had been deprived of the full enjoyment of equality would turn the flag into a flaunting lie, and the people would demand with indignation that it should be hauled down and not raised again till the .wrong was remedied." "Truly," I said, "the new glory which ,OId Glory wears is a greater than the old glory." More Foreign Travel but less Foreign Trade As we had talked, the doctor had allowed our car to drift before the westerly breeze till now we were over the harbour, and I ,was moved to exclaim at the scanty array of shipping it contained. "It does not seem to me," I said, "that there are more vessels here than in my day, much less the great fleets one might expect to see after a century's development in popu- lation and resources." "In point of fact," said the doctor, "the new order has tended to decrease the volume of foreign trade, though on the other hand there is a thousand-fold more foreign travel for instruction and pleasure." "In just what way," I asked, "did the new order tend to decrease exchanges with foreign countries? " "In two ways," replied the doctor. "In the first place, as you know, the profit idea is now abolished in foreign trade as well as in domestic distribution. The International Council supervises all exchanges between nations, and the price of any product ex- ported by one nation to another must not be more than that at which the exporting nation provides its own people v,-ith the same. Con- sequently there is no reason why a nation should care to produce goods for export unless and in so far as it needs for actual consumption products of another country which it cannot itself so well produce. "Another yet more potent effect of the new order in limiting foreign exchange is the general equalisation of all nations which hap long ago come about as to intelligence and the knowledge and practice of sciences and arts. A nation of to-day would be humili- ated to have to import any commodity which insuperable natural conditions did not pre- vent the production of at home. It is conse- quently to such productions that commerce is now limited, and the list of them grows ever shorter as with the progress of invention man's conquest of Nature proceeds. As to the old advantage of coal-producing countries in manufacturing, that disappeared nearly a century ago with the great discoveries which made the unlimited development of electrical power practically costless. "But you should understand that it is not merely on economic grounds, or for self- est.eem's sake, that the various peoples desire to do everything possible for themselves rather than depend on people at a distance. It is quite as much for the education and mind-awakening influence of a diversified in- dustrial system within a small space. It is our policy, so far as it can be economically carried out in the grouping of industries, not only to make the system of each nation com- plete, but so to group the various industries within each particular country that every considerable district shall present within its own limits a sort of microcosm of the in- dustrial world. We were speaking of that, you may remember, the other morning, in the Labour Exchange." The Modern Doctor's Easy Task The doctor had some time before reversed our course, and v/e were now moving west- ward over the city. "What is that building which we are just passing over that has so much glass about it? " I asked. "That is one of the sanitariums," replied the doctor, "which peojile go to who are in bad health and do not wish to change their climate, as we think persons in serious chronic ill-health ought to do, and as all can now do if they desire. In those buildings everything is as absolutely adapted to the condition of the patient as if he were for the time being in a world in which his disease were the normal type." "Doubtless there have been great improve- ments in all matters relating to your profes- sion — medicine, hygiene, surgery, and the rest — since my day." "Yes," replied the doctor, "there have been great improvements in two ways — nega- tive and positive— and the more important of the two is perhaps the negative way, con- sisting in the disappearance of conditions inimical to health, which physicians formerly had to combat with little chance of success in many cases. For example, it is now two 118 EQUALITY full generations since the guarantee of equal maintenance for all placed women in a posi- tion of economic independence, and conse- quent complete control of their relations to men. You will readily understand now, as one result of this, the taint of syphilis has been long since eliminated from the blood of the race. The universal prevalence now for three generations of the most cleanly and refined conditions of housing, clothing, heat- ing, and living generally, with the best treat- ment available for all in case of sickness, have practically — indeed I may say com- pletely — put an end to the zymotic and other contagious diseases. To complete the story, add to these improvements in the hygienic conditions of the people the systematic and universal physical culture which is a part of the training of youth, and then as a crowning consideration think of the effect of the physical rehabilitation — you might almost call it the second creation of woman in a bodily sense — which has purified and ener- gised the stream of life at its source." "Really, doctor, I should say that, with- out going further, you have fairly reasoned your profession out of its occupation." "You may well say so," replied the doc- tor. " The progress of invention and im- provement since your day has several times over improved the doctors out of their former occupations, just as it has every other sort of workers, but only to open new and higher fields of finer work." "Perhaps," my companion resumed, "a more important negative factor in the im- provement in medical and hygienic conditions than any I have mentioned is the fact that people are no longer in the state of ignor- ance as to their own bodies that they seem formerly to have been. The progress of knowledge in that respect has kept pace with the march of universal culture. It is evi- dent from what we read that even the cul- tured classes in your day thought it no shame to be wholly uninformed as to physiology and the ordinary conditions of health and disease. They appear to have left their physical interests to the doctors, with much the same spirit of cynical resignation with which they turned over their souls to the care of the clergy. Nowadays a system of education would be thought farcical which did not impart a sufficient knowledge of the general principles of physiology, hygiene, and medicine to enable a person to treat any ordinary physical disturbance without re- course to a physician. It is perhaps not too much to say that everybody nowadays knows as much about the treatment of disease as a large proportion of the members of the medical profession did in your time. As you may readily suppose, this is a situation, which, even apart from the general improve- ment in health, would enable the people to get on with one physician where a score for- merly found business. We doctors are morcly specialists and experts on subjects that everybody is supposed to be well grounded in. When we are called in, it is really only in consultation, to use a phrase of the pro- fession in your day, the other parties being the patient and his friends. "But of all the factors in the advance of medical science, one of the most important has been the disappearance of sectarianism, resulting largely from the same causes, moral and economic, which banished it from re- ligion. You will scarcely need to be re- minded that in your day medicine, next to theology, suffered most of all branches of knowledge from the benumbing influence of dogmatic schools. There seems to have been well-nigh as much bigotry as to the science of curing the body as the soul, and its in- fluence to discourage original thought and retard progress was much the same in one field as the other. "There are really no conditions to limit the course of physicians. The medical edu- cation is the fullest possible, but the methods of practice are left to the doctor and patient. It is assumed that people as cultured as ours are as competent to elect the treatment for their bodies as to choose that for their souls.. The progress in medical science which has resulted from this complete independence and freedom of initiative on the part of the physician, stimulated by the criticism and applause of a people well able to judge of results, has been unprecedented. Not only in the specific application of the preserving and healing arts have innumerable achieve- ments been made and radically new prin- ciples discovered, but we have made advances toward a knowledge of the central mystery of life which in your day it would have been deemed almost sacrilegious to dream of. As to pain, we permit it only for its sympto- matic indications, and so far only as we need its guidance in diagnosis." " I take it, however, that you have not abolished death." "I assure you," laughed the doctor, "that if perchance anyone should find out the secret of that, the people would mob him and burn up his formula. Do you suppose we want to be shut up here for ever?" "How Could we Indeed?" Applying myself again to the study of the moving panorama below us, I presently re- marked to the doctor that we must be pretty nearly over what was formerly called Brighton, a suburb of the city at which the live-stock for the food supply of the city had mainly been delivered. "I see the old cattle-sheds are gone," I said. "Doubtless you have much better arrangements. By the way, now that every- body "is well-to-do, and can afford the best cuts of beef, I hnaginc the problem of pro- EQUALITY 119 viding a big city with fresh meats must be much more difficult than in my day, when the poor were able to consume little flesh food, and that of the poorest sort." The doctor looked over tiic side of the car for some moments before answering. "I take it," he said, "that you have not spoken to any one before on this point." " Why, I think not. It has not before occurred to me." " It is just as well," said the doctor. " You sec, Julian, in the trausforination in customs and habits of thought aud standards of fitness since your day, it could scarcely have happened but that in some cases the changes should have been attended with a decided revulsion in sentiment against the former practices. I hardly know how to express myself, but I am rather gfad that you first spoke of this matter to me." A light dawned on me, and suddenly brought out the significance of numerous half-digested observations which I had pre- viously made. "Ah!" I exclaimed, "you mean you don't eat the flesh of animals any more. ' "Is it possible you have not guessed that? Had you not noticed that you were offered no such food ? " "The fact is," I replied, "the cooking is so different in all respects from that of my day that I have given up all attempt to identify anything. But I have certainly missed no flavour to which I have been accustomed, though I have been delighted by a great many novel ones." "Yes, ".said the doctor, "instead of the one or two rude processes inherited from primitive men by which you used to prepare food and elicit its qualities, we have a great number and variety. I doubt if there was any flavour you had which we do not re- produce, besides the great number of new ones discovered since your time." " But when was the use of animals for food discontinued ? " " Soon after the great Revolution." " What caused the change? Was it a con- viction that health woul^ be favoured by avoiding flesh ? " " It does net seem to have been that motive which chiefly led to the change. Un- doubtedly the abandonment of the custom of eating animals, by which we inherited all their diseases, has had something to do with the great physical improvement of the race, but people did not apparently give up eating animals mainly for health's sake any more than cannibals in more ancient times aban- doned eating their fellow-men on that ac- count. It was, of course, a very long time ago, and there was perhaps no practice of the former order of which the people, im- mediately after giving it up, seem to have become so much ashamed. This is doubtless why we find such meagre information in the histories of the period as to the circum- stances of (he change. There appears, how- ever, to be no doubt that the abandonment of the custom was chiefly an effect of the great wave of humane feeling, the passion of pity and compunction for all suffering — in a" word, the impulse of tender-heartedness — which was really the great moral power bo- hind the Revolution. As might be expected, this outburst did not affect merely the rela- tions of men with men, but likewise their relations with the whole sentient world. The sentiment of brotherhood, the feeling of solidarity, asserted itself not merely to- ward men and women, but likewise toward the humbler companions of our life on earth and sharers of its fortunes, the animals. The new and vivid light thrown on the rights and duties of men to one another brought also into view and recognition the riglits of the lower orders of being. A sentiment against cruelty to animals of every kind had long been growing in civilised lands, and formed a distinct feature of the general softening of manners which led up to the Revolution. This sentiment now became an enthusiasm. The new conception of our re- lation to the animals appealed to the heart and captivated the imagination of mankind Instead of sacrificing the weaker races to our use or pleasure, with no thought for their welfare, it began to be seen that we should rather, as elder brothers in the great family of Nature, be, so far as possible, guardians and helpers to the weaker orders whose fate is in our hands and to which we are as gods. Do you not see, Julian, how the prevalence of this new view might soon have led people to regard the eating of their fellow- animals as a revolting practice, almost akin to cannibalism? " " That is, of course, very easily under- stood. Indeed, doctor, you must not sup- pose that my contemporaries were wholly without feeling on this subject. Long before the Revolution was dreamed of there were a great many persons of my acquaintance who owned to serious qualms over flc.^h-eating, and perhaps the greater part of refined per- sons were not without pangs of conscience at various times over the practice. The trouble was, there really seemed nothing else to do. It was just like our economic sys- tem. Humane persons generalij' admitted that it was very bad and brutal, and yet very few could distinctly see what the world was going to replace it with. You people seem to have succeeded in perfecting a cuisine without using flesh, and I admit it is every way more satisfactory than oura was ; but you cannot imagine how absolutely impossible the idea of getting on without the use of animal food loolced in my day, when as yet nothing definite had been suggested to take its place which offered any reasonable amount of gratification to the palate, even if it provided the means of aliment." " I can imagine the difficulty to some ex- 120 EQUALITY tent. It was, as you say, like that which EO long hindered the change of economic ; systems. People could not clearly realise what was to take its place. While one's mouth is full of one flavour it is difficult to imagine another. That lack of constructive imagination on the part of the mass is the obstacle that has stood in the way of remov- ing every ancient evil, and made necessary a wave of revolutionary force to do the work. Such a wave of feeling as I have described was needful in this case to do away with the immemorial habit of flesh-eating. As soon as the new attitude of men's minds took away their taste for flesh, and there was a demand that had to be satisfied for some other and adequate sort of food, it seems to have been very promptly met." "Fiom what source?" " Of course," replied the doctor, " chiefly from the vegetable world, though "by no means wholly. There had never been any serious attempt before to ascertain what its provisions for food actually were, still less what might be made of them by scientific treatment. Nor, as long as there was no ob- jection to killing some animal and appro- priating without trouble the benefit of its experiments, was there likely to be. The rich lived chiefly on flesh. As for the working masses, which had always drawn their vigour mainly from vegetables, nobody of the influential classes cared to make their lot more agreeable. Now, however, all with one consent set about inquiring what sort of a table Nature might provide for men who had forsworn murder. "Just as the crude and simple method of slavery, first chattel slavery and afterward wage slavery, had, so long as it prevailed, prevented men from seeking to replace its crude convenience by a scientific industrial system, so in like manner the coarse conveni- ence of flesh for food had hitherto prevented men from making a serious perquisition of Nature's edible resources. The delay in this respect is further accounted for by the fact that the preparation of food, on account of the manner of its conduct as an industry, had been the least progressive of all the arts of life." "What is that?" I said. "The least pro- gressive of arts? Why so? " "Because it had always been carried on as an isolated household industry, and as such chiefly left to servants or women, who in former times were the most conservative and habit-bound class in the communities. The rules of the art of cookery had been handed down little changed in essentials since the wife of the Aryan cowherd dressed her hus- band's food for him. "Now, it must remain very doubtful how immediately successful the revolt against animal food would have proved if the average family cook, whether wife or hireling, had been left each for herself in her private kitchen to grapple with the problem of pro- viding for the table a satisfactory substitute for flesh. But, thanks to the many-sided character of the great Revolution, the junc- ture of time at which the growth of humane feeling created a revolt against animal food coincided with the complet-e breakdown of domestic service and the demand of women for a wider life, facts which compelled tho placing of the business of pi'oviding and pre- paring food on a co-operative basis, and the making of it a branch of the public service. So it was that as soon as men, losing appetite for their fellow-creatures, began to ask earnestly what else could be eaten, there was already being organised a great governmental department commanding all the scientific talent of the nation, and backed by the re- sources of the country, for the purpose of solving the question. And it is easy to be- lieve that none of the new departments was stimulat€d in its efforts by a keener public interest than this which had in charge the preparation of the new national bill of fare. These were the conditions for which alimen- tation had waited from the beginnings of th« race to become a science. "In the first place, the food materials and methods of preparing them actually eitant, and used in the different nations, were, for the first time in history, collected and col- lated. In presence of the cosmopolitan variety and extent of the international menu thus presented, every national cuisine wa3 convicted of having until then run in a rut. It was apparent that in nothing had the nations been more provincial, more stupidly prejudiced against learning from one another, than in matters of food and cooking. It was discovered, as observing travellers had always been aware, that every nation and country, often every province, had half-a- dozen gastronomic secrets that had never crossed the border, or at best on very brief excursions. "It is well enough to mention, in passing, that the collation of this international bill of fare was only one illustration of tha innumerable ways in which the nationa, m soon as the new? order put an end to the old prejudices, began right and left to borrow and adopt the best of one another's ideas and institutions, to the great general enrichment. "But the organisation of a scientific system of alimentation did not cease with utilising the materials and methods already existing. The botanist and the chemist next set about finding new food materials and new methods of preparing them. At once it was discovered that of the natural products capable of being used as food by man, but a petty proportion had ever been utilised ; only those, and a small part even of that class, which readily lent themselves to the sinjrio primitive pro- cess whereby the race hitherto bad attempted to prepare food — namely, the application of EQUALITY 121 dry or wet heat. To this, manifold other processes suggested by chemistry were now added, with effects that our ancestors found as delightful as novel. It had hitherto been with the science of cooking as with metal- lurgy when simple fire remained its only method. "It is written that the children of Israel, when practi.sing an enforced vegetarian diet in the wilderness, yearned after the flesh- pots of Egypt, and prob;ibly with good reason. The experience of our ancestors appears to have been in this respect quite different. It would seem that the sentiments with which, after a very short period had elapsed, they looked back upon the flesh-pots they had left behind were charged with a feeling quite the reverse of regret. There is an amusing cartoon of the period, which sug- gests how brief a time it took for them to discover what a good thing they had done for themselves in resolving to spare the animals. The cartoon, as I remember it, is in two parts. The first shows Humanity, typified by a feminine figure regarding a group of animals, consisting of the ox, the sheep, and the hog. Her face expresses the deepest compunction, while she tearfully ex- claims, ' Poor things ! How could we ever bring ourselves to eat you?' The second part reproduces the same group, with the heading, ' Five years after.' But here the countenance of Humanity as she regards the animals expresses not contrition or self-re- proach, but disgust and loathing, while she exclaims in nearly identical terms, but very diffeient emphasis, ' How could we, indeed ? ' " What became of trb Great Cities. Continuing to move westward toward the interior, we had now gradually left behind the more thickly settled portions of the city, if indeed any portion of these modern cities, in which every home stands in its own enclosure, can be called thickly settled. The groves and meadows and larger woods had become numerous, and villages occurred at frequent intervals. We were out in the country. "Doctor," said I, "it has so' happened, you will remember, that what I have seen of twentieth-century life has been mainly its city side. If country life has changed since my day as much as city life, it will be very in- teresting to make its acquaintance again. Tell n!G something about it." "There are few respects, I suppose," re- plied the doctor, "in which the effect of the nationalisation of production and distribu- tion on the basis of economic equality has worked a greater transformation than in the relations of city and country, and it is odd we should not have chanced to speak of this before now." "When I was last in the world of living people," I said, "the city was fast devouring the country. Has that process gone on, or has it po.'^sibly been reversed?" "Decidedly the latter," replied the doctor, "as indeed you will at once see must have been the case when you consider that tha enormous growth of the great cities of the past was entirely an economic consequence of the system of private capitalism, with its necessary dependence upon individual initia- tive, and the competitive system." "That is a new idea to me," I said. "I think you will find it a very obvious one upon reflection," replied the doctor. "Under private capitalism, you see, there was no public or governmental system for organising productive effort and distributing its results. There was no general and un- failing machinery for bringing producers and consumers together. Everybody had to seek his own occupation and maintenance on his own account, and success depended on his finding an opportunity to exchange his labour or possessions for the possessions or labour of others. For this purpose the best place, of course, was where there were many people who likewise wanted to buy or sell their labour or goods. Consequently, when, owing either to accident or calculation, a mass of people were drawn together, others flocked to them, for every such aggregation made a market-place where, owing simply to the niunber of persons desiring to buy and sell, better opportunities for exchange were to be found than where fewer people were, and the greater the number of people the larger and better the facilities for exchange. The city having thus taken a start, the larger it be- came the faster it was likely to grow, by the same logic that accounted for its first rise. The labourer went there to find the largest and steadiest market for his muscle, and the capitalist/ — who, being a conductor of produc- tion, desired the largest and steadiest labour market — v/ent there also. The capitalist trader went there to find the greatest group of consumers of his goods within least space. "Although at first the cities rose and grew mainly because of the facilities for exchange among their own citizens, yet presently the re.sult of the superior organisation of ex- change facilities made them centres of ex- change for the produce of the .surrounding country. In this way those who lived in the cities had not only great opportunities to grow rich by supplying the needs of the dense resident population, but were able ali^o to levy a tribute upon the products of the people in the country round about by com- pelling those products to pass through their hands on the way to the consumers, even though the consumers, like the producers, lived in the country, and might be next-door neighbours. "In duo course," pursued the doctor, "this concentration of material wealth in the cities led to a concentration there of all the 122 EQUALITY superior, the refined, the pleasant, and the luxurious ministrations of life. Not only did the manual labourers flock to the cities as the market where they could best exchange their labour for the money of the capitalists, but the professional and learned class re- sorted thither for the same purpose. The lawyers, the pedagogues, the doctors, the rhetoricians, and men of special skill in every branch, went there as the best place to find the richest and most numerous employers of their talents, and to make their careers. "And in like manner all who had pleasure to sell — the artists, the players, the singers, yes, and the courtesans also^flocked to the cities for the same reasons. And those who desired pleasure and had wealth to buy it, those who wished to enjoy life, either as to its coarse or refined gratifications, followed the pleasure-givers. And, finally, the thieves and robbers, and those pre-eminent in the wicked arts of living on their fellow-men, followed the throng to the cities, as offering them also the best field for their talents. And so the cities became great whirlpools, which drew to themselves all that was richest and best, and also everything that was vilest, in the whole land. "Such, Julian, was the law of the genesis and growth of the cities, and it was by necessary consequence the law of the shrink- age, decay, and death of the country and country life. It was only necessary that the era of private capitalism in America should last long enough for the rural districts to have been reduced to what they were in the daj's of the Roman Empire, and of every empire which achieved full development — namely, regions whence all who could escape had gone to seek their fortune in the cities, leavhag only a population of serfs and over- seers. "To do your contemporaries justice, they seemed themselves to realise that the swal- lowing up of the country by the city boded no good to civilisation, and would apparently have been glad to find a cure for it, but they failed entirely to observe that, as it was a necessary effect of private ca,pitalism, it could only be remedied by abolishing that." "Just how," said I, "did the abolition of private capitalism and the substitution of a nationalised economic system operate to stop the growth of the cities? " "By abolishing the need of markets for the exchange of labour and commodities," re- plied the doctor. "The facilities of exchange organised in the cities under the private capitalists were rendered wholly superfluous and impertinent by the national organisation of production and distribution. The produce of the country was no lonj;er handled by or distributed through the cities, except so far as produced or consumed there. The quality of goods furnished in all localities, and the measure of industrial service required of all, was the same. Economic equality having done away with rich and poor, the city ceased to be a place where greater luxury could be enjoyed or displayed than the counti'y. The provision of employment and of maintenance on equal terms to all took away the advantages of locality as helps to livelihood. In a word, there was no longer any motive to lead a person to prefer city to country life, who did not like crowds for file sake of being en vvJed. Under these circumstances you will not find it strange that the growth of the cities ceased, and their depopulation began from the moment the effects of the Revolution became ap- parent." "But you have cities yet ! " I exclaimed. "Certainly — that is, we have localities where population still remains denser than in other places. None of the great cities of your day have become extinct, but their populations are but small fractions of what they were." "But Boston is certainly a far finer-looking city than in my day." "All the modern cities are far finer and fairer in every way than their predecessors, and infinitely fitter for human habitation, but in order to make them so, it was neces- sary to get rid of their surplus population. There are in Boston to-day perhaps a quarter as many people as lived in the same limits in the Boston of your da\', and that is simply because there were four times as many people within those limits as could be housed and furnished with environments consistent with the modern idea of healthful and agreeable living. New York, having been far wor3e crowded than Boston, has lost a still larger proportion of its former population. Were you to visit Manhattan Island I fancy your first impression would be that the Central Park of your day had been extended all the way from the Battery to Harlem River, though in fact the place is rather thickly built up according to modern notions, some two hundred and fifty thousand people living there among the groves and fountains." "And you say this amazing depopulation took place at once after the Revolution? " "It began then. The only way_ in which the vast populations of the old cities could be crowded into spaces so small was by packing them like sardines in tenement houses. As soon as it was settled that every- body must be provided with really and equally good habitations, it followed that the cities must lose the greater part of their population. These had to be provided with dv/ellings in the country. Of course, so vast a work'could not be accomplished instantly, but it proceeded with all possible speed. In addition to the exodus of people from the cities because there was no room for them to live decently, there was also a great out- flow of others, who, now there had ceased to be any economic advantages in city life, were attracted by the natural charms of the EQUALITY 123 country ; so that you may easily see that it was one of the great tasks of the first decade after the Revolution to provide homes else- where for those who desired to leave the cities. The tendency countryward continued until, the cities having been emptied of their excess of people, it was possible to make radical changes in- their arrangements. A large proportion of the old buildings, and all the unsightly, lofty, and inartistic ones, were cleared away and replaced with structures of of the low, broad, roomy style adapted to the new ways of living. Parks, gardens, and roomy spaces were multiplied on every hand, and the system of transit so modified as to get rid of the noise and dust, and finally, in a word, the city of your day was changed into the modern city. Having thus been made as pleasant places to live in as was the country itself, the outflow of popu- lation from the cities ceased and an equili- brium became established." "It strikes me," I observed, "that under any circumstances cities must still, on ac- count of their greater concentration of people, have certain better public services than small villages, for naturally such con- conveniences are least expensive where a dense population is to be supplied." "As to that," replied the doctor, "if a person desires to live in some remote spot far away from neighbours he will have to put up with some inconveniences. He will have to bring his supplies from the nearest public store and dispense with various public services enjoyed by those who live nearer together; but in order to be really out of reach of these services he must go a good way off. You must remember that nowadays the problems of communication and transpor- tation both by public and private means have been so entirely solved that conditions of space which were prohibitive in your day are unimportant now. Villages five and ten miles apart are as near together for purposes of social intercourse and economic adminis- tration as the adjoining wards of your cities. Either on their own account, or by group combinations with other communities, dwellers in the smallest villages enjoy in- Btallations of all sorts of public services as complete as exist in the cities. All have public stores and kitchens with tele- phone and delivery systems, public baths, libraries, and institutions of the highest edu- cation. As to the quality of the services and commodities provided, they are of abso- lutely equal excellence wherever furnished. Finally, by telephone and electroscope the dwellers in any part of the country, however deeply secluded among the forests or tho mount^ains, may enjoy the theatre, the con- cert, and the orator quite as advantageously as the residents of the largest cities." The Reaffobestixq Still we swept on mile after tnilc, league after league, toward the interior, and still the surface below presented tho same park- like aspect that had marked the immediate environs of the city. Every natural feature appeared to have been idealised, and all its latent meaning brought out by tho loving skill of some consummate landscape artist, the works of man blending with the face of Nature in perfect harmony. Such arrange- ments of scenery had not been uncommon in my day, when great cities prepared costly pleasure-grounds, but I had never imagined anything on a scale like this. "How far docs this park extend?" I de- manded at last. "There seems no end to it." "It extends to the Pacific Ocean," said the doctor. "Do yon mean that the whole United States is laid cut in this way? " "Not precisely in this way by any means, but in a hundred different v.'ays according to the natural suggestions of the face of the country and the most effective way of co- operating with them. In this region, for instance, where there are few bold natural features, the best effect to be obtained was that of a smiling, peaceful landscape with as much diversification in detail as possible. In the mountainous regions, on the contrary, where Nature has furnished effects which man's art could not strengthen, tho method has been to leave everything absolutely as Nature left it, only providing the utmost facilities for travel and observation. When you visit the White Mountains or the Berk- shire Hills you will find, I fancy, their slopes shaggier, the torrents wilder, the forests loftier and more gloomy than they were a hundred years ago. The only evidences of man's handiwork to be found there are the roadways which traverse every gorge and top every summit, carrying the traveller within reach of all the wild, rugged, or beautiful bits of Nature." "As far as forests go, it will not bo neces- sary for me to visit the mountains in order to perceive that the trees are not only a great deal loftier as a rule, but that there are vastly more of them than formerly." "Yes," said the doctor, "it would be odd if you did not notice that difference in the landscape. There are said to be five or ten trees nowadays where there was one in your day, and a good part of those you see down there are from seventy-five to a hundred years old, dating from the reafforesting." "What was the reafforesting? " I asked. "It was the restoration of the forests after the Revolution. Under private capitalism the greed or need of individuals had led to so general a wasting of the woods that the Btroams were greatly reduced, and the land 124 EQUALITY as constantly plagued with droughts. It was found after the Revolution that one of the things most urgent to be done was to reafforest the country. Of course, it has taken a long time for the new plantings to come to maturity, but I believe it is now some twenty-five years since the forest plan reached its full development and the last vestiges of the former ravages disappeared." "Do you know," I said presently, "that one feature which is missing from the land- scape impresses me quite as much as any that it presents ? " "What is it that is missing? " "The hay field." "Ah! yes, no wonder you miss it," said the doctor. "I understand that in your day hay was the main crop of New England ? " "Altogether so," 1 replied, "and now I suppose you have no use for hay at all. Dear me, in what a multitude of important ways the passing of the animals out of use both for food and work must have affected human occupations and interests ! " "Yes, indeed," said the doctor, and always to the notable improvement of the social con- dition, though it may sound ungrateful to say so. Take the case of tbf horse, for ex- ample. With the passing jf that long- suffering servant of man to his well-earned reward, smooth, permanent, and clean road- ways first became possible; dust, dirt, danger, and discomfort ceased to be neces- sary incidents of travel. "Thanks to the passing of the horse, it was possible to reduce the breadth of road- ways by half or a third, to construct them of smooth concrete from grass to grass, leav- ing no soil to be disturbed by wind or water, and such ways once built, last like Roman roads, and can never be overgrown by vege- tation. These paths, penetrating every nook and corner of the land, have, together with the electric motors, made travel such a luxury that, as a rule, we make all short jour- neys, and v.'hen time does not press even very long ones, by private conveyance. Had land travel remained in the condition it was in when it depended on the horse, the invention of the air-car would have strongly tempted humanity to treat the earth as the birds do — merely as a place to alight on between flights. As it is, we consider the question an even one whether it is pleasanter to swim through the air or to glide over the ground, the motion being well-nigh as swift, noiseless, and easy in one case as in the other." "Even before 1887," I said, "the bicycle was coming into such favour, and the pos- sibilities of electricity were beginning so to loom up, that prophetic people began to talk about the day of the horse as almost over. But it was believed that, although dispensed with for road purposes, he must always re- main a necessity for the multifarious pur- poses of farm-work, and so I should have supposed. How is it about that ? " Twentieth -Century Farming. "Wait a moment," replied the doctor; "when we have descended a little I will give you a practical answer." After we had dropped -from an altitude of perhaps a thousand feet to a couple of hun- dred, the doctor said — "Look down there to the right." I did so, and saw a large field from which the crops had been cut. Over its surface was moving a row of great machines, behind which the earth surged up in brown and rigid billows. On each machine stood or sat in easy attitude a young man or woman with quite the air of persons on a pleasure excursion. "Evidently," I said, "these are ploughs, but what drives them ? " "They are electric ploughs," replied the doctor. "Do you see that snakelike cord trailing away over the broken ground behind efK'h machine? That is the cable by which the force is supplied. Observe those posts at regular intervals about the field. It is only necessary to attach one of those cables to a post to have a power which, connected with any sort of agricultural machine, fur- nishes energy graduated from a man's strength to that of a liundred horses, and re- quiring for its guidance no other force than the fingers of a child can supply." And not only this, but it was further ex- plained to me that by this system of flexible cables of all sizes the electric power was applied not only to all the heavy tasks for- merly done by animals, but also to the hand instruments — the spade, the shovel, and the fork — which the farmer in my time must bend his own back to, however well supplied he might be with horse-power. There was, indeed, no tool, however small, the doctor explained, whether used in agriculture or any other art, to which this motor was not applicable, leaving to the worker only tho adjustment and guiding of the instrument. " With one of our shovels," said the doc- tor, "an intelligent boy can excavate a trench or dig a mile of potatoes quicker than a gang of men in your day, and with no more effort than he would use in wheeling a barrow." I had been told several times that at the present day farmwork was considered quite as desirable as any other occupation, but, with my impressions as to the peculiar ardu- ousness of the earth-worker's task, I had not been able to realise how this could really be so. It began to seem possible. The doctor suggested that perhaps I would like to land and inspect some of the arrange- ments of a modern farm, and I gladly assented. But first he took advantage of our elevated position to point out the network of railways by which all the farm transporta- EQUALITY 125 tion was done, and whereby the crops when gathered could, if desiraule, be shipped directly, without further handling, to any point in the country. Having alighted from our car, we crossed the field toward the nearest of the great ploughs, the rider of which was a dark-haired young woman daintily costumed, such a figure certainly as no nineteenth-century farm field ever saw. As she sat gracefully upon the back of the shining metal monster which, as it advanced, tore up the earth with terrible horns, 1 could but be reminded of Europa on her bull. If her prototype was a^ charming as this young woman, Jupiter certainly was excusable for running away with her. As we approached, she stopped the plough and pleasantly returned our greeting. It was evident that she recognised me at the first glance, as, tiianks doubtless to the dif- fusion of my portrait, everybody seemed to do. The interest with which she regarded me would have been more flattering had I not been aware that I owed it entirely to my character as a freak of Nature, and not at all to my personality. When I asked her what sort of a crop they were expecting to plant at this season, she replied that this was merely one of the many annual ploughings given to all soil to keep it in condition. " We use, of course, abundant fertilisers," she said, " but consider the soil its own best fertiliser if kept moving." "Doubtless," said I, "labour is the best fertiliser of the soil. So old an authority as Msov) taught us that in his fable of ' The Buried Treasure,' but it was a terribly ex- Eensive sort of fertiliser in my day when it ad to come out of the muscles of men and beasts. One ploughing a year was all our farmers could manage, and that nearly broke their backs." " Yes," she said, " I have read of those poor men. Now you see it is diflercnt. So long as the tides rise and fall twice a day, let alone the winds and waterfalls, there is no reason why we should not plough every day if it were desirable. I believe it is estimated that about ten times the amount of power is nowadays given to the working of every acre of land that it was possible to apply in former times." We spent some time inspecting the farm. The doctor explained the drainage and pump- ing systems by which both excess and de- ficiency of rain are guarded against, and gave me opportunity to examine in detail some of the wonderful tools he had de- scribed, which make practically no requisi- tion on the muscle of the worker, only need- ing a mind behind them. Connected with the farm was one of the systems of great greenhouse establishments upon which the people depend for fresh vege- tables in the winter, and this, too, we visited. The wonders of intensive, culture which I saw in that great structure would of course astonish none of my readers, but to me the revelation of what could bo dona with plants when all the conditions of light, heat, moisture, and soil ingredients were absolutely to be commanded, was a never-to- be-forgotten experience. It seemed to me that I had stolen into the very laboratory of the Creator, and found Him at the task of fashioning with invisible hands the dust of the earth and the viewless air into forms of life. I had never seen plants actually grow before, and had deemed the Indian juggler's trick an imposture. But here I saw them lifting their heads, putting forth their buds, and opening their flowers by movements which the eye could follow. I confess that I fairly listened to hear them whisper. " la my day, greenhouse culture of vege- tables out of season had been carried on only to an extent to meet the demands of a small class of very rich. The idea of pro- viding such supplies at moderate prices for the entire community, according to the modern practice, was of course quite un- dreamed of." When we left the greenhouse the after- noon had worn away, and the sun was set- ting. Rising swiftly to a height where its rays still warmed us, we set out homeward. Strongest of all the impressions of that to me so wonderful afternoon there lingered most firmly fixed in my mind the latest — namely, the object lesson I had received of the transformation in the conditions of agriculture, the great staple human occupa- tion from the beginning, and the basis of every industrial system. Presently I said — " Since you have so successfully done away with the first of the two main drawbacks of the agricultural occupation as known in my day— namely, its excessive laboriousness — you have no doubt also known how to elimi- nate the other, which was the isolation, the loneliness, the lack of social intercourse and opportunity of social culture which were in- cident to the farmer's life." " Nobody would certainly do farm-work," replied the doctor, " if it had continued to be either more lonesome or more laborious than other sorts of work. As regards th« social surroundings of the agriculturist, he is in no way differently situated from the artisan or any other class of workers. He, like the others, lives where he pleases, and is carried to and fro just as they are be- tween the place of his residence and occu- pation by the lines of swift transit with which the country is threaded. Work on a farm no longer implies life on a farm, un- less for those who like it." " One of the conditions of the farmer's life, owing to the variations of the season, " I said, "has always been the alternation of slack work and periods of special exigency, such as planting and harvesting, when the 126 EQUALITY sudden need of a multiplied labour force has necessitated the severest strain of effort for a time. This alternation of too little with too much work, I should suppose, would still continue to distinguish agriculture from other occupations." "No doubt," replied the doctor; "but this alternation, far from involving either a wasteful relaxation of effort or an excessive strain on the worker, furnishes occasions of recreation which add a special attraction to the agricultural occupation. The seasons of planting and harvesting are of course slightly or largely different in the several districts of a country so extensive as this. The fact makes it possible successively to concentrate in each district as large an extra contingent of workers drawn from other districts as is needed. It is not uncommon on a few days' notice to throw a hundred thousand extra workers into a region where there is a special temporary demand for labour. The inspira- tion of thcEe great mass-movements is re- markable, and must be something like that which attended in your day the mobilising and marching of armies to war." We drifted on for a space in silence through the darkening sky. " Truly, Julian," said the doctor at length, "no industrial transformation since your day has been so complete, and none surely has affected so great a proportion of the people, as that which has come over agriculture. The poets from Virgil up and down have recognised in rural pursuits and the cultivation of the earth the conditions most favourable to a serene and happy life. Their fancies in this respect have, however, until the present time, been mocked by the actual conditions of agriculture, which have combined to make the lot of the farmer, the Bustainer of all the world, the saddest, most difficult, and most hopeless endui-ed by any class oT men. From the beginning of the world until the last century the tiller of the soil has been the most pathetic figure in history. In the ages of slavery his was the lowest class of slaves. After slavery dis- appeared his remained the most anxious, arduous, and despairing of occupations. He endured more than the poverty of the wage- earner without his freedom from care, and all the anxiety of the capitalist without his hope of compensating profits. On the one Bide he was dependent for his product, as was no other class, upon the caprices of Nature, while on the other in disposing of it he was more completely at the m.ercy of the middleman than any other producer. Well might he wonder whether man or Nature were the more heartless. If the crops failed, the farmer perished ; if they prospered, the middleman took the pro6t. Standing as a buffer between the elemental forces and human society, he was smitten by the one only to be thrust back by the other. Bound to the soil, he fell into a commer- cial serfdom to the cities well-nigh as com- plete as the feudal bondage had been. By reason of his isolated and unsocial life he was uncouth, unlettered, out of touch with culture, without opportunities for self-im- provement, even if his bitter toil had left him energy or time for it. For this reason the dwellers in the towns looked down upon him as one belonging to an inferior race. In all lands, in all ages, the countryman has been considered a proper butt by the most loutish townsman. The starving proletarian of the city pavement scoffed at the farmer as a boor. Voiceless, there was none to speak for him, and his rude, inarticulate complaints were met with jeers. Balaam was not more astonished when the ass he was riding rebuked him than the ruling classes of America seem to have been when the farmers, toward the close of the last century, undertook to have something to say about the government of the country. " From time to time in the progress of history the condition of the farmer has for brief periods been tolerable. The yeoman of England was once for a little while one who looked nobles in the face. Again, the American farmer, up to the middle of the nineteenth century, enjoyed the golden ago of agriculture. Then for a space, produc- ing chiefly for use and not for sale to middlemen, he was the most independent of men and enjoyed a rude abundance. But before the nineteenth century had reached its last third, American agriculture had passed through its brief idyllic period, and, by the inevitable operation of private capitalism, the farmer began to go down hill toward the condition of serfdom, which in all ages before had been his normal state, and must be for evermore, so long as the economic ex- ploitation of men by men should continue. While in one sense economic equality brought an equal blessing to all, two classes had especial reason to hail it as bringing to them a greater cleA'ation from a deeper degradiilion than to any others. One of these classes was the women, the other the farmers." EQUALITY 127 CHAFrER XXXiV WHAT STARTED THE REVOLUTION WuAT did I say to the theatre for that even- ing? \va5 the question with which Edith met mo when we reached home. It seemed that a celebrat-cd historical drama of the great Revolution was to be given in Honolulu that afternoon, and she had thought I might like to see it. '■Really you ought to att-end," she said, " for the presentation of the play is a sort of compliment to you, seeing that it is re- vived in response to the popular interest in revolutionary history which your presence has aroused." No way of spending the evening could have been more agreeable to me, and it was agreed that we should make up a family theatre party. "The only trouble," I said, as we sat around the tea table, "is that I don't know enough yet about the Revolution to follow the play very intelligently. Of course, I have heard revolutionary events referred to frequently, but I have no connected idea of the Revolution as a whole." "That will not matter," said Edith. "There is plenty of time before the play for father to tell you what is necessary. The matinee does not begin till three in the after- noon at Honolulu, and as it is only six now the difference in time will give us a good hour before the curtain rises." " That's rather a short time, as well as a short notice, for so big a task as explaining the great Revolution," the doctor mildly pro- tested, "but under the circumstances I sup- pose I shall have to do the best I can." "Beginnings are always misty," he said, when I straightway opened at him with the question when the great Revolution began. "Perhaps St. John disposed of that point in the simplest way when he said that ' In the beginning v/as God.' To come down nearer, it might be said that Jesus Clirist stated the doctrinal basis and practical purpose of the great Revolution when He declared that the golden rule of equal and the best treatment for all was the only right principle on A'hich people could live together. To speak, how- ever, in the language of historians, the great Revolution, like all iinportant events, had two sets of causes — first, the general, necessary, and fundamental cause which must have brought it about in the end, whatever the minor circumstances had been; and, second, the proximate or provoking causes which, within certain limits, determined when it actually did take place tocrcthpr with fh^ incidental features. These immodiate or pro- voking causes were, of course, different in different countries, but the general, neces- sary, and fundamental cause was the same in all countries, the great Revolution being, as you know, world-wide and nearly simul- taneoas, as regards the more advanced nations. "That cause, as I have often intimated in our talks, was the growth of intelligence and diffusion of knowledge among the masses, which, beginning with the introduction of printing, spread slowly through the six- teenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, and much more rapidly during the nine- teenth, when, in the more favoured countries, it began to bo something like general. Pre- vious to the beginning of this process of enlightenment, the condition of the mass of mankind as to intelligence, from the most ancient times, had been practically station- ary at a point little above the level of the brutes. With no more thought or will of their own than clay in the hands of the potter, they were unresistingly moulded to the uses of the more intelligent and power- ful individuals and groups of their kind. So it went on for innumerable ages, and nobody dreamed of anything else until at last the conditions were ripe for the inbreath- ing of an intellectual life into these inert and senseless clods. The process by which this awakening took place was silent, gradual, imperceptible, but no previous event or series of events in the history of the race had been comparable to it in the effect it was to have upon human destiny. It meant that the in- terest of the many instead of the few, the welfare of the wliole instead of that of a part, were henceforth to be the paramount purpose of the social order and the goal of its evolution. "Dimly your nineteenth-century philoso- phers seem to have perceived that the general diffusion of intelligence was a new and large fact, and that it introduced a very important force into the social cvrlntion, but they were wall-eyed in their failure to see the certainty with which it foreshadowed a complete revo- lution of the economic basis of society in the interest of the whole body of the people as opposed to class interest or pnitial interest of every sort. Its first effect was the demo- cratic movement by which personal and class rule in political matters was overthrown in the name of the supreme interest and au- thority of the people. It is astonishing that there should have been any intelligent persons among you who did not perceive that 128 EQUALITY political democracy was but the pioneer corps and advance guard of economic democracy, clearing the way and providing the instru- mentality for the substantial part of the pro- gramme — namely, the equalisation of the dis- tribution of work and wealth. So much for the main, general, and necessary cause, and explanation of the great Revolution — namely, the progressive diffusion of intelligence among the masses from the sixteenth to the end of the nineteenth centuries. Given this force in operation, and the revolution of the economic basis of society must sooner or later have been its outcome everywhere : whether a little sooner or later, and in just what way and with just what circumstances, the differing conditions of different countries determined. "In the case of America, the period of revolutionary agitation which resulted in the establishment of the present order began almost at once upon the close of the civil war. Some historians date the beginning of the Revolution from 1873." "Eighteen seventy-three!" I exclaimed; "why, that was more than a dozen years before I fell asleep ! It seems, then, that I was a contemporary and witness of at least a part of the Revolution, and yet I saw no Revolution. It is true that we recognised the highly serious condition of industrial con- fusion and popular discontent, but we did not realise that a Revolution was on." "It was to have been expected that you would not," replied the doctor. "It is very rarely that the contemporaries of great revo- lutionary movements have understood their nature until they have nearly run their course. Following generations always think that they would have been wiser in reading the signs of the times, but that is not likely." "But what was there," I said, "about 1873 which has led historians to take it as the date from which to reckon the beginning of the Revolution? " "Simply the fact that it marked in a rather distinct v/ay the beginning of a period of economic distress among the American people, which continued, with temporary and partial alleviations, until the overthrow of private capitalism. The popular discontent resulting from this experience was the pro- voking cause of the Revolution. It awoke Americans from their self-complacent dream that the social problem had been solved, or could be solved, by a system of demo- cracy limited to merely political forms, and set them to seeking the true solution. "The economic distress beginning at the last third of the century, vvhich was the direct provocation of the Revolution, was very slight compared with that which had been the constant lot and ancient heritage of other nations. It represented merely the first turn or two of the screw by which capitalism in due time squeezed "dry the masses always and everywhere. The unex- ampled space and richness of their new land had given Americans a century's respite from the universal fate. Those advantages had passed, the respite was ended, and the time had come when the people must adapt their necks to the yoke all peoples before had worn. But having grown high-spirited from so long an experience of comparative welfare, the Americans resisted the imposition, and, finding mere resistance vain, ended by making a revolution. That, in brief, is the whole story of the way the great Revolution came on in America. But while this might satisfy a languid twentieth-century curiosity as to a matter so remote in time, you will naturally want a little more detail. There is a particular chapter in Storiot's History of the Revolution explaining just how and why the growth of the power of capital provoked the great uprising, which deeply impressed me in my school-days, and I don't think I can make a better use of a part of our short time than by reading a few paragraphs from it." And Edith having brought the book from the library— for we still sat at the tea-table — the doctor read — " ' With reference to the evolution of the system of private capitalism to the point where it provoked the Revolution by threaten- ing the lives and liberties of the people, historians divide the history of the American Republic, from its foundation in 1787 to the great Revolution which made it a true re- public, into three periods. " ' The first comprises the decades from the foundation of the republic to about the end of the first third of the nineteenth century — say, up to the 'thirties or 'forties. This wa-s the period during which the power of capital in private hands had not as yet shown itself seriously aggressive. The moneyed class was small, and the accumulations of capital petty. The vastness of the natural resources of the virgin country defied as yet the lust of greed. The ample lands to be had for the taking guaranteed independence to all at the price of labour. With this resource no man needed to call another master. This may be con- sidered the idyllic period of the republic, the time when De "TocquevilTe saw and ad- mired it, though not without prescience of the doom that awaited it. The seed of death was in the state in the principle of private capitalism, and was sure in time to grow and ripen, but as yet the conditions were not favourable to its development. All seemed to go well, and it is not strange that the American people indulged in the hope that their republic had indeed solved the social question. '"From about 1830 or 1840, speaking of course in a general way as to date, we con- sider the republic to have entered on its second phase — namely, that in which the grov.th and concentration of capital began EQUALITY 129 to be rapid. The moneyed class now grew powerful, and began to reach out and absorb the natural resources of the country, and to organise for its profit the labour of the people. In a word, the growth of the plutocracy became vigorous. The event which gave the great impulse to this movement, and fixed the time of the transition from the first to the second period in the history of the nation, was of course the general application of steam to commerce and industry. The transition may indeed be eaid to have begun somewhat earlier, with the introduction of the factory system. Of course, if neither steam nor the inventions which made the factory system possible had «ver been introduced, it would have been merely a question of a longer time before the capitalist class, proceeding in this case by landlordism and usury, would have reduced the masses to vassalage, and overthrown democracy, even as in the ancient republics; but the great inventions amazingly acceler- ated the plutocratic conquest. For the first time in history the capitalist, in the subjuga- tion of his fellows, had machinery for his »lly, and a most potent one it was. This was the mighty factor which, by multiplying the power of capital, and relatively dwarfing the importance of the working man, accounts for the extraordinary rapidity with which during the second and third periods the con- quest of the republic by the plutocracy was carried out. " ' It is a fact creditable to Americans that they appear to have begun to realise as early us the 'forties that new and dangerous ten- dencies were affecting the republic, and threatening to falsify its promise of a wide diffusion of welfare. That decade is notable in American history for the popular interest taken in the discussion of the possibility of a better social order, and for the numerous experiments undertaken to test the feasibility of dispensing with the private capitalist by co-operative industry. Already the more in- telligent and public-spirited citizens were beginning to observe that their so-called popular government did not seem to inter- fere in the slightost degree with the rule of the rich, and the subjection of the masses to economic masters, and to wonder, if that were to continue to be so, of exactly how much value the so-called republican institu- tions were on which they had so prided themselves. "'This nascent agitation of the social question on radical lines was, however, for the time, destined to prove abortive, by force of a condition peculiar to America — namely, the existence on a vast scale of African chattel slavery in the country. It was fitting in the evolution of complete hiyjian liberty that this form of bondage, crMler and more brutal, if not on the whole more cruel, than wage slavery, should first be put out of the way. But for this neces- sity, and the conditions that produced it, we may believe that the great Revolutica would have occurred in America tv.enty-five years earlier. From the period of 1840 to 1870 the slavery issue, involving as it did a conflict of stupendous forces, absorbed all the moral and mental, as well as physical, energies of the nation. "'During the thirty or forty years from the serious beginning of the anti-slavery movement till the war was ended and its issues disposed of, the nation had no thought to spare for any other interests. During this period the concentration of capital in few hands, already alarming to the far- sighted in the 'forties, had time, almost un- observed and quite unresisted, to push its conquest of the country and the people. Under cover of the civil war, with its pre- ceding and succeeding periods of agitation over the issues of the war, the capitalists may be said to have stolen a march upon the nation, and entrenched themselves in a commanding position. " 'Eighteen seventy-three is the point, as near as any date, at which the country, delivered at last from the distracting ethical and sectional issues of slavery, first began to open its eyes to the irrepressible conflict which the growth of capitalism had forced — a conflict between the power of wealth and the democratic idea of the equal right of all to life, liberty, and happiness. From about this time wo date, therefore, the beginning of the final or revolutionary period of the pseudo-American Republic which resulted in the establishment of the present system. " ' History had furnished abundant pre- vious illustrations of the overthrow of re- publican societies by the growth and con- centration of private wealth, but never before had it recorded a revolution in the economic basis of a great nation at once so complete and so swiftly effected. In America before the war, as we have seen, wealth had been distributed with a general effect of evenness never previously known in a large com- munity. There liad been few rich men and very few considerable fortunes. It had been in the power neither of individuals nor a class, through the possession of overwhelm- ing capital, to exercise oppression upon the rest of the community. In the short space of twenty-five to thirty years these economic conditions had been so completely reversed as to give America in the 'seventies and 'eighties the name of the land of millionaires, and make it famous to the ends of the earth as the country of all others where the vastest private accumulations of wealth existed. The consequences of this amazing concentration of wealth formerly so equally diffused, as it had affected the industrial, the social, and the political interests of the people, could not have been other than revolutionary. " ' Free competition in business had ceased to exist. Personal initiative in industrial 130 EQUALITY ertcrprises, which formerly had been open to all, was restricted to the capitalists, and to the larger capitalists at that. Formerly known all over the world as the land of opportunities, America had in the time of a generatioa become equally celebrated as the land of monopolies. A man no longer counted chiefly for what he was, but for what he had. Brains and industry, if coupled with civility, might indeed win an upper servant's place in the employ of capi- tal, but no longer could command a career. "'The concentration of the economic administration of the country in the hands of a comparatively small body of great capi- talists had necessarily consolidated and cen- tralised in a corresponding manner all the functions of production and distribution. Single great concerns, backed by enormous aggregations of capital, had appropriated tracts of the business field formerly occupied by innumerable smaller concerns. In this process, as a matter of course, swarms of small businesses were crushed like flies, and their former independent proprietors were fortunate to find places as underlings in the great establishments which had supplanted them. Straight through the 'seventies and 'eighties, every month, every week, every day saw soma fresh province of the economic state, some new branch of industry or com- merce formerly open to the enterprise of all, captured by a combination of capitalists, and turned into an entrenched camp of monopoly. The words syndicate and trust were coined to describe these monstrous growths, for which the foi-mer language of the business world had no name. " ' Of the two great divisions of the work- ing masses it would be hard to say whether the wage-earner or the farmer had suffered most by the changed order. The old per- sonal relationship and kindly feeling between employee and employer had passed away. The great aggregations of capital which had taken the place of the former employers were impersonal forces, which knew the worker no longer as a man, but as a unit of force. He was merely a tool in the employ of a machine, the managers of which regarded him as a necessary nuisance, v/ho must un- fortunately be retained at the least possible expense, until he could be invented wholly out of existence by some new mechanical contrivance. '"The economic function and possibilities of the farmer had similarly been dwarfed or cut off as a result of the concentration of the business sj^stem of the country in the hands of a few. The railroads and the grain- market had, between them, absorbed the former profits of farming, and left the farmer only the wages of a day-labourer in case of a good crop, and a mortgage debt in case of a bad one ; and all this, moreover, coupled with the responsibilities of a capitalist whose monev was investr^rl in his farm. This latter responsibility, however, did not long continue to trouble the farmer, for, as naturally might be supposed, the only way he could oxist from year to year under such conditions was by contracting debts without the slightest prospect of paying them, which presently led to the foreclosure of his land, and his reduc- tion from the once proud estate of an American farmer to that of a tenant on his way to become a peasant. "'From 1873 to 1896 the histories quote some six distinct business crises. The periods of rallying between them were, however, so brief that we may say a continuous crisis existed during a large part of that period. Now, business crises had been numerous and disastrous in the early and middle epoch of the Republic, but the business system, resting at that time on a v,'idely extended popular initiative, had shown itself quickly and strongly elastic, and the rallies that promptly followed the crashes had always led to a greater prosperity than that before enjoyed. But this elasticity, with the cause of it, was now gone. There was little or slow reaction after the crises of the 'seventies, 'eighties, and early 'nineties, but, on the contrary, a scarcely interrupted decline of prices, wages, and the general prosperity and content of the farnimg and wage-earning masses. "' There could not be a more striking proof of the downward tendency in the welfare of the wage-earner and the farmer than the de- teriorating quality and dwindling volume of foreign immigration which marked the period. The rush of European emigrants to the United States as the land of promise for the poor, since its beginning half a century before, had continued with increasing volume, and ""drawn to us a great population from the best stocks of the Old World. Soon after the war the character of the immigra- tion began to change, and during the 'eighties and 'nineties came to be almost entirely made up of the lowest, most wretched, and bar- barous races of Eirrope — the very scum of the Continent. Even to secure these wretched recruits the agents of the Transatlantic steamers and the American land syndicates had to send their agents all over the worst districts of Europe, and flood the countries with lying circulars. Matters had come to the point that no European peasant or work- ing-man, who was yet above the estate of a beggar or an exile, could any longer afford to share the lot of the American working- man and farmer, so little time before the envy of the toiling world. "'While the politicians sought, especially about election time, to cheer the working- man with the assurance of better times just ahead, the more serious economic writers seem to have frankly admitted that the superiority formerly enjoyed by American working-men over those of other counties could not be expected to last longer, that the tendency henceforward was to be toward EQUALITY 131 a world-wide level of prices and wages — namely, the level of the country where they were lowest. In keeping with this predic- tion we note that for the first time, about tlie beginning of the 'nineties, the American employer began to find himself, through the reduced cost of production in which wages were the main element, in a position to under- sell in foreign markets the products of the slave gangs of British, Belgian, French, and Herman capitalists. '"It was during this period, when the economic distress of the masses was creating industrial war and making revolutionists of the most contented and previously prosperous :i,nicultural population in history, that the \astest private fortunes in the history of the v.orld were being accumulated. The million- aire, who had been unknown before the war, and was still an unusual and portentous figure in the early 'seventies, was presently suc- ceeded by the multi-millionaire, and above the multi-millionaires towered yet a new race of economic Titans, the hundred millionaires, and already the coming of the billionaire was being discussed. It is not difficult, nor did the people of the time find it so, to see, in view of this comparison, where the wealth went which the masses were losing. Tens of thousands of modest competencies dis- appeared, to reappear in colossal fortunes in single hands. Visibly as the body of the spider swells as he sucks the juices of his victims, had these vast aggregations grown In measure as the welfare of the once prosperous people had shrunk away. "'The social consequences of so complete an overthrow of the former economic equili- brium as had taken place could not nave been less than revolutionary. In America, before the war, the accumulations of wealth were usually the result of the personal efforts of the possessor, and were consequently small and correspondingly precarious. It was a say- ing of the time that there were usually but three generations from shirt-sleeves to shirt- sleeves — meaning that if a man accumulated a little wealth, his son generally lost it, and the grandson was again a manual labourer. Under these circumstances the economic dis- parities, slight at most and constantly fluc- tuating, entirely failed to furnish a basis for class distinctions. There were recognised no labouring class as such, no leisure class, no fixed classes of rich and poor. Riches or poverty, the condition of being at leisure or obliged to work, were considered merely tem- porary accidents of fortune and not per- manent conditions. All this was now changed. The great fortunes of the new order of things by their very magnitude were stable acnuisi- tions, not easily liable to be lost, capable of being handed down from generation to gene- ration with almost as much security as a title of nobility. On the other hand, the monopolisation of all the valuable economic opportunities in the counffy by the great capitalists made it correspondingly impossible for those not of the capitalist class to attaia wealth. The hope ot becoming rich some day, which before the war every energetic American had cherished, was now practically beyond the horizon of the man bom to poverty. Between rich and poor the door was henceforth shut. The way up, hitherto the social safety valve, had been closed, and the bar woigiited with money-bags. "'A natural rellex of the changed social conditions of the country is seen in the new class terminology, borrowed from the Old World, which soon after the war crept into use in the United States. It had been the boast of the former American that everybody in this country was a working-man ; but now that term we find more and more frankly employed to distinguish the poor from the well-to-do. For the first time in American literature we begin to read of the lower classes, the upper classes, and the middle classes — terms which would have been mean- ingless in America before the war, but now corresponded so closely with the real facts of the situation that those who detested them most could not avoid their use. "'A prodigious display of luxury such as Europe could not rival had begun to char- acterise the manner of life of the possessors of the new and unexampled fortunes. Spec- tacles of gilded splendour, of royal pomp and boundless prodigality, mocked the popular discontent and brought out in dazzling light the width and depth of the gulf that was being fixed betv.'8en the masters and the masses. "'Meanwhile the money kings took no pains to disguise the fulness of tiicir convic- tion that the day of democracy was passing and the dream of equality nearly at an end. As the popular feeling in America had grown bitter against tliem they had responded with frank indications of their dislike of the coun- try and disgust with its democratic institu- tions. The leading American millionaires had become international personages, spend- ing the greater part of their time and their revenue in European countries, sending their children there for education, and in some in- stances carrying their preference for the Old World to the extent of becoming subjects of foreign Powers. The disposition on the part of the greater American' capitalists to turn their backs upon democracy and ally them- selves with European and monarchical insti- tutions was emphasised in a striking manner by the long list of marriages arranged during this period between great American heiresses and foreign noblemen. It seemed to be con- sidered that the fitting destiny for the daugh. ter of an American multimillionaire was such a union. These great capitalists were very shrewd in money matters, and their invest- ments of vast sums in the purchase of titles for their posterity was the strongest evidence they could give of a sincere conviction that 132 EQUALITY the future of the world, like its past, be- longed not to the people, but to class and privilege. '" The influence exercised over the political government by the moneyed class under the convenient euphemism of "the business in- terests," which merely meant the interests of the rich, had always been considerable, and at times caused grave scandals. In measure as the wealth of the country had become con- centrated and allied, its influence in the government had naturally increased, and dur- ing the 'seventies, 'eighties, and 'nineties it became a scarcely veiled dictatorship. Lest the nominal representatives of the people should go astray in doing the will of the capitalists, the latter were represented by bodies of picked agents at all the places of government. These agents closely folfowed the conduct of all public officials, and wher- ever there was any wavering in their fidelity to the capitalists, were able to bring to bear influences of intimidation or bribery which were rarely unsuccessful. These bodies of agents had a recognised semi-legal place in the political system of the day under the name of lobbyists. " ' The history of government contains few more shameful chapters than that which re- cords how during this period the Legislatures —municipal, State, and national — seconded by the Executives and the (Courts, vied with each other by wholesale grants of land, privi- leges, franchises, and monopolies of all kinds, in turning over the country, its resources, and its people to the domination of the capitalists, their heirs and assigns, for ever. The public lands, which a few decades before had pro- mised a boundless inheritance to future generations, were ceded in vast domains to syndicates and individual capitalists, to be held against the people as the basis of a future territorial aristocracy with tributary populations of peasants. Not only had the material substance of the national patrimony been thus surrendered to a handful of the people, but in the fields of commerce and of industry all the valuable economic opportuni- ties had been secured by franchises to mono- polies, precluding future generations from opportunity of livelihood or employment, save as the dependants and liegemen of a here- ditary capitalist class. In the chronicles of royal misdoings there have been many dark chapters recording how besotted or imbecile monarchs have sold their people into bondage and sapped the welfare of their realms to enrich licentious favourites, but the darkest of those chapters is bright laeside that which records the sale of the heritage and hopes of the American peopl.e to the highest bidder by the so-called democratic State, national, and local goverrmients, during the period of which we are speaking. '"Especially necessary had it become for the plutocracy to be able to use the powers of governmpnf ,it. will, on account of the embittered and desperate temper of the work- ing masses "'The labour strikes often resulted in dis- turbances too extensive to be dealt with by the police, and it became the common prac- tice of the capitalists, in case of serious strikes, to call on the State and national governments to furnish troops to protect their property interest. The principal function of the militia of the States had become the suppression of strikes with bullet or bayonet, or the standing guard over the plants of the capitalists, till hunger compelled the insur- gent v>'orkmen to surrender. "'During the 'eighties the State govern- ments entered upon a general policy of pre- paring the militia for this new and ever- enlarging field of usefulness. The National Guard was turned into a capitalist guard. The force was generally reorganised, in- creased in numbers, improved in discipline, and trained with especial reference to the business of shooting riotous working-men. The drill in street firing — a quite new feature in the training of the American militiaman, and a most ominous one — became the pro- minent test of efficiency. Stone and brick armouries, fortified against attack, loopholed for musketry and mounted with guns to sv/eep the streets, were erected at the strategic points of the large cities. In some instances the militia, which, after all, was pretty near the people, had, however, shown such unwillingness to fire on strikers, and such symptoms of sympathy for their grievances, that the capitalists did not trust them fully, but in serious cases preferred to depend on the pitiless professional soldiers of the General Government, the regulars. Conse quently, the Government, upon request of the capitalists, adopted the policy of establishing fortified camps near the great cities, and posting heavy garrisons in them. The Indian wars were ceasing at about this time, and the troops that had been stationed on the Western plains to protect the white settle- ments from the Indians were brought East to protect the capitalists from the white settlements. Such was the evolution of pri- vate capitalism. "'The extent and practical character of the use to which the capitalists intended to put the military arm of the Government in their controversy with the working-men may be judged from t!u^ f;ict that in single years of the early 'nineties armies of eight and ten thousand mm were on the march, in New York and Pennsylvania, to suppress strikes. In 1892 the militia of five States, aided by the regulars, were under arms against strikers simultaneously, the aggregate force of troops probably making a larger body than General Washington ever commanded. Here, surely, was civil war already. '"Americans of the former days had laughed scornfully at the bayonet-propped monarchies of Europe, saying rightly that a EQUALITY 133 government which needed to be defended by force from its own people was a self-confessed failure. To this pass, however, the indus- trial s^'stem of the United States was fast coming— it was becoming a government by bayonets. '"Thus briefly, and without attempt at detail, may be recapitulated some of the main aspects of the transformation in the condition of the American people, resulting from the concentration of the wealth of the country, which first began to excite serious alarm at the close of the civil war. "'It might almost be said that the citizen armies of the North had returned from sav- ing the republic from open foes, to find that it had been stolen from them by more stealthy but far more dangeix)us enemies whom they had left at home. While they had been put- ting down cast« rule based on race at the South, class rule based on wealth had been set up at the North, to be in time extended over South and North alike. While the armies of the people had been shedding rivers of blood in the effort to presei-\'e the political unity of the nation, its social unity, upon which the very life of a republic de- pends, had been attacked by the beginnings of class divisions, which could only end by splitting the once coherent nation into mutu- ally suspicious and inimical bodies of citizens, rccjuiring the iron' bands of despotism to hold them together in a political organisation. Four million negi'oes had indeed been freed from chattel slavery, but meanwhile a nation of white men had passed under the yoke of an economic and social vassalage which, though the common fate of European peoples and of the ancient world, the Tounders of the republic had been proudly confident their posterity would never wear.'" The doctor closed the book from which he had been reading and laid it down. "Julian," he said, "this story of the sub- version of the American Republic by the plutocracy is an astounding one. You were a witness of the situation it describes, and are able to judge whether the statements are ex- aggerated." "On the contrary," I replied, "I should think you had been reading aloud from a collection of newspapers of the period. All the political, social, and business facts and symptoms to which the writer has referred were matters of public discussion and com- mon notoriety. If they did not impress me as they do now, it is simply because I imagine I never heard them grouped and marshalled with the purpose of bringing out their significance." Once more the doctor asked Edith to bring him a book from the library. Turning the pages until he had found the desired place, he said — " LPFt you should fancy that the force of Storiot's statement of the economic situation in the United States during the last third of the nineteenth century owes anything to the rhetorical arrangement, I want to give you just a few hard, cold statistics as to the actual distribution of property during that period, showing the extent to which its ownership had been concentrated, llere is A volume made up of information on this sub- ject based upon analyses of census reportr, tax assessments, the files of probate courts, and other official documents. 1 will give you three sets of calculations, each prepared by a separate authority and based upon a distinct line of investigation, and all agreeing with a closeness which, considering the magnitude of the calculation, is astounding, and leaves no room to doubt the substantial accuracy of the conclusions. " From the first set of tables, which was prepared in 1893 by a census official from the returns of the United States census, we find it estimated that out of sixty-two billions of wealth in the country a group of millionaires and multimillionaires, representing three one- hundredths of one per cent, of the popula- tion, owned twelve billions, or one-fifth. Thirty-three billions of the rest was owned by a little less than nine per cent, of the American people, being the rich and well-to- do cla.'^s less than millionaires. That is, the millionaires, rich, and well-to-do, making al- together but nine per cent, of the whole nation, owned forty-five billions of the total national valuation of sixty-two billions. The remaining ninety-one per cent, of the whole nation, constituting the bulk of the people, were classed as the poor, and divided among themselves the remaining seventeen million dollars. " A second table, published in 1894, and based upon the surrogates' records of estates in the great State of New York, estimates that one per cent, of the people, one one- hundredth of the nation, possessed over half, or fifty-five per cent., of its total wealth. It finds that a further fraction of the popula- tion, including the well-to-do, and amounting to eleven per cent., owned over thirty-two per cent, of the total wealth, so that twelve per cent, of the whole nation, including the very rich and the well-to-do, monopolised eighty-seven per cent, of the total wealth of the country, leaving but thirteen per cent, of that wealth to be shared among the re- maining eighty-eight per cent, of the nation. This eighty-eight per cent, of the nation was subdivided into the poor and the very poor. The last, constituting fifty per cent, out of the eighty-eight, or half 'the entire nation, had too little wealth to be estimated at all, apparently living a hand-to-mouth existence. "The estimates of a third computator whom I shall quote, although taken from quite different data, agree remarkably with the others, representing as they do about the same period. These last estimates, which were published in 1889 and 1891, and like the 184 EQUALITY others produced a strong impreBsion, divide the nation into three classes — the rich, the middle, and the working class. The rich, being one and four-tenths per cent, of the population, are credited with seventy per cent, of the total wealth. The middle class, representing nine and two-tenths per cent, of the population, is credited with twelve per cent, of the total wealth, the rich and middle classes, together, representing ten a,nd six-tenths per cent, of the population, having therefore eighty-two per cent, of the total wealth, leaving to the working class, which constituted eighty-nine and four-tenths of the nation, but eighteen per cent, of the wealth, to share among them." " Doctor," I exclaimed, " I knew things were pretty unequally divided in my day, but figures like these afe overwhelming. You need not take the trouble to tell me any- thing further by way of explaining why the people revolted against private capitalism. These figures were Enough to turn the very stones into revolutionists." " I thought you would say so," replied the doctor. " And please remember also that these tremendous figures represent only the progress made toward the concentration of wealth mainly within the period of a single generation. Well might Americans say to themselves, ' If such things are done in the green tree, what shall be done in the dry ? ' If private capitalism, dealing with a com- munity in which had previously existed a de- gree of economic equality never before known, could within a period of some thirty years m.ake such a prodigious stride toward the complete expropriation of the rest of the nation for the enrichment of a class, what was likely to be left to the people at the end of a century? What was to be left even to the next generation ? " CHAPTER XXXV WHY THE REVOLUTION WENT SLOW AT FIRST, BTTT FAST AT L4ST " So much for the causes of the Revolution in America, both the general fundamental cause, consisting in the factor newly intro- duced into social evolution by the enlighten- ment of the masses and irresistibly tending to equality, and the immediate local causes Seculiar to America, which account for the evolution having come at the particular time it did, and for its taking the particular course it did. Now, briefly as to that courBe : — " The pinching of the economic shoe re- sulting from the concentration of wealth was naturally first felt by the class with least reserves, the wage-earners, and the Revolu- tion may be said to have begun with their revolt. In 1869 the first great labour or- ganisation in America was formed to resist the power of capital. Previous to the war the number of strikes that had taken place in the country could be counted on the fingers. Before the 'sixties were out they were counted by hundreds, during the 'seven- ties by thousands, and during the 'eighties the labour reports enumerate nearly ten thousand, involving two or three million workers. Many of these strikes were of Con- tinental scope, shaking the whole commercial ^ fabric and causing general panics. " Close after the revolt of the wage-earners came that of the farmers — less turbulent in methods, but more serious and abiding in re- sults. This took the form of secret leagues and open political parties devoted to resist- ing what was called the money power. Already in the 'seventies these organisations threw State and national politics into con- fusion, and later became the nucleus of the revolutionary party, " Your contemporaries of the thinking classes cannot be taxed with indifference to these signs and portents. The public discus- sion and literature of the time reflect the con- fusion and" anxiety with which the unprece- dented manifestations of popular discontent had affected all serious persons. The old- fashioned Fourth, of July boastings had ceased to be heard in the land. All agreed that somehow republican forms of government had not fulfilled their promise as guarantees of the popular welfare, but were showing themselves impotent to prevent the recrudes- cence in the New World of all the Old World's evils, especially those of class and . caste, which it had been supposed could never exist in the atmosphere of a republic. It was recognised on all sides that the old order was changing for the worse, and that the republic and all it had been thought to stand for was in danger. It was the universal cry that something must be done to check the ruinous tendency. Reform was the word in everybody's mouth, and the rallying cry, whether in sincerity or pretence, of every party. But indeed, Julian, I need waste no time describing this state of affairs to you, for you were a witness of it till 1887." " It was all quite as you describe it, the industrial and political warfare and turmoil, the general sense that the country was going wrong, and the universal cry for some sort of reform. But, as I said before, the agita- EQUALITY 135 tion, while alarming enough, was too con- fused and purposeless to seem revolutionary. All agreed thiit something ailed the country, but no two atjreed what it was or how to cure it." " Just so," said the doctor. " Our his- torians divide the entire revolutionary epoch — from the close of the war, or the beginning of the 'seventies, to the establishment of the present order early in the twentieth century ^into two peiiodsj the incoherent and the rational. The first of these is the period of which we have been talking, and with which Storiot deals in the paragraphs I have read — the period with which you were, for the most part, contemporary. As we have seen, and you know better than we can, it was a time of terror and tumult, of confused and purposeless agitation, and a Babel of contra- dictory clamour. The people were blindly kicking in the dark against the pricks of capitalism, without any clear idea of what they were kicking against. " The two great divisions of the toilers, the wage-earners and the farmers, were equally far from seeing clear and whole the nature of the situation and the forces of which they were the victims. The wage- earners' only idea was that by organising the artisans and manual workers their wages could be forced up and maintained indefi- nitely. They seem to have had absolutely no more knowledge than children of the effect of the profit system always and inevitably to keep the consuming power of the community indefinitely below its producing povrer, and thus to maintain a constant state of more or less aggravated glut in the goods and labour markets, and that nothing could possibly pre- vent the constant presence of these conditions so long as the profit system was tolerated, or their effect finally to reduce the wage- earner to the snbsi.-tence point or below, as profits tended downward. Until the wage- eaincrs saw this, and no longer wasted their strength in hopeless or trivial strikes against individual capitalists, which could not pos- sibly affect the general result, and united to overthrow the profit system, the Revolution must wait, and the capitalists had no reason to disturb themselves. " As for the farmers, as they were not wage-earners, they took no interest in the plans of the latter, which aimed merely to benefit the wage-earning class, but devoted themselves to equally futile schemes for their class, in which, for the same reason that they were merely class remedies, the wage-earners took no interest. Their aim was to obtain aid from the Government to improve their r condition as petty capitalists oppressed by [ the greater capitalists who controlled the f traffic and markets of the country ; as if any conceivable device, so long as private capi- talism should be tolerat-ed, would prevent its natural evolution, which was the crushing I of the smaller capitalist by the larger. " Their main idea seems to have been that their troubles as farmers were chiefly if not wholly to be accounted for by certain vicious acts of financial legislation, the effect of which thoy held had been to make money scarce and dear. What they demanded as tlie sufficient cure of the existing evils was the repeal of the vicious legislation and a larger issue of currency. This tliey believed would be especially beneficial to the farming class by reducing the interest on their debts and raising the price of their product. " Undoubtedly the currency and the coin- age and the governmental financial system in general had been shamelessly abused by the capitalists to corner the wealth of the nation in their hands, but their misuse of this part of the economic machinery had been no woree than their manipulation of the other portions of the sj-stem. Their trickery with the cur- rency had only helped them to monopolise the wealth of the people a little faster than they would have done it, had they depended for their enrichment on what were called the legitimate operations of rent, interest, and profits. While a part of their general policy of economic subjugation of the people, the manipulation of the currency had not been essential to that policy, which would have succeeded just" as certainly had it been left out. The capitalists were under no necessity to juggle with the coinage had they been content to make a little more leisurely pro- cess of devouring the lands and effects of the people. For that result no particular form of currency system was necessary, and no conceivable monetary system would have pre- vented it. Gold, silver, paper, dear money, cheap money, hard money, bad money, good money — every form of token from cowries to guineas — had all answered equally well in different times and countries for the designs of the capitalist, the details of the game being only slightly modified according to the conditions. " To have convinced himself of the folly of ascribing the economic distress to which his class as well as the people at large had been reduced, to an act of Congress relating to the currency, the American farmer need only have looked abroad to foreign lands, where he would have seen that the agricul- tural class everywhere was plunged in a misery greater than his own, and that, tco, without the slightost regard to the nature of the various monetary systems in use. " Was it indeed a new or strange pheno- menon in human affairs that the agriculturista were going to the wall, that the American farmer should seek to account for the fact bj' some new and peculiarly American policy? On the contrary, this had been the fate of the agricultural class in all agos, and what was now threatening the American tiller of the soil was nothing other than the doom which had befallen his kind in every previous generation and in every part of the world. 186 EQUALITY Manifestly, then, he should seek the explana- tion not in any particular or local conjunc- tion or circumstances, but in some general and always operative cause. This general cause, operative in all lands and times and among all races, he would pi'esently see when he should interrogate history, was the irresistible tendency by which the capitalist class in the evolution of any society through rent, in- terest, and profits absorbs to itself the whole wealth of the country, and thus reduces the masses of the people to economic, social, and political subjection, the most abject class of all being invariably the tillers of the soil. For a time the American population, includ- ing the farmers, had been enabled, thanks to the vast bounty of a virgin and empty con- tinent, to evade the operation of this uni- versal law, but the common fate was now about to overtake them, and nothing would avail to avert it save the overthrow of the system of private capitalism, of which it always had been and always must be the necessary effect. " Time would fail even to mention the in- numerable reform nostrums offered for the cure of the nation by smaller bodies of re- formers. They ranged from the theory of the prohibitionists that the chief cause of the economic distress — from which the teetotal farmers of the West were the worst sufferers — was the use of intoxicants, to that of the party which agreed that the nation was being divinely chastised because there was no formal recognition of the Trinity in the con- stitution. Of course, these were extravagant persons, but even those who recognised the concentration of wealth as the cause of the whole trouble quite failed to see that this concentration was itself the natural evolu- tion of private capitalism, and that it was not possible to prevent it or any of its con- sequences unless and uJitil private capitalism itself should be put an end to. "As might bo expected, efforts at resis- tance so ill-calculated as these demonstrations of the wage-earners and farmers, not to speak of the host of petty sects of so-called re- formers during the first phase of the Revolu- tion, were ineffectual. The great labour organisations which had sprung up shortly after the war as soon as the wage-earners felt the necessit}'^ of banding themselves to resist the yoke of concentrated capital, after twenty-five years of fighting, had demon- strated their utt-er inability to maintain, much less to improve, the condition of the working- man. During this period ten or fifteen thou- sand recorded strikes and lock-outs had taken place, but the net result of the industrial civil war, protracted through so long a period, had been to prove to the dullest of Vv^orking-men the hopelessness of securing any considerable amelioration of their lot by class action or organisation, or indeed of even maintaining it against encroachments. After all this unexampled suffering and fighting. the wage-earners found themselves worse off than ever. Nor had the farmers, the other great division of the insurgent masses, been any more successful in resisting the money power. Their leagues, although controlling votes by the million, had proved even more impotent if possible than the wage-earners' organisations to help their members. Even where they had been apparently successful and succeeded in capturing the political con- trol of states, they found the money power still able by a thousand indirect influences to baulk their efforts and turn their seem- ing victories into apples of Sodom, which became ashes in the hands of those who would pluck them. " Of the vast, anxious, and anguished volume of public discussion as to what should be done, what after twenty-five years had been the practical outcome ? Absolutely nothing. If here and there petty reforms had been introduced, on the whole the power of the evils against which those reforms were directed had vastly increased. If the power of the plutocracy in 1873 had been as the little finger of a man, in 1895 it was thicker than his loins. Certainly, so far as superficial and material indications went, it looked as if the battle had been going thus far steadily, swiftly, and hopelessiy against the people, and that the American capitalists who ex- pended their millions in buying titles of nobility for their children were wiser in their generation than the children of light and better judges of the future. " Nevei-theless, no conclusion could possibly have been more mistaken. During these decades of apparently unvaried failure and disaster the revolutionary movement for the complete overthrow of private capitalism had made a progress which to rational minds should have presaged its complete triumph in the near future." " Where had the progress been? " I said; " I don't see any." " In the development among the masses of the people of the necessary revolutionary temper," replied the doctor; "in the pre- paration of the popular mind by the only process that could have prepared it, to accept the programme of a radical reorganisation of the economic system from the ground up. A great revolution, you must rem.ember, which is to profoundly change a form of society, must accumulate a tremendous moral force, an overwhelming weight of justifica- tion, so to speak, behind it before it can start. The processes by which and the period during which this accumulation of impulse is effected are by no means so spec- tacular as the events of the subsequent period when the revolutionary movement, having obtained an irresistible momentum, sweeps . away like straws the obstacles that so long held it back only to swell its force and volume at last. But to the student the period of preparation is the more truly EQUALITY 187 interesting and criticU field of study. It was absolutely necessary that the American people, before they would seriously think of undertaking so tremendous a reformation as was implied in the substitution of public for private capitalism, should be fully convinced not by argument only, but by abundant bitter experience and convincing object lessons, that no remedy for the evils of the time less com- I'lete or radical would suffice. They must become convinced by numerous experiments that private capitalism had evolved to a point where it was impossible to amend it l>eforo they would list«n to the proposition to end it. This painful but necessary expe- rience the people were gaining during th*e earlier decades of the struggle. In this way the innumerable defeats, disappointments, and fiascocs which met their every effort at lurbing and reforming the money power during the 'seventies, 'eighties, and early 'nineties, contributed far more than as many victories would have done to the magnitude and completeness of the final triumph of the people. It was indeed necessary that all these things should come to pass to make the Revolution possible. It was r.eccssary that the system of private and class tyranny called private capitalism should fill up the measure of its iniquities and reveal ail it was capable of, as the irreconcilable enemy of democracy, the foe of life and liberty and human happi- ness, in order to ensure that degree of momen- tum to the coming uprising against it which was necessary to guarantee its complete and final overthrow. Revolutions which start too soon stop too soon, and the welfare of the race demanded that this revolution should not cease, nor pause, until the last vestige of the system by which men usurped power over the lives and liberties of their fellows through economic means was destroyed. Therefore not one outrage, not one act of oppression, not one exhibition of conscienceless rapacitj', not one prostitution of power on the part of Executive, Legislature, or judiciary, not one tear of patriotic shame over the degrada- tion of the national name, not one blow of the policeman's bludgeon, not a single bullet or bayonet thrust of the soldiery, could have been spared. Nothing but just this discipline of failure, disappointment, and defeat on the part of the earlier reformers could have educated the people to the necessity of attacking the sj'stem of private capitalism in its existence instead of merely in its particu- lar manifestations. " We reckon the beginning of the second part of the revolutionary movement, to which we give the name of the coherent or rational phase, from the time when there became apparent a clear conception, on the part of at least a considerable body of the people, of the true nature of the issue as one between the rights of man and the principle of irresponsible power embodied in private capi- talism, and the realisation that its outcome, if the people were to triumph, must be the establishment of a wholly new economic system which should be based upon the public control in the public Intercast of the system of production and distribution hitherto left to private management." "At about what date," I asked, "do you consider that the revolutionary movement began to pass from the incoherent into the logical phase ? " "Of course," replied the docto*-, " it was not the case of an immediate outright change of character, but only of the beginning of a new spirit and intelligence. The confusion and incoherence and short-sightedness of the first period long overlapped the time when the infusion of a niors rational spirit and ade- quat-e ideal began to appear, but from about the beginning of the 'nineties we date the first appearance of an intelligent purpose in the revolutionary movement and the begin- ning of its development from a mere formless revolt against intolerable conditions into a logical and self-conscious evolution toward the order of to-day." "It seems I barely missed it." "Yes," replied the doctor, "if you had been able to keep awake only a year or two longer you would not have been so wholly surprised by our industrial system, and espe- ciallj' by the economic equality for and by which it cxist.'^, for within a couple of years after your supposed demise the possibility that such a social order might be the outcome of the existing crisis was being discussed from one end of America to the other. " Of course," the doctor went on, " the idea of an integrated economic system co- ordinating the efforts of all for the common welfare, which is the basis of the modern state, is as old as philosophy. As a theory it dates back to Plato at least, and nobody knows how much further, for it is a con- ception of the most natural and obvious order. Not, however, until popular govern- ment had been made possible by the diffusion of intelligence was the world ripe for the realisation of such a form of society. Until that time the idea, like the soul wailing for a fit incarnation, must remain v/ithout social embodiment. h'elfish rulers thought of the masses only as instruments for their own aggrandisement, and if they had interested themselves in a more exact organisation of industry it would only have been with a view of making that organisation the means of a more complete tyranny. Not till the masses themselves became competent to rule was a serious agitation possible or desirable for an economic organisation on a co-operative basis. With the first stirrings of the demo- cratic spirit in Europe had come the begin- ning of earnest discussion as to the feasibility of such a social order. Already, by the middle of the century, this agitation m the Old World had become, to discerning eye.s, one of the signs of the times, but as j'et 1S8 EQUALITY America, if we except the brief and abortive social experiments in the 'forties, had re- mained wholly unresponsive to the European movement. " I need not repeat that the reason, of course, was the fact that the economic con- ditions in America had been more satisfactory to the masses than ever before, or anywhere else in the world. The individualistic method of making a living, every man for himself, had answered the purpose on the whole so well that the people did not care to discuss other methods. The powerful motive neces- sary to rouse the sluggish and habit-bound minds of the masses and interest them in a new and revolutionary set of ideas was lack- ing. Even durmg the early stage of the revolutionary period it had been found im- possible to obtain any hearing for the notions of a new economic order which were already agitating Europe. It was not till the close of the 'eighties that the total and ridiculous failure of twenty years of desperate efforts to reform the abuses of private capitalism had prepared the American people to give serious attention to the idea of dispensing with the capitalist altogether by a public organisation of indus- try to be administered like other common affairs in the common interest. " The two great points of the revolutionary programme — the principle of economic equality and a nationalised industrial system as its means and pledge — the American people were peculiarly adapted to understand and appreciate. The lawyers had made a Con- stitution of the United States, but the true American constitution — the one written on the people's hearts — had always remained the immortal Declaration, with its assertion of the inalienable equality of all men. As to the nationalisation of industry, while it in- volved a set of consequences which would completely transform society, the principle on which the proposition was based, and to which it appealed for justification, was not new to Americans in any sense, but, on the contrary, was merely a logical development of the idea of popular sell-government, on which the American system was founded. The application of this principle to the regulation of the economic administration was indeed a use of it which was historically new, but it v/as one so absolutely and ob- viously implied in the content of the idea that, as soon as it was proposed, it was impossible that any sincere democrat should not be astonished that so plain and common- sense a corollary of popular government had waited so long for recognition. The apostles of a collective administration of the economic system in the common interest had in Europe a twofold task : first, to teach the general doctrine of the absolute right of the people to govern, and then to show the economic application of that right. To Americans, however, it was only necessary to point out an obvious, although hitherto overlooked, application of a principle already fully accepted as an axiom. " The acceptance of the new ideal did not imply merely a change in specific pro- grammes, but a total facing about of the revolutionary movement. It had thus far been an attempt to resist the new economic conditions being imposed by the capitalists, by bringing back the former economic con- ditions through the restoration of free com- petition as it had existed before the war. This was an effort of necessity hopeless, seeing that the economic changes which had taken place were merely the necessary evolution of any system of private capital- ism, and could not be successfully resisted while the system was retained. "'Face about!' was the new word of command. ' Fight forward, not backward ! March with the course of economic evolu- tion, not against it. The competitive sys- tem can never be restored, neither is it worthy of restoration, having been at best an immoral, wasteful, brutal scramble for existence. New issues demand new answers. It is in vain to pit the moribund system of competition against the young giant of private monopoly : it must rather be opposed by the greater giant of public monopoly. The consolidation of business in private interests must be m,et with greater con- solidation in the public interest, the trust and the syndicate, with the city, state, and nation, capitalism with nationalism. The capitalists have destroyed the competitive system. Do not try to restore it, but rather thank them for the work, if not the motive, and set about, not to rebuild the old village of hovels, but to rear on the cleared place the temple humanity so long has waited for.' " By the light of the new teaching the people began to recognise that the strait place into which the republic had come was but the narrow and frowning portal of a future of universal welfare and happiness such as only the Hebrew prophets had colours strong enough to paint. " By the new philosophy the issue which had "arisen between the people and the plutocracy was seen not to be a strange and unaccountable or deplorable event, but a necessary phase in the evolution of a democratic society in passing from a lower to an incomparably* higher plane, an issue therefore to be welcomed, not shunned, to be forced, not evaded, seeing that its out- come in the existing state of human en- lightenment and world-wide democratic sentiment could not be doubtful. By the road by which every republic had toiled upward from the barren lowlands of early hardship and poverty, just at the point where the steepness of the hill had been overcome and a prospect opened of pleasant uplands of wealth and prosperity, a sphinx EQUALITY 1S9 had ever stood, propounding the riddle, ' How shall a stat« combine the preservation of democratic equality with the increase of wealth 7 ' Simple indeed had been the answer, for it was only needful that the t people should so order their system of I economy that wealth should be equally shared as it increased, in order that, how- ever great the increase, it should in no way interfere with the equalities of the people ; for the great justice of equality is the well of political life everlasting for peoples, whereof if a nation drink it may live for ever. Nevertheless, no republic before had been able to answer the riddle, and there- fore their bones whitened tte hilltop, and not one had ever survived to enter on the pleasant land in view. But the time had now come in the evolution of human intelli- gence when the riddle so often asked and never answered was to be answered aright, the sphinx made an end of, and the road freed for ever for all the nations. " It was this note of perfect assurance, of confident and boundless hope, which dis- tinguished the new propaganda, and was the more commanding and uplifting from its cojitrast with the black pessimism on the one side of the capitalist party, and the petty aims, class interests, short vision, and timid spirit of the reformers who had hitherto opposed them. " With a doctrine to preach of so com- pelling force and beauty, promising such good things to men in so great want of them, it might seem that it would require but a brief time to rally the v.hole people to its support. And so it would doubtless have been if the machinery of public informa- tion and direction had been in the hands of the reformers or in any hands that wore impartial, instead of being, as it was, almost wholly in those of the capitalists. In pre- vious periods the newspapers had not repre- sented large investments of capital, having been quite crude affairs. For this very reason, however, they were more likely to represent the popular feeling. In the later part of the nineteenth century a great newspaper with large circulation necessarily required a vast investment of capital, and consequently the important newspapers of the country were owned by capitalists, and of course carried on in the owners' interests. Except when the capitalists iii control chanced to be men of high principle, the great papers were therefore upon the side of the existing order of things, and against the revolutionary movement. These papers monopolised the facilities of gathering and disseminating public intelligence, and thereby exercised a cepsorship, almost as k effective as that prevailing at the same time t in Russia or Turkey, over the greater part f of the information which reached the people. " Not only the press but the religious instruction of the people was under the control of the capiUilists. The churches were the pensioners of the rich and well- to-do tenth of the people, and abjectly dependent on them for the means of carry- ing on and extending their work. The universities and institutions of higher learning were in like manner harnessed to the plutocratic chariot by golden chains. Like the churches, they were dependent for support and prosperity upon the benefac- tions of the rich, and to offend them would have been suicidal. Moreover, the rich and well-to-do tenth of the population was the only class which could afford to send children to institutions of the secondary education, and they naturally preferred schools teaching a doctrine comfortable to the possessing class. "If the reformers had been put in pos- sion of press, puipit, and university, which the capitalists controlled, whereby to set home their doctrine to the heart and mind and conscience of the nation, they would have converted and carried tho country in a month. " Feeling how quickly the day would be theirs if they could but reach "^the people, it was natural that they should chafe bitterly at the delay, confronted as they were by the spectacle of humanity daily crucified al'resh and enduring an illimitable anguish which they knew was needless. Who indeed would not have been impatient in their place, and cried as they did, 'How long, Lord, how long ' ? To men so situated, each day's post- ponement of the great deliverance might well have seemed like a century. Involved as they were in the din and dust of innumerable petty combats, it was as difficult for them as for soldiers in the midst of a battle to obtain an idea of the general course of the conflict and the operation of the forces which would determine its issue. To us, however, as we look back, the rapidity of the process by which during the 'nineties the American people were won over to the re- volutionary programme seems almost miracu- lous, while as to the ultimate result there was, of course, at no time the slightest ground of question. " From about the beginning of the second phase of the revolutionary movement, the literature of the times begins to rellect in the most extraordinary manner a wholly new spirit of radical protest against the injustices of the social order. Not only in the serious journals and books of public discussion, but in fiction and in hflles-lettre^, the subject of social reform becomes prominent and almost commanding. The figures that have come down to us of the amazing circulation of some of the books devoted to the advocacy of a radical social reorganisation are almost enough in themselves to explain the revolu- tion. The anti-slavery movement had one 140 EQUALITY Uncle Tom's Cabin ; the anti- capitalist move- ment had many. " A particularly significant fact was the extraordinary unanimity and enthusiasm with which the purely agricultural communi- ties of the Far West welcomed the new gospel of a new and equal economic system. In the past, governments had always been prepared for revolutionary agitation among the proletarian wage-earners of the cities, and had always counted on the stolid con- servatism of the agricultural class for the force to keep the inflammable artisans down. But in this revolution it was the agricul- turists who were in the van. This fact alone should have sufliciently foreshadowed the swift course and certain issue of the struggle. At the beginning of the battle the capitalists had lost their reserves. "At about the beginning of the 'nineties the revolutionary movement first prominently appears in the political field. For twenty years after the close of the civil war the surviving animosities between North and South mainly determined party lines, and this fact, together with the lack of agree- ment on a definite policy, had hitherto pre- vented the forces of industrial discontent from making any striking political demon- stration. But toward the close of the 'eighties the diminished bitterness of feeling between North and South left the people free to align themselves on the new issue, which had been steadily looming up ever since the war, as the irrepressible conflict of the near future — ■ the struggle to the death between democracy and plutocracy, between the rights of man and the tyranny of capital in irresponsible hands. "Although the idea of the public conduct of economic enterprises by public agencies had never previously attracted attention or favour in America, yet already in 1890, almost as soon as it began to be talked about, political parties favouring its application to important branches of business had polled heavy votes. In 1892 a party, organised in nearly every State in the Union, cast a mil- lion votes in favour of nationalising at least the railroads, telegraphs, banking system, and other monopolised businesses. Two years later the same party showed large gains, and in 1896 its platform was substan- tially adopted by one of the great historic parties of the country, and the nation divided nearly equally on the issue. " The terror which this demonstration of the strength of the party of social discontent caused among the possessing class seems at this distance rather remarkable, seeing that its demands, while attacking many important capitalist abuses, did not as yet directly assail the principle of the private control of capital as the root of the whole social evil. No doubt, what alarmed the capitalists even more than the specific propositions of the social insurgents were the signs of a settled popular exasperation against them and all their works, which indicated that what was now called for was but the beginning of what would be demanded later. The anti- slavery party had not begun with demand- ing the abolition of slavery, but merely its lim.itatioa, The slave-holders were not, how- ever, deceived as to the significance of the new political portent, and the capitalists would have been less wise in their generation than their predecessors had they not seen in the political situation the beginning of a con- frontation of the people and the capitalists — the masses and the classes, as the expres- sion of the day was — which threatened an economic and eocial revolution in the near future." " It seems to me," I said, " that by this stage of the revolutionary movement, Ameri- can capitalists capable of a dispassionate view of the situation ought to have seen the necessity of making concessions if they wei-e to preserve any part of their advan- tages." " If they had," replied the doctor, " they would have been the first beneficiaries of a tyranny who, in presence of a rising flood of revolution, ever realised its force or thought of making concessions until it was hopelessly too late. You see, tyrants are always materialists, while the forces behind great revolutions are moral. That is why the tyrants never foresee their fate till it is too late to avert it." " We ought to be in our chairs pretty soon," said' Edith. "I don't want Julian to miss the opening scene." "There are a few m.inutcs yet," said the doctor, "and seeing that I have been rather unintentionally led into giving this sort of outline sketch of the course of the Revolu- tion. I want to say a word about the extra- ordinary access of popular enthusiasm which made a short story of its later stages, especially as it is that period with which the play deals that we are to attend. "There had beon many, you must know, Julian, who, while admitting that a system of CO operation must eventually take the place of private capitalism in America and everywhere, had expected that the process would be a slow and gradual one, extending over several decades, perhaps half a cen- tury, or even more. Probably that was the moi-e general opinion. But those who held it failed to take account of the popular en- thusiasm which would certainly take posses- sion of tlie movement and drive it irresistibly forward from the moment that the prospect of its success became fairly clear to the masses. Undoubtedly, when the plan of a nationalised industrial system, and an equal sharing of re.'^ults, .with its promise of the abolition of poverty, and the reign of uni- versal comfort, was first presented to the people, the very greatness of the salvation it offered operated to hinder its acceptance. It E(^UALITV 141 seenired too good to be true. With difficulty the masses, sodden in mi.scry and inured to hopelessness, had been able to believe that in heaven there would be no poor, buk that it was passible here and now in this everyday America to establish such an earthly para- dise was too much to believe. " r>ut gradually, as the revolutionary propaganda diffused a knowledge of the clear and unquestionable grounds on which this great assurance restctl, and as the growing majorities of the revolutionary party con- vinced the most doubtful that the hour of its triumph was at hand, the hope of the multitude grew into confidence, and confi- dence flamed into a resistless enthusiasm. By the very magnitude of the promise which at first appalled them they were now trans- ported. An impassioned eagerness seized npon them to enter into the delectable land, BO that they found every day's, every hour's delay intolerable. The young said, 'Lot us make haste, and go in to the promised land while we are young, that we may know what living is ; ' and the old said, ' Let us go in ere we die, that we may close our eyes in peace, knowing that it will be well with our children after us.' The leaders and pioneers of the Revolution, after having for so many years exhorted and appealed to a people for the most part indifferent or incredulous, now found themselves caught up and borne on- ward by a mighty wave of enthusiasm which it was impossible for them to check, and difficult for them to guide, had not the way been so plain. "Then, to cap the climax, as if the popu- lar mind were not already in a sufficiently exalted frame, came the 'Great Revival,' touching this enthusiasm with religious emotion." " We used to have what were called re- vivals of religion in my day," I said, "some- times quite extensive ones. Was this of the Bame nature? " "Scarcely," replied the doctor. "The Great Revival was a tide of enthusiasm for the social, not the personal, salvation, and for the establishment in brotherly love of the kingdom of God on earth which Christ bade men hope and work for. It was the general awakening of the people of America in the closing years of the last century to the profoundly ethical and truly religious character and claims of the movement for an industrial system which should guarantee the economic equality of all the people. " Nothing, surely, could be more self- evident than the strictly Christian inspira- tion of the idea of this guarantee. It con- templated nothing less than a literal fulfil- ment, on a complete social scale, of Christ's inculf-ation that all should feel the same solicitude and make the same effort for the welfare of others as for their own. The first effect of such a solicitude must needs be to prompt effort to bring about an equal material provision for all, as the primary condition of welfare. One would certainly think that a nominally Christian people having eom.e familiarity with the New 'J'estament would have needed no one to tell them these things, but that they would have recognised on its first statement that the programme of the revolutionists was simply a paraphrase of the golden rule expressed in economic and political terms. One would have said that whatever other members of the community might do, the Christian be- lievers would at once have flocked to the support of such a movement with their whole heart, soul, mind, and might. That they were so slow to do so must be ascribed to the wrong teaching and non-teaching of a class of persons whose express duty, above all other persons and classes, was to prompt them to that action — namely, the Christian clergy. "For many ages — almost, indeed, from the beginning of the Christian era — the churches had turned their backs on Christ's ideal of a kingdom of God to be realised on earth by the adoption of the law of mutual help- fulness and fraternal love. Giving up the regeneration of human society in this world as a hopeless undertaking, the clergy, in the name of the Author of the Lord's Prayer, had taught the people not to expect God'a will to be done on earth. Directly reversing the attitude of Christ toward society as an evil and perverse order of things needing to be made over, they had made themselves the bulv/arks and defences of existing social and political institutions, and exerted their whole influence to discourage popular aspira- tions for a more just and equal order. In the Old World they had been the championi and apologists of power and privilege and vested rights against every movement for freedom and equality. In resisting the up- ward strivings of their people the kings and emperors had always found the clergy more useful servants than the soldiers and the police. In the New World, when royalty, in the act of abdication, had passed the sceptre behind its back to capitalism, the ecclesias- tical bodies had transferred their allegiance to the money power, and as formerly they had preached the divine right of kings to rule their fellow-men, now preached the divine right of ruling and using others which inhered in the possession of accumulated or inherited wealth, and the duty of the people to submit without murmuring to the exclu- sive appropriation of all good things by the rich. "The historical attitude of the churches as the champions and apologists of power and privilege in every controversy with the rights of man and the idea of equality had always been a prodigious scandal, and in every revolutionary crisis had not failed to cost them great losses in public respect and popu- lar following. Inasmuch as the now impend- 14£ EQUALITY ing crisis between the full assertion of human equality and the existence of private capital- ism was incomparably the most radical issue of the sort that had ever risen, Che attitude of the churches was likely to have a critical effect upon their future. Should they make the mistake of placing themselves upon the unpopular side in this tremendous contro- versy, it would be for them a colossal, if not a fatal, mistake — one that would threaten the loss of their last hold as organisations on the hearts and minds of the people. On the other hand, had the leaders of the churches been able to discern the full significance of the great turning of the world's heart toward Christ's ideal of human society, which marked the closing of the nineteenth century, they might have hoped, by taking the right side, to rehabilitate the churches in the esteem and respect of the world, as, after all, despite so many mistakes, the faithful representatives of the spirit and doctrine of Christianity. Some there were, indeed — yes, many, in the aggregate — among the clergy who did see this, and sought desperately to show it to their fellows ; but, blinded by clouds of vain traditions, and bent before the tremendous pressure of capitalism, the ecclesiastical bodies in general did not, with these noble exceptions, awake to their great opportunity until it had passed by. Other bodies of learned men there were which equally failed to discern the irresistible force and divine sanction of the tidal wave of humane enthusiasm that was sweeping over the earth, and to see that it was destined to leave behind it a transformed and regene- rated world. But the failure of these others, however lamentable, to discern the nature of the crisis was not like the failure of the Christian clergy, for it was their express calling and business to preach and teach the application to human relations of the golden rule of ecjual treatment for all, which the Revolution came to establish, and to watch for the coming of this very kingdom of brotherly love, whose advent they met with anathemas. "The reformers of that time were mos*^ bitter against the clergy for their double treason to humanity and Christianity, in opposing instead of supporting the Revolu- tion ; but time has tempered harsh judgments of every sort, and it is rather with deep pity than v/ith indignati«n that we look back on these unfortunate men, who will ever retain the tragic distinction of having missed the grandest opportunity of leadership ever offered to men. Why add reproach to the burden of such a failure as that? "While the influence of ecclesiastical authority in America, on account of the growth of intelligence, had at this time greatly shrunken from former proportions, the generally unfavourable or negative atti- tude of the "churches toward the programme of equality had told heavily to hold back the popular support which the movement might reasonably have expected from professedly Christian people. It was, however, only a question of time, and the educating influence of public discussion, when the people would become acquainted for themselves with the merits of the subject. The Great Revival followed, when, in the course of this pro- cess of education, the masses of the nation reached the conviction that the revolution against which the clergy had warned them as unchristian was, in fact, the most essen- tially and intensely Christian movement that had ever appealed to men since Christ called His disciples, and as such impera- tively commanded the strongest support of every believer or admirer of Christ's doctrine. "The American people appear to have been, on the whole, the most intelligently religious of the large populations of the world — as religion vpas understood at that time — and the most generally infiuenced by the senti- ment of Christianity.' When the people came to recognise that the ideal of a world of equal welfare, which had been represented to them by the clergy as a dangerous delusion, was no other than the very dream of Christ ; when they realised that the hope. which led on the advocates of the new order was no baleful ignis fatuus, as the churches had taught, but nothing less nor other than the Star of Bethlehem, it is not to be wondered at that the impulse which the revolutionary movempat received should have been over- whelming. From that time on it assumes more and more the character of a crusade, the first of the many so-called crusades of his- tory which had a valid and adequate title to that name, and right to make the Cross its emblem. As the conviction took hold on the always religious masses that the plan of an equalised human welfare was nothing less than the divine design, and that in seeking their own highest happiness by its adoption they were also fulfilling Gods jjurpose for the race, the spirit of the Revolution became a religious enthusiasm. As to the preaching of Peter the Hermit, so now once more the masses responded to the preaching of the re- formers with the exultant cry, 'God wills it ! ' and none doubted any longer that the vision would come to pass. So it was that the Revolution, which had begun its course under the ban of the churches, was carried to its consummation upon a wave of moral and religious emotion." "But what became of the churches and the clergy when the people found out what blind guides they had been?" T asked. "No doubt," replied the doctor, "it must ■have seemed to them something like the judg- ment-day when their flocks challenged them with open Bibles, and demanded why they had hid the Gospel all these ages and falsi- fied the oracles of God which they had claimed to interpret. But so far as appears, EQUALITY 143 the joyous exultation of the people over the great discovery that liberty, equality, and fraternity were nothinj; less than the prac- tical meaning and content of Christ's reli- gion, seems to have left no room in their heart for bitterness toward any class. The world had received a crowning demonstration that was to remain conclusive to all time of the untrustworthiness of ecclesiastical guid- ance; that was all. The clergy who had failed in their office of guides had not done so, it is needless to say, because they were not as good as other men, but on account of the hoi^eless falsity of their position as the economic dependants of those they assumed to lead. As soon as the Great Revival had fairly begun they threw themselves into it as eagerly as any of the people, but not now with any pretensions of leadership. They followed the people whom they might have led. "From the Great Revival we date the be- ginning of the era of modern religion — a reli- gion which has dispensed with the rites and ceremonies, creeds and dogmas, and banished from this life fear and concern for the meaner self ; a religion of life and conduct dominated by an 'impassioned sense of the solidarity of himianity and of man with God; the religion of a race that knows itself divine and fears no evil, either now or hereafter." "I need not ask," I said, "as to any sub- sequent stages of the Revolution, for I fancy its consummation did not tarry long after the Great Revival." " That was indeed the culminating impulse," replied the doctor; "but while it lej^ a momentum to the movement for the imme- diate realisation of an equality of welfare which no obstacle could have resisted, it did its work, in fact, not so much by breaking down opposition as by melting it away. The capitalists, as you who were one of them scarcely need to be told, were not persons of a more depraved disposition than other people, but merely, like other classes, what the economic system had made them. Hav- ing like passions and sensibilities with other men, they were as incapable of standing out against the contagion of the enthusiasm of humanity, the passion of pity, and the com- pulsion of humane tenderness which the Great Revival had aroused, as any other class of people. From the time that the sense of the people came generally to recognise that the fight of the existing order U> prevent the new order was nothing more nor less than a controversy between the almighty dollar and the Almighty God, there was sub- stantially but one side to it. A bitter minority of the capitalist party and its sup- porters seems indeed to have continued its outcry against the Revolution till the end, but it was of little importance. The greater and all the better part of the capitalists joined with the people in completing the installation of the new order which all bad now come to see was to redound to the benefit of all alike." "And there was no war?" "War? Of course not. Who was there to fight on the other side? It is odd how many of the early reformers seem to have antici- pated a war before private capitalism could be overthrown. They were constantly refer- ring to the Civil War in the United"^ States and to the French Revolution as precedents which justified their fear, but really those were not analogous cases. In the controversy over slavery, two geographical sections, mutually impenetrable to e;u.h other's ideas, were opposed, and war was inevitable. In the French Revolution there would have been no bloodshed in France but for the interfer- ence of the neighbouring nations with their brutal kings and brutish popidations. The peaceful outcome of the great Revolution in America was, moreover, potently favoured by the lack as yet of deep class distinctions, and consequently of rooted class hatred. Their growth was indeed beginning to proceed at an alarming rate, but the process had not yet gone far or deep, and was ineffectual to resist the glow of social enthusiasm which, in the culminating years of the Revolution, blended the whole nation in a common faith and pur- pose. "You must not fail to bear in mind that the great Revolution, as it came in Amei-ica, was not a revolution at all in the political sense in which all former revolutions in the popular interest had been. In all these in- stances the people, after making up their minds what they wanted changed, had to overthrow the Government and seize the power in order to change it. But in a demo- cratic State like America the Revolution was practically done when the people had made up their minds that it was for their interest. There was no one to dispute their power and right to do their will when once resolved on it. The Revolution as regards America and in other countries, in proportion as their ■governments were popular, was more like the trial of a case in court than a revolution of the traditional blood-and-thunder sort. The court was the people, and the only way that either contestant could win was by convinc- ing the court, from which there was no appeal. "So far as the stage properties of the traditional revolution were concerned, plots, conspiracies, powder-smoke, blood and thunder, any one of the ten thousand squab- bles in the mediaeval Italian and Flemish towns, furnishes far more material to the romancer or playwright than did the great Revolution in America." "Am I to understand that there were actu- ally no violent doings in connection with this great transformation ? " "There were a great number of minor dis- turbances and collisions, involving in the aggregate a considerable amount of violence 144f EQUALITY and bloodshed, but there was nothing like the war with pitched lines which the early reformers looked for. Many a petty dispute, causeless and resultless, between nameless kings in the past, too small for historical mention, has cost far more violence and bloodshed than, so far as America is con- cerned, did the greatest of all revolutions." "And did the European nations fare as well when they passed through the same crisis ? " "The conditions of none of them were so favourable to peaceful social revolution as were those of the United States, and the experience of most was longer and harder, but it may be said that in the case of none of the European peoples were the direful apprehensions of blood and slaughter justified which the earlier reformers seem to have entertained. All over the world the Revo- lution was, as to its main factors, a triumph of moral forces." CHAPTER XXXVI THE.WEE-GOING IN THE TWENTIETH CENTrRT "I AM sorry to interrupt," said Edith, "but it wants only five minutes of the time for the rising of the curtain, and Julian ought not to miss the first scene." On this notice we at once betook ourselves to the music room, where four easy-chairs had been cosily arranged for our convenience. While the doctor was adjusting the telephone and electroscope connections for our use, I expatiated to my companion upon the con- trasts betv/een the conditions of theatre- going in the nineteenth and in the twentieth centuries — contrasts which the happy denizens of the present world can scarcely, by any effort of imagination, appreciate. "In my time only the residents of the larger cities, or visitors to them, were ever able to enjoy good plays or operas, pleasures which were by necessary consequence forbidden and un- known to the mass of the people. But even those who as to locality might enjoy these recreations were obliged, in order to do so, to undergo and endure such prodigious fuss, crowding, expense, and general derangement of comfort that for the most part they pre- ferred to stay at home. As for enjoying the great artists of other countries, one had to travel to do so or wait for the artists to travel. To-day, I need not tell you how it is : you stay at home and send your eyes and ears abroad to see and hear for you. Wherever the electric connection is carried — and there need be no human habitation, how- ever remote from social centres, be it the mid-air balloon or mid-ocean float of the weather watchman, or the ice-crusted hut of the polar observer, where it may not reach — it is possible in slippers and dressing-gown for the dweller to take his choice of the public entertainments given that day in every city of the earth. And remember, too, although you cannot understand it, who have never seen bad acting or heard bad singing, how this ability of one troupe to play or sing to the whole earth at once has operated to take away the occupation of mediocre artists, seeing that everybody, being able to see and hear the best, will hear them and see them only." " There goes the bell for the curtain," said the doctor, and in another moment I had for- gotten all else in the scen^ upon the stage. I need not sketch the action of a play so familiar as "The Knights of the Golden Rule." It is enough for this purpose _ to recall the fact that the costumes and setting were of the last days of the nineteenth century, little different from what they had been when I looked last on the world of that day. There were a few anachronisms and inaccuracies in the setting which the theatri- cal administration has since done me the honour to solicit my assistance in correcting, bul^the best tribute to the general correct- ness of the scheme was its effect to make me from the first moment oblivious of my actual surroundings. I found myself in presence of a group of living contemporaries of my former life, men and women dressed as I had seen them dressed, talking and acting, as till within a few weeks I had always seen people talk and act; persons, in short, of like passions, prejudices, and manners to my own, even to minute mannerisms ingeniously introduced by the playwright, which even more than the larger "traits of resemblance affected my imagination. The only feeling that hindered my full acceptance of the idea that I was attending a nineteenth-century show, was a puzzled wonder why I should seem to know so much more than the actors appeared to about the outcome of the social revolution they were alluding to as in pro- gress. When the curtain fell on the first scene, and I looked about and saw Edith, her mother, and father sitting about me in the music room, the realisation of my actual situation came with a shock that earlier in my twentieth-century career would have set my brain swimming. But I was too firm on my new feet now for anything of that sort, and for the rest of the play the con- stant sense of the tremendous experience EQUALITY 146 which had nuide nie at once a contemporary the drama, and everything else, till the globe of two ages so widely apart, contributed an of the colour clock, turning from bottle-green indescribable intensity to my enjoyment of to white, warned us of midnight, when the the play. ladies left the doctor and myself to our own After the curtain fell, we sat talking of devices. CHAPITER XXXVII THE TRANSITION PERIOD "It is pretty late," I said, "but I want very much to ask you just a few more ques- tions about the Revolution. All that I have learned leaves me quite as puzzled as ever to imagine any set of practical measures by which the substitution of public for private capitalism could have been effect€d without a prodigious shock. We had in our day engineers clever enough to move great build- ings from one site to another, keeping them meanwhile so steady and upright as not to interfere with the dwellers in them, or to cause an interruption of the domestic opera- tions. A problem something like this, but a millionfold greater and more complex, must have been raised when it came to changing the entire basis of production and distribu- tion, and revolutionising the conditions of everybody's employment and maintenance, and doing it, moreover, without meanv>-hile seriously interrupting the ongaing of the various parts of the economic machinery on which the livelihood of the people from day to day depended. I should be greatly in- terested to have you tell me something about how this was done." " Your question," replied the doctor, " re- flects a feeling which had no little influence during the revolutionary period to prolong the toleration extended by the people to private capitalism despite the mounting in- dignation against its enormities. A com- plete change of economic systems seemed to them, as it does to you, such a colossal and complicated undertaking that even many who ardently desired the new order, and fully believed in its feasibility when once estab- lished, shrank back from what they appre- hended would be the vast confusion and diflSculty of the transition process. Of course, the capitalists, and champions of things as they were, made the most of this feeling, and apparently bothered the re- formers not a little by calling on them to name the specific measures by which they -would, if they had the power, proceed to substitute for the existing system a nationalised plan of industry managed in the equal interest of all. ^' One school of revolutionists declined to formulate or suggest any definite programme whatever for the consummating or construc- tive stage of the Revolution. They said that JEQUALITY the crisis would suggest the method for dealing with it, and it would be foolish and fanciful to discuss the emergency before it arose. But a good general makes plans which provide in advance for all the main eventuali- ties of his campaign. His plans are, of course, subject to radical modifications or complete abandonment, according to circum- stances, but a provisional plan he ought to have. The reply of this school of revolui tionists was not, therefore, satisfactory, and. so long as no better one could be made, a timid and conservative community inclined to look askance at the revolutionary pro- gramme. "Realising the need of something* mora positive as a plan of campaign, various schools of reformers suggested more or less definite schemes. One there was which argued that the trades unions might develop strength enough to control the great trades, and put their own elected officers in place of the capitalists, thus organising a sort of federation of trades unions. This, if prac- ticable, would have brought in a system of group capitalism as divisive and antisocial, in the large sense, as private capitalism itself, and far more dangerous to civil order. This idea was lat-er heard little of, as it became evident that the possible growth and func- tions of trades unionism were very limited. " There was another school which held that the solution was to be found by the establish- ment of great numbers of voluntary colonies, organised on co-operative principles, which by their success would lead to the formation of more and yet more, and that, finally, when most of the population had joined such groups they would simply coalesce and form one. Many noble and enthusiastic souls devoted themselves to this line of effort, and the numerous colonies that were organised in the United States during the revolutionary period were a striking indication of the general turning of men's hearts toward a better social order. Otherwise such experi- ments led, and could lead, to nothing. Economically weak, held together by a senti- mental motive, generally composed of eccen- tric though worthy persons, and surrounded by a hostile environment which had the whole use and advantage of the social and economic machinery, it was scarcely possible that such 146 EQUALITY enterprises should come to anything practical unless under exceptional leadership or circum- stances. " There was another school still which held that the better order was to evolve gradually out of the old as the result of an indefinite series of humane legislation, con- sisting of factory acts, short-hour laws, pen- sions for the old; improved tenement houses, abolition of slums, and I don't know how many other poultices for particular evils resultant from the system of private capi- talism. These good people argued that when at some indefinitely remote time all the evil consequences of capitalism had been abolished, it would be time enough, and then comparatively easy, to abolish capitalism itself — that is to say, after all the rotten fruit of the evil tree had been picked by hand, one at a time, off the branches, it would be time enough to cut down the tree. Of course, an obvious objection to this plan was, that so long as the tree remained standing, the evil fruit would be likely to grow as fast as it was plucked. The various reform measures, and many others urged by these reformers, were wholly humane and excellent, and only to be criticised when put forward as a suffi- cient method of overthrowing capitalism. They did not even tend toward such a result, but were quite as likely to help capitalism to obtain a longer lease of life by making it a little less abhorrent. There was really a time after the revolutionary movement had gained considerable headway when judicious leaders felt considerable apprehension lest it might be diverted from its real aim, and its force wasted in this programme of piecemeal reforms. "But you have asked me what was the plan of operation by which the revolutionists, when they finally came into power, actually overthrew private capitalism. It was really as pretty an illustration of the military manoeuvre that used to be called flanking as the history of war contains. Now, a flanking operation is one by which an army, instead of attacking its antagonist directly in front, moves round one of his flanks in such a way that without striking a blow it forces the enemy to leave his position. That is just the strategy the revolutionists used in the final issue with capitalism. " The capitalists had taken for granted that they were to be directly assaulted by whole- sale forcible seizure and confiscation of their properties. Not a bit of it. Although in the end, of course, collective ownership was wholly substituted for the private ownership of capital, yet that was not done until after the whole system of private capitalism had broken down and fallen to pieces, and not as a means of throwing it down. To recur to the military illustration, the revolutionary army did not directly attack the fortress of capitftlism at all, but so manoeuvred as to make it untenable, and to compel its evacuation. "Of course, you will understand that this policy was not suggested by any consideration for the rights of the capitalists. Long before this time the people had been educated to see in private capitalism the source and sum of all villainies, convicting mankind of deadly sin every day that it was tolerated. The policy of indirect attack pursued by the revolutionists was wholly dictated by the interest of the people at large, which de- manded that serious derangements of the economic system should be, as far as possible, avoided during the transition from the old order to the new. " And now, dropping figures of speech, let me tell you plainly what was done— that is, so far as I remember the story. I have made no special study of the period since my college days, and very likely when you come to read the histories you will find that I have made many mistakes as to the details of the process. I am just trying to give you a general idea of the main course of events, to the best of my remembrance. I have already explained that the first st^p in the pro- gramme of political action adopted by the opponents of private capitalism had been to induce the people to municipalise and nationalise various quasi-public services, such as waterworks, lighting plants, ferries, local railroads, the telegraph and telephone sys- tems, the general railroad system, the coal- mines and petroleum production, and the traffic in intoxicating liquors. These bemg ^ class of enterprises partly or wholly non- competitive and monopolistic in character, the assumption of public control over them did not directly attack the system of production and distribution in general, and even the timid STia conservative viewed the step wita little apprehension. This whole class of natural or legal monopolies might indeed have been taken under public manage- ment without logically involving an as- sault on the system of private capi- talism as a whole. Not only was this so, but even if this entire class of businesses was made public and rim at cost, the cheapening in the cost of living to the commimity thus effected would presently be swallowed up by reductions of wages and prices, resulting from the remorseless operation of the com- petitive profit system. " It was therefore chiefly as a means to an ulterior end that the opponents of capi- talism favoured the public operation of these businesses. One part of that ulterior end was to prove to the people the superior sim- plicity, efficiency, and humanity of public over private management of economic under- '^akings. But the principal use which this partial process of nationalisation served was to prepare a body of public employees suffi- ciently large to furnish a nucleus of con- sumers when the Government should under- take the establishment of a general system oi production and distribution on a non-profi< EQUALITY 147 basis. The employees of the nationalised lailroads alone nunibored nearly a million, ;uid with their dependent women and children represented some 4,000,000 people. The era- iilo3'ees in the coal-mines, iron-mines, and other businesses taken charge of by the Government as subsidiary to the railroads, together with the telegraph and telephone workers, also in the public service, made some hundreds of thousands more persons with their dependents. Previous to lliese addi- tions there had been in the regular civil ser- vice of the Government nearly 250,000 per- sons, and the army and navy made some 50,000 more. These groups with their depen- dents amounted probably to a million more persons, who, added to the railroad, mining, telegraph, and other employees, made an aggregate of something like 5,000,000 persons dependent on the national employment. Besides these were the various bodies of State and municipal employees in all grades, from the Governors of States down to the street-cleaners. The Public Service Stores "The first step of the revolutionary party when it came to power, with the mandate of a popular majority to bring in the new order, was to establish in all important centres public service stores, where public employees could procure at cost all provisions of necessity or luxury previously bought at f)rivate stores. The idea was the less startling or not being wholly new. It had been the cus- tom of various governments to provide for certain of the needs of their soldiers and sailors by establishing service stores at which everything was of absolutely guaranteed quality, and sold strictly at cost. The arti- cles thus furnished were proverbial for their cheapness and quality compared with any- thing that could be bought elsewhere, and the soldiei-'s privilege of obtaining such goods was envied by the civilian, left to the tender mercies of the adulterating and profit-gorging retailer. The public stores now set up by the Government were, however, on a scale of completeness quite beyond any previous undertakings, intended as they were to supply all the consumption of a population large enough for a small-sized nation. "At first the goods in these stores were of necessity bought by the Government of the private capitalists, producers, or importers. On these the public employee saved all the middlemen's and retailers' profits, getting tiioaj at perhaps half or two- thirds of what they must have paid at private stores, with the guarantee, .'noreover, of a careful Govern- ment inspection as to quality. But these sub- stantial advantages were but a foretaste of the prosperity he enjoyed Myben the Govern- ment added the function of production to that of distribution, and proceeded as rapidly as fossible to manufacture products, instead of aying them of capitalists. "To this end great food and cotton farms wore established in all sections of the country and innumerable shops and factories started, so that presently the Government had in pub- lic employ not only the original 5,000,000, but as many more — farmers, artisans, and labourers of all sorts. These, of course, also had the right to be provided for at the public stores, and the system had to be extended correspondingly. The buyers in the public stores now saved not only the profits of the middleman and the retailer, but those as well of the manufacturer, the producer, and the importer. "(Still further, not only did the public stores furnish the public employees with every kind of goods for consumption, but the Govermnent likewise organised all sorts of needful services, such as cooking, laundry- work, housework agencies, &c., for the ex- clusive benefit of public employees— all, of course, conducted absolutely at cost. The result was that the public employee was able to be supplied at home or in restaurants with food prepared by the best skill out of the best material and in the greatest possible variety, and more cheaply than he had ever been able to provide himself with even the coarsest provisions." "How did the Government acquire the lands and manufacturing plants it needed?" I inquired. "Did it buy them of the owners, or as to thei plants, did it build them? " "It could, of course, have bought them, or in the case of the plants have erected them without affecting the success of the pro- gramme, but that was generally neediest. Aa to land, the farmers by millions were only too glad to turn over their farms to the Government and accept employment on them, with the security of livelihood which that implied for them and theirs. The Govern- ment, moreover, took for cultivation all un- occupied lands that were convenient for the purpose, remitting the taxes for compensa- tion. "It was much the same with the factories and shops which the national system called for. They were standing idle by thousands in all parts of the country, in the midst of starving populations of the unemployed. When these plants were suited to the Govern- ment requirements they were taken possession of, put in operation, and the former workers provided with employment. In most in- stances former superintendents and foremen, as well as the main body of operatives, were glad to keep their old places, with the nation as employer. The owners of such plants, if I remember rightly, received some allowance, equal to a very low rate of interest, for the use of their property until such time as the complete establishment of the new order should make the equal maintenance of all citizens the subject of a national guarantee. That this was to bo the speedy and certain outcome of the course of events was now do 148 EQUALITY longer doubted, and pending that result the owners of idle plants were only too glad to get anything at all for their use. "The manufacturing plants were not the only form of idle capital which the Govern- ment on similar terms made use of. Consi- derable quantities of foreign imports were required to supply the public stores; and to avoid the payment of profits to capitalists on these, the Government took possession of idle shipping, building what, it further needed, and went into foreign trade, exporting pro- ducts of the public industries, and bringing home in exchange the needed foreign goods. Fishing fleets flying the national flag also brought home the harvest of the seas. These peace fleets soon far outnumbered the war- ships which up to that time exclusively had borne the national commission. On these fleets the sailor was no more a slave. How Money Lost its Value "And now consider the effect of another feature of the public store system, namely, the disuse of money in its operations. Ordi- nary money was not received in the public stores, but a sort of scrip cancelled on use, and good for a limited time only. The public employee had the right of exchanging the money he received for wages, at par, intothia scrip. While the Government issued it only to public employees, it was accepted at the public stores from any who presented it, the Government being only careful that the total amount did not exceed the wages exchanged into such scrip by the public employees. It thhs became a currency which commanded three, four, and five hundred per cent, pre- mium over money which would only buy the high-priced and adulterated goods for sale in the remaining stores of the capitalists. The gain of the premium went, of course, to the public employees. Gold, which had been worshipped by the capitalists as the supreme and eternal type of money, was no more receivable than silver, copper, or paper cur- rency at the public stores, and people who desired the best goods were fortunate to find a public employee foolish enough to accept three or four dollars in gold for one in scrip. "The effect to make money a drug in the market, of this sweeping reduction in its purchasing utility, was greatly increased by its practically complete disuse by the large and ever-enlarging proportion of the people in the public service. The demand for money was still further lessened by the fact that nobody wanted to borrow it now for use in extending business, seeing that the field of enterprise open to private capital was shrinking every hour, and evidently destined presently to disappear. Neither did any one desire money to hoard it, for it was i^Ore evident every day that it wc^ala soon necome worthless. I have spok---n of the public-store icnp commanding: ocveral hundred per cent. prernium over money, but that was in the earlier stages of the transition period. To- ward the last the premium mounted to ever- dizzier altitudes, until the value of money quite disappeared, it being literally good for nothing as money. "If you would imagine the complete col- lapse of the entire monetary and financial sys- tem with all its standards and influences upon human relations and conditions, you have only to fancy ' what the effect would have been upon the same interests and relations in your day rf positive and un- questioned information had become general that the world was to be destroyed within a few weeks or months, or at longest within a year. In this case indeed the world was not to be destroyed, but to be rejuvenated and to enter on an incomparably higher and happier and more vigorous phase of evolution; but the effect on the monetary system and all dependent on it was quite the same as if the world were to come to an end, for the new world would have no use for money, nor recognise any human rights or relations as measured by it." "It strikes me," said I, "that as money grew valueless the public taxes must have failed to bring in anything to support the Government." "Taxes," replied the doctor, "were an inci- dent of private capitalism, and were to pass away with it. Their use had been to give the Government a means of commanding labour under the money system. In propor- tion as the nation collectively organised and directly applied the whole labour of the people, as the public welfare required, it had no need and could make no use of taxes any more than of money in other respects. Taxation went to pieces in the culminating stage of the Revolution, in measure as the organisation of the capital and labour of the people for public purposes put an end to its functions." How THE REST OF THE PEOPLE CAME IN "It seems to me that about this time, if not before, the mass of the people outside of the puijlic service must have begun to insist pretty loudly upon being let in to share these good things." ^^ "Of course they did," replied the doctor; "and of course that was just what they were expected to do, and what it had been ar- ranged they should do, as soon as the nationalised system of production and dis- tribution was in full running Order." The previously existing body of public employeea had merely been utilised as furnishing a con- venient nucleus of consumers to start with,, Tviiich. Iiiight bd supplied without deranging meantime any more than necessary the out- side wage or commodity markets. As soon as the system was in working order the Government undertook to receive into the EQUALITY 149 public service not merely selected bodies of workers, but all who applied. From tliat time the industrial army received its recruits by tens and fifties of thousands a day, till within a brief time the people as a whole were in the public service. "Of course, everybody who had an occu- pation or trade was kept right on at it at the place where he had formerly been em- ployed, and the labour exchanges, already in full use, managed the rest. Later on, when all was going smoothly, would be time enough for the changings and shiftings about that would seem desirable." "Naturally," I said, "under the operation of the public employment programme, the working people must have been those first brought into the system, and the rich and well-to-do must probably have i-emained out- side longest, and come in, so to speak, all in a bntch when they did." "Evidently so," replied the doctor. "Of course, the original nucleus of public em- ployees, for whom the pubHc stores were first opened, were all working people, and so were the bodies of people successively taken into the public service, as farmers, artisans, and tradesmen of all sorts. There was nothing to prevent a capitalist from joining the ser- vice, but he could do so only as a worker on a par with the others. He could buy in the public stores only to the extent of his pay as a worker. His other' money would not be good there. There were many men and women of the rich who, in the humane enthusiasm of the closing days of the Revo- lution, abandoned their lands and mills to the Government, and volunteered in the pub- lic service at anything that could be given them to do ; but on the whole, as might be expected, the idea of going to work for a living on an economic equality with their former servants was not one that the rich welcomed, and they did not come to it till they had to." "And were they, then, at last enlisted by force? " I asked. "By force!" exclaimed the doctor; "dear me, no. There was no sort of constraint brought to bear upon them any more than upon anybody else, save that created by the growing difficulty and final impossibility of hiring persons lor private employment, or obtaining the necessities of life except from the public stores with the new scrip. Before the Government entered on the policy of re- ceiving into the public service every one who applied, the unemployed had thronged upon the capitalists, seeking to be hired. But inamediatcly afterward the rich began to find it impossible to obtain men and women to serve them in field, factory, or kitchen. They could offer no inducements in the depreciated money which alone they possessed that were enough to counterbalance the advantages of the public service. Everybody knew also that there w .s no future for the wealthy class. and nothing to be gained through their favour. "Moreover, as you may imagine, there was already a strong popular feeling of contempt for those who would abase themselves to serve others for hire when they might serve the nation of which they were citizens ; and, as you may well imagine, this growing senti- ment made the position of a private servant or employee of any sort intolerable. And not only did the unfortunate capitalists find it impossible to induce people to cook for them, wash for them, to black their boots, to sweep their rooms, or drive their coaches, but they were put to straits to obtain in the dwindling private markets, where alone their money was good, the bare necessities of life, and presently found even that impossible. For a while, it would seem, they struggled against a relentless fate, sullenly supporting life on crus.ts in the corners of their lone- some palaces ; but at last, of course, they all had to follow their former servants into the new nation, for there was no way of living save by connection with the national economic organisation. Thus strikingly was illus- trated, in the final exit of the capitalists from the human stage, how absolute was and always had been the dependence of capital upon the labour it despised and tyrannised over." "And do I understand that there was no compulsion upon anybody to join the public service '! " "None but what was. inherent in the cir- cumstances I have named," replied the doc- tor. "The new order had no need or use for unwilling recruits. In fact, it needed no one, but every one needed it. If any one did not wish to enter the public service, and could live outside of it without stealing or begging, he was quite welcome to. The books say that the woods were full of self- exiled hermits for a while, but one by one they tired of it and came into the new social house. Some isolated communities, however, remained outside for years." "The mill seems, indeed, to have been calculated to grind to an exceeding fineness all opposition to the new order," I observed, "and yet it must have had its own difficul- ties, too, in the natural refractoriness of the materials it had to make grist of. Take, for example, my own class of the idle rich, the men and women whose only business had been the pursuit of pleasure. What useful work could have been g/)t out of such people as we were, however well disposed we might have become to render service ? Where could we have been fitted into any sort of industrial service without being more hindrance than help?" "The problem might have been serious if the idle rich of whom you speak had been a very large proportion of the population ; but, of course, though very much in evidence, they were in numbers insignificant compared loO with the juass of useful woikcrs. So far as they were educated persons— and quite gener- ally they had some smattering of knowledge — there Vas an ample demand for their ser- vices as teachers. Of course, they were not trained teachers, or capable of good pedago- gical work ; but directly after the Revolution, when the children and youth of the former poor were tiirned back by millions from the field and factories to the' schools, and when the adults also of the working classes pas- sionately demanded some degree of education to correspond with the improved conditions of life they had entered on, there was un- limited call for the services as instructors of everybody who was able to teach anything, even one' of the primary branches— spelling, writing, geography, or arithmetic in the rudi- ments. The women of the former wealthy class, being mostly well educated, found in this task of teaching the children of the masses, the new heirs of the world, an em- ployment in which I fancy thej- must ha,ve tasted more real happijiess in the feeling of being useful to their kind than all their former frivolous existences could have given them. Few, indeed, were there of any class who did not prove to have some physical or mental quality by which they mig'ht with pleasure to themselves be serviceable to their kind." '■. What wa? done with the Vitioas and Criminal "''There was another class of my contem- ))oraries," I said, " vrhich I fancy must have given the new order more trouble to make anything out of than the rich, and those were the vicious and criminal idle. The rich were at least intelligent and fairly well behaved, and knew enough to adapt them- selves to a new state of things, and make the best of the inevitable, but these others must have been harder to deal with. There was a great floating population of vagabond criminals, loafers, and vicious of every class, male and female, in my day, as doubtless you well know. Admit that our vicious form iif society was responsible for them; never- theless, there they were, for the new society lo deal with. To all intents and purposes they were dehumanised, and as dangerous as wild beasts. They were barely kept in some sort of restraint by an army of police and the weapons of criminal law, and con- stituted a pern)anent menace to law and order. At times of unusual agitation, and especially at all revolutionary crises, they were wont to muster in alarming force, and become aggressive. At the crisis you are describing they must doubtless have made themselves extremely turbulent. What did the new order do with them? Its just and humane propositions would scarcely appeal to the members of the criminal class. They were not reasonable beings; they preferred to live by lawless violence rather than by EQUALITY orderly industry on terms however just. Surely the new nation must have found this class of citizens a very tough morsel for its digestion." " Not nearly so tough," replied the doctor, "as the former society had found it. In the first place, the former society, being itself based on injustice, was wholly without moral prestige or ethical authority 'in dealing with the criminal and lawless classes. tiociety itself stood condemned in their presence for the injustice which had been the provocation and excuse of their revolt. This was a fact which made the whole machinery of so-called criminal justice in your day a mockery. Every intelligent man knew in his heart that the criminal and vicious were, for the mosi part, what they were on account of neglect and injustice, and an environment of de- praving influences for which a defective social order was responsible, and that if righteous- ness were done, society, instead of judging them, ought to stand with them in the dock before a higher justice, and take upon itself the heavier condemnation. This the crimi- nals themselves felt in the bottom of their hearts, and that feeling forbade them to respect the law they feared. They felt that the society which bade them reform was itself in yet greater need of reformation. The new o'rder, on the other hand, held forth to the outcasts hands purged of guilt toward them. Admitting the wrong that they had suffered in the past, it invited them to a new- life under new conditions, offering them, on just and equal terms, their share in th*" social heritage. Do you suppose that thei-e ever was a human heart so base that it did not at least know the difference between jus- tice and injustice, and to some extent respond to it? "A surprising number of the cases you speak of, who had been given up as failures by your civilisation, while in fact they had been proofs of its failure, responded with alacrity to the first fair opportunity to be decent men and women which had ever come to them. There was, of course, a large residuum too hopelessly perverted, too con- genitally deformed, to have the power of leading a good life, however assisted. To- ward these the new society, strong in the perfect justice of its attitude, proceeded with merciful firmness. The new society was not to tolerate, as the old had done, a criminal class in its midst any more than a destitute class. The old society never had any moral right to forbid stealing or to punish robbers, for the whole economic system was based on the appropriation, by force or fraud, on the part of a few, of the' earth and its resources, and the fruit of the toil of the poor. Still less had it any right to forbid beggary or to punish violence, seeing that the economic sys- tem which it maintained and defended neces- sarily operated to make beggars and to pro- voke' violence. But the new order, guarantee- EQUALITY 161 ing an equality of plenty to all, left no plea for the thief and robber, no excuse for the beggar, no provocation for the violent. By preferring their evil courses to the fair and honourable life offered them, such persons would henceforth pronounce sentence on themselves as unfit for human intercourse. With a good conscience, therefore, the new society proceeded to deal with all vicious and criminal persons as morally insane, and to segregate them in places of confinement, there to spend their lives — not, indeed, under punishment, or enduring hardships of any sort beyond enough labour for self-support, but wholly secluded from the world — and absolutely prevented from continuing their kind. By this means the race, in the first generation after the Revolution, was able to leave behind itself for ever a load of in- herited depravity and base congenital in- stincts, and so ever since it has gone on from generation to generation, purging itself of its uncleanness. " The Coloured Race and the New Order. "In my day," I said, "a peculiar com- plication of the social problem in America was the existence in the Southern States of many millions of recently- freed negro slaves, but partially as yet equal to the responsi- bility of freedom. I should be interested to know just how the new order adapted itself to the condition of the coloured race in the South." " It proved," replied the doctor, " the prompt solution of a problem which other-, wise might have continued indefinitely to plague the American people. The population of recent slaves was in need of some sort of. industrial regimen, at once firm and benevo- lent, administered under conditions which' should meanwhile tend to educate, refine, and elevate its members. These conditions the new order met with ideal perfection. The centralised discipline of the national indus- trial army, depending for its enforcement not so much on force as on the inability of any one to subsist outside of the system of which it was a part, furnished just the sort of control — gentle, yet resistless — which was needed by the recently-emancipated bonds- man. On the other hand, the universal education and the refinements and amenities of life which came with the economic wel- fare presently brought to all alike by the new order, meant for the coloured race even more as a civilising agent than it did to the white population, which relatively had been further advanced." " There would have been i\i some parts," I remarked, " a strong prejudice on the part of the white population against any system which compelled a closer commingling of the races." " So we read, but there was absolutely nothing in the new system to offend that prejudice. It related entirely to economic organisation, and had nothing more to do then than it has now with social relations. Even for industrial purposes the new system involved no more commingling of races than the old had done. It was perfectly consis- tent with any degree of race separation in industry which the most bigoted local preju- dices might demand." How THE Transition might have been Hastened. " There is just one point about the transi- tion stage that I want to go back to," I said. "In the actual case, as you have stated it, it seems that the capitalists held on to their capital and continued to conduct business as long as they could induce any- body to work for them or buy of them. I suppose that was human nature— capitalist human nature anyway; but it was also con- venient for the Revolution, for this course gave time to get the new economic system perfected as a framework before the strain of providing for the whole people was thrown on it. But it was just possible, I suppose, that the capitalists might have taken a dif- ferent course. For example, suppose, from the moment the popular majority gave control of the national Government to the revolu- tionists, the capitalists had with one accord abandoned their functions and refused to do business of any kind. This, mind j-ou, would have been before the Government had any time to organise even the beginnings of the new system. That would have made a more difficult problem to deal with, would it not? " "I do not think that the problem would have been more difficult," replied the doctor, " though it would have called for more prompt and summary action. The Govern- ment would have haa two things to do, and to do at once : on the one hand, to take up and carry on the machinery of productive industry abandoned by the capitalists, and simultaneously to provide maintenance for the people pending the time v^hen the new product should become available. I suppose that as to the matter of providing for the maintenance of the people the action taken would be like that usually followed by a government when by flood, famine, siege, or other sudden emergency the livelihood of a whole community has been endangered. No doubt the first step v.'ould have been to requisition for public use all stores of grain, clothing, r.hocs, and commodities in general throughout the country, excepting, of course, reasonable stocks in strictly private use. There was always in any civilised country a supply ahead of these necessities sufficient for several months or a year, which would be many times more than would be needful to bridge over the gap between the stoppage of the wheels of production under private management and their getting into full motion under public administration. Ordci on the public stores for food and clothin 152 EQUALITY would have been issued to all citizens making application and enrolling themselves in the public industrial service. Meanwhile the Government would have immediately resumed the operation of the various productive enter- prises abandoned by the capitalists. Every- body previously employed in them would simply have kept on, and employment would have been as rapidly as possible provided for those who had formerly been without it. The new product, as fast as made, would be turned into the public stores, and the pro- cess would, in fact, have been just the same as that I have described, save that it would have gone through in m.uch quicker time. If it did not go quite so smoothly on account of the necessary haste, on the other hand it would have been done with sooner, and at most we can hardly imagine that the incon- venience and hardship to the people would have been greater than resulted from even a mild specimen of the business crises which your contemporaries thought necessary every seven years, and which toward the last o'f the old order became perpetual. How Capitalist Coercion of Employees was MET. '•' Your question, however," continued the 'Joctor, " reminds me of another point which I had forgotten to mention— namely, the pro- Visional methods of furnishing employment tor the unemployed before the organisation of the complete national system of industry. What your contemporaries were pleased to call ' the problem of the unemployed ' — namely, the necessary effect of the profit system to create and perpetuate an unem- ployed class — had been increasing in magni- tude from the beginning of the revolutionary period, and toward the close of the century the involuntary idlers were numbered by mil- lions. While this state of things on the one hand furnished a powerful argument for the revolutionary propaganda by the object lesson it furnished of the incompetence of private capitalism to solve the problem of national maintenance, on the other hand, in propor- tion as employment became hard to get, the hold of the employers over the actual and would-be employees became strengthened. Those who had employment and feared to lose it, and those who had it not but hoped to get it, became, through fear and hope, very puppets in the hands of the employing class and cast their votes at their bidding. Election after election was carried in this way by the capitalists through their power to compel the working-man to vote the capitalist ticket against his own convictions, from the fear of losing or hope of obtaining an oppor- tunity to work. "This was the situation which made it necessary previous to the conquest of the General Government by the revolutionary party, in order that the* working-men should be made free to vote for their own deliver- ance, that at least a provisional system of employment should be established 'whereby the wage-earner might be ensured a livelihood when unable to find a private employer. " In different States of the Union, as the revolutionary party came into power, slightly different methods were adopted for meeting this emergency. The crucle and wasteful makeshift of indiscriminate employment on public works, which had been previously adopted by governments in dealing with simi- lar emergencies, would not stand the criticism of the new economic science. A more intelli- gent method was necessary and easily found. The usual plan though varied in different localities, was for the State to guarantee to every citizen who applied therefor the means of maintenance, to be paid for in his or her labour, and to be taken in the form of com- modities and lodgings, these commodities and lodgings being themselves produced and maintained by the sum of the labour of those, past and present, who shared them. The necessary imported commodities or raw materials were obtained by the sale of the excess of product at market rates, a special market being also found in the consumption of the State prisons, asylums, &c. This system, whereby the State enabled the other- wise unemployed mutually to maintain them- selves by merely furnishing the machinery and superintendence, came very largely into use to meet the emergencies of the transition period, and played an important part in pre- paring the people for the new order, of which it was in an imperfect way a sort of antici- pation. In some of these State establish- ments for the unemployed the circle of industries was remarkably complete, and the whole product of their labour above expenses being shared among the workers, they enjoyed far better fare than when in private employment, together with a sense of security then 'impossible. The employer's power to control his workmen by the threat of dis- charge was broken from the time these co- operative systems began to be established, and when, later, the national industrial organisa- tion was ready to absorb them, they merely melted into it." How ABOUT THE WOMEN T "How about the women?" I said. ^'Do I understand that, from the first organisation ■ of the industrial public service on a com- plete scale, the women were expected, like the men, if physically able, to take their places in the ranks? " " Where women were sufficiently employed already in hou^work in their own families," replied the doctor, " they were recognised as rendering public service until the new co- operative housekeeping was sufficiently sys- tematised to do away with the necessity of separate kitchens and other elaborate domestic machinery for each family. Otherwise, ex- cept as occasions for exemption existed, EQUALITY 159 women took their [ilace fruin the beginning of the new order as units in the industrial state on the same basis witli mon. "If the Revolution had come a hundred years before, when as yet women had no other vocation but housework, the change in customs might have been a striking one, but already at that time women had made them- selves a place in the industrial and business world, and by the time the Revolution came it was rather exceptional w'hen unmarried women not of the rich and idle class did not have some regular occupation outside the home. In recognising women as equally eligible and liable to public service v/ith men, the new order simply confirmed to the women workers the independence they had already won." "But how about the married women? " "Of course," replied the doctor, "there would be consideraole periods during which married women and mothers would naturally be wholly exempt from the performance of any public duty. But except at such times there seems to be nothing in the nature of the sexual relation constituting a reason why a married woman should lead a more secluded and useless life than a man. In this matter of the place of women under the new order, you must understand that it was the women themselves, rather than the men, who insisted that they must share in full the duties as well as the privileges of citizenship. The men would not have demanded it of them. In this respect you must remember that during its whole course the Revolution had been contemporary with a movement for the enlargement and greater freedom of women's lives, and their equalisation as to rights and duties with men. The women, married as well as unmarried, had become thoroughly tired of being effaced, and were in full revolt against the headship of man. If the Revolution had not guaran- teed the equality and comradeship with him which she was fast conquering under the old erder, it could never have counted on her support." " But how .ibout the care of children, of the home, &c. ? " " Certainly the mothers could have been trusted to see that nothing interfered with the welfare of their children, nor was there anything in the public service expected of them that need do so. There is nothing in the maternal function which establishes such a relation between mother and child as need permanently interfere with her performance of social and public duties, nor indeed does it appear that it was allowed to do so in your day by women of sufficient economic means to command needed assistance. The fact that women of the masses so often found it necessary to abandon an independent exis- tence, and cease to live any more for them- selves the moment they had children, was flimply a mark of the imperfection of your social arrangements, and not a natural or moral necessity. So, too, as to what you call caring for a home. As soon as co-opera- tive methods were applied to housekeeping, and its various departments were systema- tised as branches of the public service, the former housewife had perforce to find another vocation in order to keep herself busy." The Lodgings Question. "Talking about housework," I said, "how did they manage about houses ? There were, of course, not enough good lodgings to go round, now that all were economic equals. How was it settled who should have the good houses and who the poor?" "As I have said," replied the doctor, "the controlling idea of the revolutionary policy at the climax of the Revolution was not to complicate the general readjustment by mak- ing any changes at that time not necessary to its main purpose. For the vast number of the badly housed the building of better houses was one of the first and greatest tasks of the nation. As to the habitable houses, they were all assessed at a graduated rental according to size and desirability, which their former occupants, if they desired to keep them, were expected to pay out of their new incomes as citizens. For a modest house the rent was nominal ; but for a great house — one of the palaces of the millionaires, for instance — the rent was so large that no individual could pay it, and indeed no indi- vidual without a host of servants would be able to occupy it, and these, of course, he had no means of employing. Such buildings had to be used as hotels, apartment houses, or for public purposes. It would appear that nobody chanj^ed dwellings except th i very poor, whose houses were unfit for habitation, and the very rich, who could make no use of their former habitations under the changed condition of things." Whex Ecoxomic Equality was fully Realised "There is one point not quite clear in my mind," I said, "and that is just when the guarantee of equal maintenance for all citizens went into effect." "I suppose," replied the doctor, "that it must have been when, after the final collapse of what was left of private capitalism, the nation assumed the responsibility of provid- ing for all the people. Until then the orga- nisation of the public service had been on the wage basis, which indeed was the only p'racticable way of initiating the plan of uni- versal public employment while yet the mass of business was conducted by the capitalists, and the new and rising system had to be accommodated at so many points to the exist- ing order of things. The tremendous rate at which the membership of the national indus- trial army was growing from week to week 154 EQUALITY during the transition period would have made it impossible to find any basis of equal dis- tribution that would hold good for a fort- night. The policy of the Government had, however, been to prepare the workers for equal sharing by establishing, as far as pos- sible, a level wage for all kinds of public employees. This it was possible to do, owing to the cheapening of all sorts of commodities by the abolition of profits, without reducing any one's income. "For example, suppose one workman had received two dollars a day, and another a dollar and a half. Owing to the cheapening of goods in the public stores, these wages presently purchased twice as much as before. But, instead of permitting the virtual increase of wages to operate by multiplication, so aa to double the original discrepancy between the pay of the two, it was applied by equal additions to the account of each. While both alike were better off than before, the dis- proportion in their welfare was thus reduced. Nor could the one previously more highly paid object to this as unfair, because the in- creased value of his wages was not the result of his own efforts, but of the new public organisation, from which he could only ask an equal benefit with all others. Thus by the time the nation was ready for equal sharing, a substantially level wage, secured by level- ling up, not levelling down, had already been established. As to the high salaries of special employees, out of all proportion to workmen's wages, which obtained under private capital- ism, they were ruthlessly cut down in the public service from the inception of the revo lutionary policy. "But of course the most radical innovation in establishing universal economic equality was not the establishment of a level wage M between the workers, but the admission of the entire population, both of workers and of those unable to work or past the working age, to an equal share in the national product. During the transition period the Government had of necessity proceeded like a capitalist in respect to recognising and d'eal- ing only with effective workers. It took no more cognisance of the existence of the women, except when workers, or the chil- dren, or the old, or the infirm, crippled, or sick, or other dependants on the workers, than the capitalists had been in the habit of doing. But when the nation gathered into its hands the entire economic resources of the country it proceeded to administer them on the principle — proclaimed, indeed, in the great Detlaration, but practically mocked by the former republic — that all human beings have an equal right to liberty, life, and happiness, and that governments rightfully exist only for the purpose of making good that right — a principle of which the first practical consequence ought to be the guarantee to all on equal terms of the economic basis. Thenceforth all adult per- sons who could render any useful service to the nation were required to do so if they desired to enjoy the benefits of the economic system ; but all who acknowledged the new order, whether they were able or unable to render any economic service, reoeived an equal share with all others of the national product, and such provision was made for the needs of children as should absolutely safeguard their interests from the neglect or caprice of selfish parents. "Of course, the immediate effect must have been that the active workers received a less income than when they had been the only sharers ; but if they had been good men Jind distributed their wages as they ought among those dependent on them, they still had for their personal use quite as much as before. Only those wage-earners who had formerly had none dependent on them or had neglected them suffered any curtailment of income, and they deserved to. But indeed there was no question of curtailment for more than a very short time for any ; for, as soon els the now completed economic organisation was fairly in motion, everybody was kept too busy devising ways to expend his or her own allowance to give any thought to that of others. Of course, the equalising of the economic maintenance of all on the basis of citizenship put a final end to the employment of private servants, even if the practice had lasted till then, which is doubtful; for if any one desired a personal servant he must henceforth pay him as much as he could receive in the public service, which would be equivalent to the whole income of the would- be employer, leaving him nothing for him- self." The Final Settlement with thb Capitalists "There is one point," I said, "on which I should like to be a little more clearly in- formed. When the nation finally took pos- session absolutely in perpetuity of all the lands, machinery, and capital after the final collapse of private capitalism, there must have been doubtless some sort of final settling and balancing of accounts between the people and the capitalists whose former properties had been nationalised. How was that managed ? What was the basis of final settlement? " "The people waived a settlement," replied the doctx>r. "The guillotine, the gallows, and the firing platoon played no part in the consummrvtion of the great Revolution. During the previous phases of the revolu- tionary agitation there had indeed been much bitter talk of the reckoning which the people in the hour of their triumph would demand of the capitalists for the cruel past; but when the hour of triumph came, the enthu- siasm of humanity which glorified it extin- guished the fires of hate ^nd took away all desire of barren vengeance. No, there EQUALITY 155 was no settlement demanded ; the people for- gave the past." "Doctor," I said, "you have sufficiently — in fact, overwhelmingly — answered my question, and all the more so because you aid not catch my meaning. Remember that I represent the mental and moral condition of the average American capitalist in 1887. What I meant was to inquire what com- pensation the people made to the capitalists for nationalising what had been their pro- perty. Evidently, however, from the twen- tieth-century point of view, ifthere were to be any final settlement between the people and the capitalists it was the former who had the bill to present." "I rather pride myself," replied the doc- tor, "in keeping track of your point of view and distinguishing it from ours, but I con- fess that time I fairly missed the cue. You see, as we look back upon the Revolution, one of its most impressive features seems to be the vast magnanimity of the people at the moment of their complete triumph in according a free quittance to their former oppressors. "Do you not see that if private capitalism was right, then the Revolution was wrong ; but, on the other hand, if the Revolution was right, then private capitalism was wrong, and the greatest wrong that ever existed ; and in that case it was the capitalists who owed reparation to the people they had wronged, rather than the people who owed compensa- tion to the capitalists for taking from them the means of that wrong ? For the people to have consented on any terms to buy their freedom from their former masters would have been to admit the justice of their former bondage. When insurgent slaves triumph, they are not in the habit of paying their former masters the price of the shackles and fetters they have broken ; the masters usually consider themselves fortunate if they do not have their heads broken with them. Had the question of compensating the capi- talists been raised a't the time we are speak- ing of, it would have been an unfortunate issue for them. To their question. Who was to pay them for what the people had taken from them? the response would have been, Who was to pay the people for what the capitalist system had taken from them and their ancestors, the light of life and liberty and happiness which it had shut off from unnumbered generations ? That was an accounting which would have gone so deep and reached back so far that the debtors might well be glad to waive it. In taking possession of the earth and all the works of man that stood upon it, the people were but reclaiming their own heritage and the work of their own hands, kept back from them by fraud. When the rightful heirs come to their awn, the unjust stewards who kept them out of their inJioritance may deem themselves mercifully dealt with if the new masters are willing to let bygones be' bygones. "But while the idea of compensating the capitalists for putting an end to their op- pression would have been ethically absurd, you will scarcely get a full conception of the situation without considering that any such compensation was in the nature of the case impossible. To have compensated the capitalists in any practical way — that is, any way which would have preserved to them under the new order any economic equiva- lent for their former holdings — would have necessarily been to set up private capitalism over again in the very act of destroying it, thus defeating and stultifying the Revolu- tion in the moment of its triumph. "You see that this last and greatest of revolutiohs in the nature of the case abso- lutely differed from all former ones in the finality and completeness of its work. In all previous instances in which governments had abolished or converted to public use forms of property in the hands of citizens, it had been possible to compensate them in some other kind of property through which their former economic advantage should be perpetuated under a different form. For example, in condemning lands it was pos- sible to pay for them in money, and in abolishing property in men it was possible to pay for the slaves, so that the pre- vious superiority or privilege held by the property owner was not destroyed outright, but merely translated, so to speak, into other terms. But the great Revolution, aiming as it did at the final destruction of all forms of advantage, dominion, or privilege among men, left no guise or mode possible under which the capitalist could continue to exercise his former superiority. All the modes under which in past time men had exercised dominion over their fellows had been by one revolution after another reduced to the single form of economic superiority, and now that this last incarnation of the spirit of selfish dominion was to perish, there was no further refuge for it. The ultimate mask torn off, it was left to wither in the face of the sun." "Your explanation leaves me nothing fur- ther to ask as to the matter of a final settling between the people and the capitalists," I said. "Still, I have understood that in the first steps toward the substitution of public business management for private capitalism, consisting in the nationalising or municipalis- ing of quasi-public services, such as gas- works, railroads, telegraphs, &c., some theory of compensation was followed. Public opinion, at that stage not having accepted the whole revolutionary programme, must probably have' insisted upon this practice. Just when was it discontinued T " "You will readily perceive," replied the doctor, "that in measure as it became gener- ally recognised that economic equality was at 156 EQUALITY hand, it began to seem farcical to pay the capitalists for their possessions in forms of wealth which must presently, as all knew, become valueless. So it was that, as the Revolution approached its consummation, the idea of buying the capitalists out gave place to plans for safeguarding them from un- necessary hardships pending the transition period. All the businesses of the class you speak of which were taken over by the people in the early stages of the revolutionary agita- tion, were paid for in money or bonds, and usually at prices most favourable to the capi- talists. As to the greater plants, which were taken over later, such as railroads and the mines, a different course was followed. By the time public opinion was ripe for these steps, it began to be recognised by the dullest that it was possible, even if not probable, that the revolutionary programme would go completely through, and all forms of mone- tary value or obligation become waste paper. With this prospect the capitalists owning the properties were naturally not particu- larly desirous of taking national bonds for them, which would have been the natural form of compensation had they been bought outright. Even if the capitalists had been willing to take the bonds, the people would never have consented to increase the public debt by the five or six billions of bonds that would have been necessary to carry out the purchase. Neither the railroads nor the mines were therefore purchased at all. It was their management, not their ownership, which had excited the public indignation and created the demand for their nationalisa- tion. It was their management, therefore, which was nationalised, their ownership re- maining undisturbed. "That is to say, the Government, on the high ground of public policy and for the correction of grievances that had become intolerable, assumed the exclusive and per- petual management and operation of the rail- road lines. An honest valuation of the plants having been made, the earnings, if any, up to a reasonable percentage, were paid over to the security holders. This arrangement answered the purpose of delivering the peonie and the security holders alike from the ex- tortions and mismanagement of the former Erivate operators, and at the same time rought a million railroad employees into the public service and the enjoyment of all its benefits quite as effectively as if the lines had been bought outright. A similar plan was followed with the coal and other mines. Thi.s combination of private ownership with public management continued until, the Revo- lution having been consummated, all the capital of the country was nationalised by oomprehensive enactment. "The general principle which governed the revolutionary policy in dealing with property owners of all sorts was that while the dis- tribution of property was essentially unjust and existing property rights morally invalid, and as soon as possible a wholly new system sliould be established, yet that, until the new system of property could as a whole replace thf existing one, the legal rights of property owners ought to be respected, and when overruled in the public interest proper provision should be made to prevent hard- ship. The means of private maintenance should not, that is to say, be taken away from any one until the guarantee of main- tenance from public sources could take its place. The application of this principle by the revolutionists seems to have been ex- tremely logical, clean cut, and positive. The old law of property, bad as it was, they did not aim to abolish in the name of licence, spoliation, and confusion, but in the name of a stricter and more logical as well as more righteous law. In the most flourishing days of capitalism, stealing, so called, was never repressed more sternly than up to the very eve of the complete introduction of the new system." "To sum up the case in a word," I sug- gested, "it seems that in passing from the old order into the new, it necessarily fared with the rich as it did when they passed out of this world into the next. In one case, as in the other, they just absolutely had to leave their money behind them." "The illustration is really very apt," laughed the doctor, "except in one impor- tant particular. It has been rumoured that the change which Dives made from this world to the next was an unhappy one for him ; but within half-a-dozen years after the new economic system had been in operation, there was not an ex-millionaire of the lot who was not ready to admit that life had been made as much better worth living for him and his class as for the rest of the com- munity." "Did the new order get into full running condition so quickly as that? " I asked. "Of course, it could not get into perfect order as you see it now for many years. The personnel of any community is the prime factor in its economic efficiency, and not until the first generation born under the new order had come to maturity — a generation every member of which had received the highest intellectual and industrial training — did the economic order fully show what it was capable of. But not ten nor two years had elapsed from the time when the national Government took all the people into employ- ment on the basis of equal sharing in the product, before the system showed results which overwhelmed the world with amaze- ment. The partial system of public indus- tries and public stores which the Government had already undertaken, had given the people some intimation of the cheapening of products and improvement in their quality which might follow from the abolition of profits even under a wage system; but not EQUALITY 157 until the entire economic system had been nationalised and all co-operated for a com- mon weal, was it possible completely to pool the product and share it equally. No pre- vious experience had therefore prepared the public for the prodigious efliciency of the new economic machinery. The people had thought the reformers made rather large promises as to what the new system would do in the way of wealth-making, but now they charged them with keeping back the truth. And yet the result was one that need not have surprised any one who had taken the trouble to calculate the economic effect of the change in systems. The incalculable increase of wealth which but for the profit system the great inventions of the century would long before have brought the world, was being reaped in a long-postponed but overwhelming harvest. "The dithculty under the profit system had been to avoid producing too much ; the difficulty under the equal-sharing system was how to produce enough. The smallness of demand had before limited supply, but supply had now set to it an unlimited task. Under private capitalism demand had been a dwarf, and lame at that; and yet this cripple had been pacemaker for the giant production. National co-operation had put wings on the dwarf, and shod the cripple with Mercury's sandals. Henceforth the giant would need all his strength, all his thews of steel and sinews of brass even, to keep him in sight as he flitted on before. "It would be difficult to give you an idea ^ of the tremendous burst of industrial energy with which the rejuvenated nation on the morrow of the Revolution threw itself into the task of uplifting the welfare of all classes to a level where the former rich man might find in sharing the common lot nothing to regret. Nothing like the Titanic achievement by which this result was effected had ever before been known in human history, and nothing like it seems likely ever to occur again. In the past there had not been work enough for the people. Millions, some rich, some poor, some will- ingly, some unwillingly, had always been idle, and not only that, but half the work that was done was wasted in competition Dr in producing luxuries to gratify the second- ary wants of the few, while yet the primary wants of the ma^s remained unsatisfied. Idle machinery equal to the power of other millions of men, idle land, idle capital of svery sort, mocked the need of the people. Now, all at once there were not hands enough in the country, wheels enough in the machinery, power enough in steam and electricity, hours enough in the day, days enough in the week, for the vast task of preparing the basis of a comfortable exist- ence for all. For not until all were well- to-do, well housed, well clothed, well fed, might any be so under the new order of things. "It is said that in the first full year after the new order was established the total pro- duct of the country was tripled, and in the second the first year's product was doubled, and every bit of it consumed. "While, of course, the improvement in the material welfare of the nation was the most notable feature in the first years after the Revolution, simply bcH-ruise it was the place at which any improvement must begin, yet the ennobling and softening of manners and the growth of geniality in social intercourse are said to have been changes scarcely less notable. While the class differences inherited from the former order in point of habits, education, and culture must, of course, cou- tinue to mark and in a measure separate the members of the generation then on the stage, yet the certain knowledge that the basis of these differences had passed away for ever, and that the children of all would mingle not only upon terms of economic equality, but of moral, intellectual, and social sympathy, and entire community of interest, seems to have had a strong anti- cipatory influence in bringing together in a sentiment of essential brotherhood those who were too far on in life to expect to see the full promise of the Revolution realised. "One other matter is worth speaking of, and that is the effect almost at once of the universal and abounding material prosperity which the nation had entered on to make the people forget all about the importance they had so lately attached to petty differ- ences in pay and wages and salary. In the old days of general poverty, when a suffi- ciency was so hard to come by, a difference in wages of fifty cents or a dollar had seemed so great to the artisan that it was hard for him to accept the idea of an economic equality in which such important distinctions should disappear. It was quite natural that it should be so. Men fight for crusts when they are starving, but they do not quarrel over bread at a banquet table. Somewhat so it befell when in the years after the Revolution material abundance and all the comforts of life came to be a matter of course for every one, and storing for the future was needless. Then it was that the hunger motive died out of human nature and covetousness as to material things, mocked to death by abundance, perished by atrophy, and the motives of the modern worker, the love of honour, the joy of beneficence, the delight of achievement, and the cnthueiaBm of humanity, became the impulses of the economic world. Labour was glorified, and the cringing wage-slave of the nineteenth century stood forth transfigured as the knight of humanity." 158 EQUALITY CHAPTER XXXVIII THE BOOK OF THE BLIND. If the reader -^-ere to judge merely from what has been set down in these pages he would be likely to infer that my most ab- sorbing interest during these days I am endeavouring to recall was the study of the political economy and social philosophy of the modern world, which I was pursuing under the direction of Dr. Leete. That, however, would be a great mistake. Full of wonder and fascination as was that occu- pation, it was prosaic business compared with the interest of a certain old story which his daughter and I were going over together, whereof but slight mention has been made, because it is a story which all know or ought to know for themselves. The dear doctor, being aware of the usual course of such stories, no doubt realised that this one might be expected presently to reach a stage of interest where it would be likely, for a time at lea-st, wholly to distract my attention from other themes. No doubt he had been governed by this consideration in trying to give to our talks a range which should result in furnishing me with a view of the institutions of the modern world and their rational basis that would be as sym- metrical and rounded out as was at all con- sist-ent with the vastncss of the subject and the shortness of the time. It was some days after he had told me the story of the transition period before we had an op- portunity for another long talk, and the turn he gave to our discourse on that occa- sion seemed to indicate that he intended it as a sort of conclusion of the series, as indeed it proved to be. Edith and I had come home rather late that evening, and when she left me I turned into the library, where a light showed that the doctor was still sitting. As I entered he was turning over the leaves of a very old and yellow-looking volume, the title of which, by its oddity, caught my eye. "Kenloe's Book of the Blind," I said. "That is an odd title." "It is the title of an odd book," replied the doctor. "The Book of the Blind is nearly a hundred years old, having been compiled soon after the triumph of the Re- volution. Everybody was happy, and the people in their joy were willing to forgive and forget the bitter opposition of the capi- talists and the learned class, which had so long held back the blessed change. The preachers who had preached, the teachers who had taught, and the writers who had written against the Revolution, were now the loudest in its praise, and desired nothing BO much as to have their previous utterances forgotten. But Kenloe, moved by a certain crabbed sense of justice, was bound that they should not be forgotten. Accordingly, he took the pains to compile, with great care as to authenticity, names, dates, and places, a mass of excerpts from speeches, books, sermons, and newspapers, in which the apolo- gists of private capitalism had defended that system and assailed the advocates of econo- mic equality during the long period of re- volutionary agitation. Thus he proposed to pillory for all time the blind guides who had done their best to lead the nation and the world into the ditch. The time would come, he foresaw, as it has come, when it woulfl seem incredible to posterity that rational men, and, above all, learned men, should have opposed in the name of reason a measure which, like economic equality, obviously meant nothing more nor less than the general diffusion of happiness. Against that time he prepared this book to serve as a perpetual testimony. It was dreadfully hard on the men, all alive at the time and desiring the past to be forgotten, on whom he conferred this most undesirable immortality. One can imagine how they must have anathematised him when the book came out. Nevertheless, it must be said that if men ever deserved to endure perpetual obloquy those fellows did. "When I came across this old volume on the top shelf of the library the other day, it occurred to me that it might be helpful to complete your impression of the great Revolution, by giving you an idea of the other side of the controversy — the side of your own class, the capitalists, and what sort of reasons they were able to give against the proposition to equalise the basis of human welfare." I assured the doctor that nothing would interest me more. Indeed, I had become so thoroughly naturalised as a twentietli- century American, that there was something decidedly piquant in the idea of having my former point of view as a nineteenth-century capitalist recalled to me. "Anticipating that you would take that view," said the doctor, "I have prepared a little list of the main heads of objection from Kenloe's collection, and we will go over them, if you like, this evening. Of course, there are many more than I shall quote, but the others are mainly variations of these, or else relate to points which have been covered in our talks." I made myself comfortable, and the doctor proceeded : The Ptjlpit Objection. " The clergy in your day assumed to be the leaders of the people, and it is but respectful EQUALITY 159 to their pretensions to take up first what seems to have been the main pulpit argument against the proposed system of economic equality collectively guaranteed. It appears to have been rather in the nature of an excuse for not espousing the new social ideal than a direct attack on it, which indeed it would have been rather difficult for nominal Christians to make, seeing that it was merely the proposal to carry out the golden rule. " The clergy reasoned that the fundamental cause of social misery was human sin and depravity, and that it was vain to expect any great improvement in the social condition through mere improvements in social forms and institutions, unless there was a corre- sponding moral improvement in men. Until that improvement took place, it was there- fore of no use to introduce improved social systems, for they would work as badly as the old ones if those who were to operate them were not themselves better men and women. " The element of truth in this argument is the admitted fact that the use which indi- viduals or communities are able to make of any idea, instrument, or institution depends on the degree to which they have been educa- ted up to the point of understanding and appreciating it. " On the other hand, however, it is equally true, as the clergy must at once have ad- mitted, that from the time a people begins to be morally and intellectually educated up to the point of understanding and appreciat- ing better institutions, their adoption is likely to be of the greatest benefit to them. Take, for example, the ideas of religious liberty and of democracy. There was a time when the race could not understand or fitly use either, and their adoption as formal in- stitutions would have done no good. After- wards there came a time when the world was ready for the ideas, and then their realisation by means of new social institutions constituted great forward steps in civilisa- tion. " That is to say, if, on the one hand, it is of no use to introduce an improved institu- tion before people begin to be ready for it, on the other hand great loss results if there be a delay or refusal to adopt the better in- stitution as soon as the readiness begins to manifest itself. " This being the general law of progress, the practical question is. How are we to de- termine as to any particular proposed im- provement in institutions, whether the world IS yet ready to make a good use of it or whether it is premature ? "The testimony of history is that the only test of the fitness of people at any time for a new institution is the volume and earnestness of the popular demand for the change. When the peoples began in earnest to cry out for religious liberty and freedom of conscience, it was evident that they were ready for them. When n:\tions began strongly to drmnnd popular government, it was proof that they were ready for that. It did not follow that they were entirely able at once to make the best possible use of the new institution ; that they could only learn to do by experience, ancf the further development which Ihey would attain through the iiso of the better institution, and could not otherwise attain at all. What was certain was that after the people had reached this state of mind the old institution had ceased to be serviceable, and that, however badly for a time the new one might work, the interest of the race de- manded its adoption, and resistance to the change was resistance to progress. "Applying this test to the situation toward the close of the nineteenth century, what evidence was there that the world was be- ginning to be ready for a radically different and more humane set of social institutions? The evidence was the volume, earnestness, and persistence of the popular demand for it, which at that period had come to be the most widespread, profound, and powerful move- ment going on in the civilised world. This was the tremendous fact which .=hould have warned the clergy who withstood the people's demand for better things, to beware lest haply they be found fighting even against God. What more convincing proof could be asked that the world had morally and intel- lectually outgrown the old economic order, than the detestation and denunciation of its cruelties and fatuities which had become the universal voice ? What stronger evidence could there be that the race was ready at least to attempt the experiment of social life on a nobler plane, thin the marvellous de- velopment during this period of the humani- tarian and philanthropic spirit, the passionate acceptance by the masses of the new idea of social solidarity and the universal brother- hood of man? "If the clergymen who objected to the Ee- volution on the ground that better institu- tions would be of no utility without a better spirit had been sincere in that objection, they would have found, in a survey of the state and tendencies of popular feeling, the most striking proof of the presence of the very con- ditions in extraordinary measure which they demanded as necessary to ensure the success of the experiment. " But indeed it is to be greatly feared that they were not sincere. They pretended to hold Christ's doctrine that hatred of the old life and a desire to lead a better one is the only vocation necessary to enter upon such a life. If they had been sincere in professing this doctrine, they would have hailed with exulta- tion the appeal of the masses to be delivered from their bondage to a wicked social order, and to be permitted to live together on better, kinder, juster terms. But what they actually said to the people was in substance this : It is true, as you complain, that the present social and economic system is morally aoomin- 160 EQUALITY able and thoroughly anti-Christian, and that it destroys men's souls and bodies. Neverthe- less, you must not think of trying to change it for a better system, because you are not yet good enough 'to try to be better. It is necessary that you should wait until you are more righteous before you attempt to leave off doing evil. You must go on stealing and fighting until you shall become fully sancti- fied. " How would the clergy have been scan- dalised to hear that a Christian minister had in like terms attempted to discourage an in- dividual penitent who professed loathing for his former life and a desire to lead a better ! What language shall we find then that is strong enough fitly to characterise the atti- tude of these so-called ministers of Christ, who in His name rebuked and derided the aspirations of a world weary of social wrong and seeking for a better way ? " The Lack of Incentive Objection. "But, after all," pursued the doctor, turn- ing the pages of Kenloe, "let us not be too hard on these unfortunate clergymen, as if they were more blinded or bigoted in their opposition to progress than were other classes of the learned men of the day, as, for example, the economists. One of the main arguments — perhaps the leading one — of the nineteenth-century economists against the programme of economic equality under a nationalised economic system, was that the people would not prove efficient workers owing to the lack of sufficiently sharp personal in- centives to diligence. " Now, let us look at this objection. Under the old system there were two main incentives to economic exertion : the one chiefly opera- tive on the masses, who lived from hand to mouth, with no hope of more than a bare subsistence ; the other operating to stimulate the well-to-do and rich to continue their efforts to accumulate wealth. The first of these motives, the lash that drove the masses to their tasks, was the actual pressure or im- minent fear of want. The second of the motives, that which spurred the already rich, was the desire to be ever richer, a passion which we know increased with what it fed on. Under the new system every one on easy conditions would be sure of as good a maintenance as any one else, and be quite relieved from the pressure or fear of want. No one, on the other hand, by any amount of effort, could hope to become the economic superior of another. Moreover, it was said, since every one looked to his share in the general result rather than to his personal product, the nerve of zeal would be cut. It was argued that the result would be that everybody would do as little as he could and keep within the minimum requirement of the law, and that therefore, while the syst«m might barely support itself, it could never be an economic success." " That sounds very natural," I said. "I imagine it is just the sort of argument that I should have thought very powerful." " So your friends the capitalists seem to have regarded it, and yet the very statement of the argument contains a confession of the economic imbecility of private capitalism which really leaves nothing to be desired as to completeness. Consider, Julian, what is implied as to an economic system by the admission that under it the people never escape the actual pressure of want or the immediate dread of it. What more could the worst enemy of private capitalism allege against it, or what stronger reason could he give for demanding that some radically new system be at least given a trial, than the fact which its defenders stated in this argu- ment for retaining it — namely, that under it the masses were always hungry? Surely no possible new system could work any worse than one which confessedly depended upon the perpetual famine of the people to keep it going." " It was a pretty bad giving away of their case," I said, " when you come to think of it that way. And yet at first statement it really had a formidable sound." "Manifestly," said the doctor, "the in- centives to wealth-production under a system confessedly resulting in perpetual famine must be ineffectual, and we really need con- sider them no further; but your economists praised so highly the ambition to get rich as an economic motive, and objected so strongly to economic equality because it would shut it off, that a word may be well as to the real value of the lust of wealth as an economic motive. Did the individual pursuit of riches under your system necessarily tend to increase the aggregate wealth of the community? The answer is significant. It tended to increase the aggregate wealth only when it prompted the production of new wealth. When, on the other hand, it merely prompted individuals to get possession of wealth already produced and in the hands of others, it tended only to change the distribution without at all increas- ing the total of wealth. Not only, indeed, did the pursuit of wealth by acquisition, as distinguished from production, not tend to increase the total, but greatly to decrease it by wasteful strife. Now, I will leave it to you, Julian, whether the successful pursuers of wealth, those who illustrated most strik- ingly the force of this motive of accumula- tion, usually sought their wealth by them- selves producing it, or by getting hold of what other people had produced, or supplant- ing other people's enterprises and reaping the field others had sown." " By the latter processes, of course," I replied. " Production was slow and hard work. Great wealth could not be gained that way, and everybody knew it. The acquisition of other people's product; and the supplanting of their enterprises, viC^o EQUALITY 161 the easy and speedy and royal ways to riches for those who wer^ clever enough', and were the basis of all large and rapid accumula- tions." "So we read," said the doctor; "but the desire of getting rich also stimulated capi- talists to more or less productive activity, which was the source of what little wealth you had. This was called production for profit, but the political-economy class the other morning showed us that production for profit was economic suicide, tending in- evitably, by limiting the consuming power of a community, to a fractional part of its productive power to cripple production in turn, and so to keep the mass of mankind in perpetual poverty. And surely this is enough to say about the incentives to wealth- making, which the world lost in abandoning private capitalism, first general poverty, and second the profit system, which caused that poverty. Decidedly we can dispense with those incentives. " Under the modem system it is indeed true that no one ever imagined such a thing as coming to want unless he deliberately chose to, but we think that fear is on the whole the weakest as well as certainly the. cruellest of incentives. We would not have it on any terms, were it merely for gain's sake. Even in your day your capitalists knew that the best man was not he who was working for his next dinner, but he who was so well off that no immediate concern for his living affected his mind. Self-respect and . pride in achievement made him a far better workman than the man who was thinking of his day's pay. But if those motives were as strong then, think how much more powerful they are now ! In your day when two men worked side by side for an emoloyer it was no concern of the one, however Uie other might cheat or loaf. It was not his loss, but the employer's. But now that all work for the common fund, the one who evades or scamps his work robs every one of his fel- lows. A man had better hang himself nowa- days than get the reputation of a shirk. "As to the notion of these objectors that economic equality would cut the nerve of zeal by denying the individual the reward of his personal achievements, it was a complete misconception of the effects of the system. The assumption that there would be no incen- tives to impel individuals to excel one another in industry merely because these incentives would not take a money form was absurd. Every one is as directly and far more cer- tainly the beneficiary of his own merits as in your day, save only that the reward is not in what you called "cash." As you know, the whole system of social and official rank and headship, together with the special honours of the State, are determined by the relative value of the economic and other services of individuals to the community. Compared with the emulation aroused by this system of nobility by merits, the incen- tives to effort offered under the old order of things must have been slight indeed. "The whole of this subject of incentive taken by your contemporaries seems, in fact, to have been based upon the crude and childish theory that the main factor in dili- gence or execution of any kind is external, whereas it is wholly internal. A person is congcnitally slothful or energetic. In the one case no opportunity and no incentive can make him work beyond a certain minimum of efficiency, while "in the other case he will make his opportunity and find his incentives, and nothing but superior force can prevent his doing the utmost possible. If the motive force is not in the man to start with, it cannot be supplied from without, and there is no substitute for it. If a man's main- spring is not wound up when he is born, it never can bo wound up afterward. The most that any industrial system can do to promote diligence is to establish such abso- lutely fair conditions as shall promise sure recognition for all merit in its measure. This fairness, which your system, utterly unjust in all respects, wholly failed to secure, ours absolutely provides. As to the unfortunates who are born lazy, our system has certainly no miraculous power to make them energetic, but it does see to it with absolute certainty that every able-bodied person who receives economic maintenance of the nation shall render at least the minimum of service. The laziest is sure to pay his cost. In your day, on the ether hand, society supported millions of able-bodied loafers in idleness, a dead weight on the world's industry. From the hour of the consummation of the great Revolution this burden ceased to be borne." " Doctor," I said, " I am sure my old friends could do better than that. Let us have another of their objections." Afraid that Equality would make Every- body Alike. " Here, then, is one which they seem to have thought a great deal of. They argued that the effect of economic equality would be to make everybody just alike, as if they had been sawed off to one measure, and that consequently life would become so monotonous that people would all hang themselves at the end of a month. This objection is beauti- fully typical of an age when everything and everybody had been reduced to a money valuation. It having been proposed to equalise everybody's supply of money, it was at once assumed, as a matter of course, that there would be left no point of difference between individuals that would be worth con- sidering. How perfectly does this conclusion express the pliilosophy of life held by a generation in which it was the custom to sum up men as respectively ' worth ' so many thousands, hundred thousands, or millions of 162 EQUALITY dollars ! Naturally enough, to such people it seemed that humau beings would become well-nigh indistinguishable if their bank accounts were the same. " But let us be entirely fair to your con- temporaries. Possibly those who used this argument against economic equality would have felt aggrieved to have it made out the baldly sordid proposition it seems to be. They appear, to judge from the excerpts collected in this book, to have had a vague but sincere apprehension that in some quite undefined way economic equality would really tend to make people monotonously alike, tediously similar, not merely as to bank accounts, but as to qualities in general, with the result of obscuring the differences in natural endowments, the interaction of which lends all the zest to social intercourse. It seems almost incredible that the obvious and necessary effect of economic equality could be apprehended in a sense so absolutely opposed to the truth. How could your con- temporaries look about them without seeing that it is always inequality which prompts the suppression of individuality by putting a premiiam on servile imitation of superiors, and, on the other hand, that it is always among equals that one finds independence ? Suppose, Julian, you had a squad of recruits ana wanted to ascertain at a glance their difference in height, what sort of ground would you select to line them up on?" " The most level piece I could find, of course." "Evidently; and no doubt these very objectors would have done the same in a like case, and yet they wholly failed to see that this was precisely what economic equality would mean for the community at large. Economic equality with the equalities of education and opportunity implied in it was the level standing-ground, the even floor, on which the new order proposed to range all alike, that they might be known for what they were, and all their natural inequalities be brought fully out. The charge of abolish- ing and obscuring the natural differences between men lay justly not against the new order, but against the old, which, by a thousand artificial conditions and opportuni- ties arising from economic inequality, made it impossible to know how far the apparent differences in individuals were natural, and how far they were the result of artificial con- ditions. Those who voiced the objection to economic equality as tending to make men all alike were fond of calling it a levelling pro- cess. So it was, but it was not men whom the process levelled, but the ground they stood on. From its introduction dates the first full and clear revelation of the natural and inherent varieties in human endowments. Economic equality, with all it implies, is the first condition of any true anthropometric or man-measuring system." " Really," I said, " all these objections seem to be of the boomerang pattern, doing more damage to the side that used them than to the enemy." " For that matter," replied the doctor, " the revolutionists would have been well off for ammunition if they had used only that furnished by their opponents' arguments. Take, for example, another specimen, which we may call the aesthetic objection to eco- nomic equality, and might regard as a development of the one just considered. It was asserted that the picturesqueness and amusement of the human spectacle would suffer without the contrast of conditions between the rich and poor. The question first suggested by this statement is : To whom, to what class did these contrasts tend to make life more amusing ? Certainly not to the poor, who made up the mass of the race. To them they must have been madden- ing. It was then in the interest of the mere handful of rich and fortunate that this argu- ment for retaining poverty was urged. In- deed, this appears to have been quite a fine ladies' argument. Kenloe puts it in the mouths of leaders of polite society. As coolly as if it had been a question of parlour decoration, they appear to have argued that t^e black background of the general misery w-Tis a desirable foil to set off the pomp of the rich. But, after all, this objection was not more brutal than it was stupid. If here and there might be found some perverted being who relished his luxuries the more keenly for the sight of others' want, yet the general and universal rule is that happiness is stimulated by the sight of the happiness of others. As a matter of fact, far from desiring to see or be even reminded of squalor and poverty, the rich seem to have tried to get as far as possible from sight or sound of them, and to wish to forget their existence. " A great part of the objections to economic equality in this book seems to have been based on such complete misapprehensions of what the plan implied as to have no sort of relevancy to it. Some of these I have passed over. One of them, by way of illustration, was based on the assumption that the new social order would in some way operate to enforce, by law, relations of social intimacy of all with all, without regard to personal tastes or affinities. Quite a number of Ken- loe's subjects worked themselves up to a frenzy, protesting against the intolerable effects of such a requirement. Of course, they were fighting imaginary foes. There was nothing under the old social order which compelled men to associate merely because their bank accounts or incomes were the same, and there was nothing under the new order that would any more do so. While the universality of culture and refinement vastly widens the circle from which one may choose congenial associates, there is nothing to pre- vent anybody from living a life as absolutely EQUALITY 163 unsocial as the voiieit cynic of the old time could have desired. Objection that Equauti would end the Competitive System. " The theory of Kenloe," contiaued the doctor, " that unless he carefully recorded and authenticated these objections to econo- mic equality, posterity would refuse to believe that they had ever been seriously oflered, is specially justified by the next one on the list. This is an argument against the new order, because it would abolish the com- petitive system, and put an end to the struggle for existence. According to the objectors, this would be to destroy an invalu- able school of character and testing process for the weeding out of inferiority, and the development and survival as leaders of the best types of humanity. Now, if your con- temporaries had excused themselves for tolerating the competitive system on the ground that, bad and cruel as it was, the world was not ripe for any other, the attitude would have been intelligible, if not rational; but that they should defend it as a desirable institution in itself, on account of its moral results, and therefore not to be dispensed with even if it could be, seems hard to believe. For what was the competitive sys- tem but a pitiless, all-involving combat for the means of life, the whole zest of which depended on the fact that there was not enough to go round, and the losers must perish or purchase bare existence by becoming the bondsmen of the successful ? Between a fight for the necessary means of life like this and a fight for life itself with sword and gun, it is impossible to make any real dis- tinction. However, let us give the objection a fair hearing. " In the first place, let us admit that, how- ever dreadful were the incidents of the fight for the means of life called competition, yet, if it were such a school of character and testing process for developing the best types of the race as these objectors claimed, there would be something to have been said in favour of its retention. But the first con- dition of any competition or test, the results of which are to command respect or possess any value, is the fairness and equality of the struggle. Did this first and essential con- dition of any true competitive struggle characterise the competitive system of your day? " "On the contrary," I replied, "the vast majority of the contestants were hopelessly handicapped at the start by ignorance and lack of early advantages, ana never had even the ghost of a chance from the word Go. Differences in economic advantages and back- ing, moreover, gave half the race at the beginning to some, leaving the others at a distance which only extraordinary endow- ments might overcome. Finally, in the race for wealth all the greatest prizes were not subject to competition at all, but were awarded without any contest according to the accident of birth." "On the whole, then, it would appear," resumed the doctor, "that of all the utterly unequal, unfair, fraudulent, sham contests, whether in sport or earnest, that were ever engaged in, the so-called competitive system was the ghastliest farce. It was called th^ competitive system apparently for no other reason than that there was not a particle of genuine competition in it, nothing but brutal and cowardly slaughter of the un- armed and overmatched by bullies in armour ; for, although we have compared the com- petitive struggle to a foot-race, it was no such harmless sport as that, but a struggle to the death for life and liberty, which, mind you, the contestants did not even choose to risk, but were forced to undertake, whatever their chances. The old Romans used to enjoy the spectacle of seeing men fight for thei'r lives, but they at least were careful to pair their gladiators as nearly as possible. The most hardened attendants at the Coliseum would have hissed from the arena a per- formance in which the combatants v/ere matched with such utter disregard of fairness as were those who fought for their lives in the so-called competitive struggle of your day." "Even you, doctor," I said, "though you know these things so well through the written record, cannot realise how terribly true your words are." "Very good. Now tell me what it would have been necessary to do by way of equalis- ing the conditions of the competitive struggle in order that it might be called, without mockery, a fair test of the qualities of the contestants." "It would have been necessary, at least," I said, "to equalise their educational equip- ment, early advantages, and economic or money backing." "Precisely so; and that is just what eco- nomic equality proposed to do. Your extra- ordinary contemporaries objected to economic equality because it would destroy the com- petitive system, when, in fact, it promised the world the first and only genuine competi- tive system it ever had." "This objection seems the biggest boomer- ang yet," I said. "It is a double-ended one," said the doctor, "and we have yet observed but one end. We have seen that the so-called com- petitive system under private capitalism waa not a competitive system at all, and frtiat nothing but economic equality could make a truly competitive system possible. Grant, however, for the sake of the argument, that the old system was honestly competitive, and that the prizes went to the most proficient under the requirements of the competition ; the question would remain whether the quali- ties the competition tended to develop were 164 EQUALITY desirable ones. A training school in the art of lying, for example, or burglary, or slander, or fraud, might be efficient in its method, and the prizes might be fairly dis- tributed to the most proficient pupils, and yet it would scarcely be argued that the maintenance of the school was in the public interest. The objection we are considering assumes that the qualities encouraged and rewarded under the competitive system were desirable qualities, and such as it waa for the public policy to develop. Now, if this was 60, we may confidently expect to find that the prize-winners in the competitive struggle, the great money-makers of your age, were admitted to be intellectually and morally the finest types of the race at the time. How waa that? " "Don't be sarcastic, doctor." "No, I will not be sarcastic, however great the temptation, but juat talk straight on. What did the world, as a rule, think of the great fortune-makers of your time? What Bort of human types did they represent? Ab to intellectual culture, it was held as an axiom that a college education was a draw- back to success in business, and naturally so, for any knowledge of the humanities would in so far have unmanned men for the sordid and pitiless conditions of the fight for wealth. We find the great prize takers in the competitive struggle to have gene- rally been men who made it a boast that they had never had any mental education beyond the rudiments. As a rule, the children and grandchildren, who gladly in- herited their wealth, were ashamed of their appearance and manners as too gross for refined surroundings. "So much for the intellectual qualities that marked the victors in the race for wealth under the miscalled competitive system ; what of the moral ? What were the qualities and practices which the successful seeker after great wealth must systematically cultivate and follow? A lifelong habit of calculating upon and taking advantage of the weaknesses, necessities, and mistakes of others, a piti- less insistence upon making the most of every advantage which one might gain over another, whether by skill or accident, the constant habit of undervaluing and depreciating what one would buy, and overvaluing what one would sell; finally, such a lifelong study to regulate every thought and act with sole reference to the pole-star of self-interest in its narrowest conception, as must needs pre- sently render the man incapable of every generous or self -forgetting impulse. That was the condition of mind and soul which the competitive pursuit of wealth in your day tended to develop, and which was naturally most brilliantly exemplified in the cases of those who carried away the great prizes of the struggle. "But, of course, these winners of the ^reat prizes were few, and had the demornhsing influence of the struggle been limited to them it would have involved the moral ruin of a small number. To realise how wide and deadly was the depraving influence of the struggle for existence, we must remember that it was not confined to its effect upon the characters of the few who succeeded, but demoralised equally the millions who failed, not on account of a virtue superior to that of the few winners, or any unwillingneEs to adopt their methods, but merely through lack of the requisite ability or fortune. Though not one in ten thousand might succeed largely in the pursuit of wealth, yet the rules of the contest must be followed aa closely to make a bare living as to gain a fortune, in bargaining for a bag of old rags as in buying a railroad. So it was that the necessity equally upon all of seeking their living, however humble, by the methods of competition, forbade the solace of a good conscience cis effectually to the poor man as to the rich, to the many losers at the game as to the few winners. You remember the familiar legend which represente the devil as bargaining with people for their souls*, with the promise of worldly success as the price. The bargain was in a manner fair, as Bet forth in the old story. The man always received the price agreed on. But the competitive system was a fraudulent devil, which, while requiring everybody to forfeit their souls, gave in return worldly success to but one in a thousand. "And now, Julian, just let us glance at the contrast between what winning meant under the old, false competitive system and what it means under the new and true com- petitive system, both to the winner and to the others. The winners then were those who had been most successful in getting away the wealth of others. They had not even protended to seek the good of the com- munity, or to advance its interest, and if they had done so that result had been quite incidental. More often than otherwise their wealth represented the loss of others. What wonder that their riches became a badge of ignominy and their victory their shame { The winners in the competition of to-day are those who have done most to increase the general wealth and Welfare. The losers, those who have failed to win the prizes, are not the victims of the winners, but those whose in- terest, together with the general interest, has been served by them better than they them- selves could have served it. They are actually better off, because a higher ability than theirs was developed in the race, seeing that this ability redounded wholly to the common in- terest. The badges of honour and rewards of rank and oflice, which are the tangible evidence of success won in the modern com- petitive struggle, are but expressions of the love and gratitude of the people to those who have proved themselves their most devoted and efficient servants and benefactors." EQUALITY 165 "It strikes me," I said, "so far as you have gone, tliat if some one had been em- ployed to draw up a list of the worst and weakest aspects of private capitalism, he could not have done better than to select the features of the system on which its chamiuons seemed to have based their objec- tions to a change." Objection that Equality would Discouragb inderendence and originality "That is an impression," said the doctor, "which you will find confirmed as we take up the next of the arguments on our list against economic equality. It was asserted that to have an economic maintenance on simple and easy terms, guaranteed to all by the nation, would tend to discourage ori- ginality and independence of thought and conduct on the part of the people, and hinder the development of character and individuality. This objection might be re- garded as a branch of the former one, that economic equality would make everybody just alike, or it might be considered a corol- lary of the argument we have just disposed of about the value of competition as a school of character. But so much seems to have been made of it by the opponents of the Revolution that I have set it down separately. "The objection is one which, by the very terms necessary to state it, seems to answer itself, for it amounts to saying that a person will be in danger of losing independence of feeling by gaining independence of position. If I were to ask you what economic condition ^vlas regarded as most favourable to moral and intellectual independence in your day, and most likely to encourage a man to act out himself without fear or favour, what would you say ? " "I should say, of course, that a secure and independent basis of livelihood was that condition." "Of course. Now, what the new order promised to give and guarantee everybody was precisely this absolute independence and security of livelihood. And yet it was argued that the arrangement would be ob- jectionable, as tending to discourage inde- pendence of character. It seems to us that if there is any one particular in which the influence upon humanity of economic equality has been more beneficent than any other, it has been the effect which security of econo- mic position has had to make every one absolute lord of himself, and answerable for his opinions, speech, and conduct to his own conscience only. "That is perhaps enough to say in answer to an objection which, as I remarked, really confutes itself; but the monumental audacity of the defenders of privat-e capitalism in arguing that any other possible system could bo more unfavourable than itself to human dignity and independence tempts a little comment, especially as this is an aspect of the old order on which I do not remember that we have had much talk. As it seema to us, perhaps the most offensive feature of private capitalism, if one may select among so many offensive features, was its effect to make cowardly, time-serving, abject crea- tures of human beings, as a consequence of the dependence for a living of pretty nearly everybody upon some individual or group. " Let us just glance at the spectacle which the old order presented in this respect. Take the women in the first place, half the human race. Because they stood almost universally in a relation of economic dependence, first upon men in general, and next upon some man in particular, they were all their lives in a state of subjection both to the personal dictation of some individual man, and to a set of irksome and mind-benumbing conven- tions representing traditional standards of opinion as to their proper conduct fixed in accordance with the masculine sentiment. But if the women had no independence at all, the men were not so very much better off. Of the masculine half of the world, the greater pait were hirelings dependent for their living upon the favour of employers, and having the most direct interest to con- form so far as possible in opinions and con- duct to the prejudices of their masters, and, when they could not conform, to be silent. Look at your secret ballot laws. You thought them absolutely necessary in order to enable working-men to vote freely. What a confes- sion is that fact of the universal intimidation of the employed by the employer ! Next there were the business men, who held themselves above the working-men. ' I mean the trades- men, who sought a living by persuading the people to buy of them. But here our quest of independence is even more hopeless than among the working-men, for, in order to be successful in attracting the custom of those whom they cringingly styled their patrons, it was necessary for the merchant to be all things to all men, and to make an art of obsequiousness. "Let us look yet higher. We may surely expect to find independence of thought and speech among the learned classes in the so- called liberal professions if nowhere else. Let us see how our inquiry fares there. Take the clerical profession first — that of the religious ministers and teachers. We find that they were economic servants and hirelings either of hierarchies or congregations, and paid to voice the opinions of their employers and no others. Every word that dropped from their lips was carefully weighed lest it should in- dicate a trace of independent thinking, and if it were found, the clergyman risked his living. Take the higher branches of secular teaching in the colleges and professions. There seems to have been some freedom al- 166 EQUALITY lowed in teaching the dead languages; but let the instructor take up some living issue, and handle it in a manner inconsistent with the capitalist interest, and you know well enough what became of him. Finally, take the editorial profession, the writers for the press, who on the whole represented the most influential branch of the learned class. The great nineteenth-century newspaper was a capitalistic enterprise as purely commercial in its principle as a woollen factory, and the editors were no more allowed to write their own opinions than the weavers to choose the patterns they wove. They were employed to advocate the opinions and interests of the capitalists owning the paper and no others. The only respect in which the journalists seem to have differed from the clergy was in the fact that the creeds which the latter were employed to preach were more or less fixed traditions, while those which the editors must preach changed with the ownership of the paper. This. Julian, is the truly exhilarat- ing spectacle of abounding and unfettered originality, of sturdy moral and intellectual independence and rugged individuality, which it was feared by your contemporaries might be endangered by any change in the economic system. We may agree with them that it would have been indeed a pity if any influ- ence should operate to make independence any rarer than it was ; bub they need not have been apprehensive ; it could not be." "Judging from these examples of the sort of argumentative opposition which the revo- lutionists had to meet," I observed, "it strikes me that they must have had a mighty easy time of it." "So far as rational argument waa con- cerned," replied the doctor, "no great revo- lutionary movement ever had to contend with 60 little opposition. The cause of the capi- talists was so utterly bad, either from the point of view of ethics, politics, or economic science, that there was literally nothing that could be said for it that could not be turned against it with greater effect. Silence was the only safe policy for the capitalists, and they would have been glad enough to follow it if the people had not insisted that they should make some sort of a plea to the indict- ment against them. But because the argu- mentative opposition which the revolutionists had to meet was contemptible in quality, it did not follow that their work was an easy one. Their real task — and it was one' for giants — was not to dispose of the arguments against their cause, but to overcome the moral and intellectual inertia of the masses, and rouse them to do just a little clear think- ing for themselves. Political Coeruption as an Objection to Nationalising Industry "The next objection — there are only two or three more worth mentioning— is directed not so much against economic equality in itself as against the fitness of the machinery by which the new industrial system was to be carried on. The extension of popular government over industry and commerce in- volved, of course, the substitution of public and political administration on a large scale for the previous irresponsible control of pri- vate capitalists. Now, as I need not tell you, the Government of the United States — muni- cipal, State, and National — in the last third of the nineteenth century had become very corrupt. It was argued that to entrust any additional functions to Governments so cor- I'upt would be nothing short of madness." "Ah!" I exclaimed, "that is perhaps the rational objection we have been waiting for. I am sure it is one that would have weighed heavily with me, for the corruption of our governmental system smelled to heaven." " There is no doubt," said the doctor, "that there was a great deal of political cor- ruption, and that it was a very bad thing; but we must look a little deeper than these objectors did to see the true bearing of this fact on the propriety of nationalising in- dustry. "An instance of political corruption was one where the public servant abused his trust by using the administration under his control for purposes of private gain instead of solely for the public interest — that is to say, he managed his public trust just as if it were his private business, and tried to make a profit out of it. A great outcry was made, and very properly, when any such conduct was suspected ; and therefore the corrupt oflacers operated under great difficulties, and were in constant danger of detection and punishment. Consequently, even in the worst Governments of your period the mass of busi- ness was honestly conducted, as it professed to be, in the public interest, comparatively few and occasional transactions being affected by corrupt influences. ""On the other hand, what were the theory and practice pursued by the capitalists in carrying on the economic machinery which were under their control ? They did not profess to act in the public interest, or to have any regard for it. The avowed object of their whole policy was so to use the machinery of their position as to make the greatest personal gains possible for them- selves out of the community. That is to say, the use of his control of the public machinery for his personal gain — which on the part of the public official was denounced and punished as a crime, and for the greater part prevented by public vigilance — was the avowed policy of the capitalist. It was the pride of the public official that he left oflice as poor as when he entered it, but it was the boast of the capitalist that he made a fortune out of the opportunities of his posi- tion. In the case of the capitalist these gains were not called corrupt, as they were EQUALITY 167 when made by public ofTniiils in tlu> (lit charge of public business. They were culled profits, and regarded as legitimate ; but the practical point to consider as to the results of the two systems was that these profits cost the people they came out of just as much as if they had been called political plunder. " And yet these wise men in Kenloe's col- lection taught the people, and somebody must have listened to them, that because in some instances public officials succeeded in spite of all precautions in using the public adminis- tration for their own gain, it would not be safe to put any more public interests under public administration, but would be safer to leave them to private capitalists, who frankly proposed as their regular policy just what the public ofhcials were punished for whenever caiight doing — namely, taking advantage of the opportunities of their position to enrich themselves at public expense. It was pre- cisely as if the owner of an estate, finding it difficult to secure stewards who were per- fectly faithful, should be counselled to pro- tect himself by putting his affairs in the hands of professional thieves." "You mean," I said, "that political cor- ruption merely meant the occasional appli- cation to the public administration of the profit-seeking principle on which all private business was conducted." " Certainly. A case of corruption in office was simply a case where the public official forgot his oath and for the occasion took a business-like view of the opportunities of his position^that is to say, when the public official fell from grace he only fell to the normal level on which all private business was admittedly conducted. It is simply as- tonishing, Julian, how completely your con- temporaries overlooked this obvious fact. Of course, it was highly proper that they shouhl be extremely critical of the conduct of their public officials ; but it is unaccountable that they should fail to see that the profits of private capitalists came out of the com- munity's pockets just as certainly as did the stealings of dishonest officials, and that even in the most corrupt public departments the stealings represented a far less percentage than would have been taken as profits if the same business were dofte for the public by capi- talists. "80 much for the precious argument that, because some officials sometimes took profits of the people, it would be more econ.omical to leave their business in the hands of those who would systematically do so ! But, of course, although the public conduct of busi- ness, even if it were marked with a certain amount of corruption, would still be more economical for the community than leaving it under the profit sj'stem, yet no self- respecting community would wish to tolerate any public corruption at all, and need not, if only the people would exercise vigilance. Now, what will compel the people to exercise vigilance as to the public administration? The closeness with *.lii(li we follow the course of an agent depends on the import- ance of the interests put in his hands. Cor- ruption has always thriven in political de- partments in which the mass of the people have felt little direct concern. Place uncler public administration vital concerns of the comniunity touching their welfare daily at many points, and there will be no further lack of vigilance. Had they been wiser, the people who objected to the governmental assumption of new economic functions on account of existing political corruption would have advocated precisely that policy as the specific cure for the evil. "A reason why these objectors seem to have been especially short-sighted is the fact that by all odds the most serious form which political corruption took in America at that day was the bribery of legislators by private capitalists and coi-porations in order to obtain franchises and privileges. In comparison with this abuse, peculation or bribery of crude direct sorts were of little extent or importance. Now, the immediate and ex- press effect of the governmental assumption of economic businesses would be, so far as it went, to dry up this source of corruption, for it was precisely this class of capitalist undertakings which the revolutionists pro- posed first to bring under public control. "Of course, this objection was directed only against the new order while in process of introduction. With its complete estab- lishment the very possibility of corruption would disappear with the law of absolute uniformity governing all incomes." "Worse and worse," I exclaimed. "What is the use of going further? " "Patience," said the doctor. "Let us com- plete the subject while we are on it. There are only a couple more of the objections that have shape enough to admit of being stated. Objection that a Nationalised Industrial System would threaten Liberty "Ths first of them." pursued the doctor, "was the argument, that such an extension of the functions of public administration as nationalised industries involved would lodge a power in the hands of the Government, even though it were the people's own govern- ment, that would be dangerous to their liber- ties. "All the plausibility there was to thii objection rested on the tacit assumption that the people in their industrial relations had under private capitalism been free and un- constrained and subject to no form of autho- rity. But what assumption could have been more regardless of facts than this? Under private capitalism the entire scheme of in- dustry and commerce, involving the employ- ment and livelihood of everybody, was sub- ject to the despotic and irresponsible govern- 168 EQUALITY ment of private masters. The very demand for nationalising industry has resulted wholly from the suft'erings of the people under the yoke of the capitalists. "In 1776 the Americans overthrew the British royal Governm'ent in the colonies, and established their own in its place. Suppose at that time the king had sent an embassy to warn the American people that by assum- ing these new functions of government which formerly had been performed for them by him they were endangering their liberty. Such an embassy would, of course, have been laughed at. If any reply had been thought needful, it would have been pointed out that -the Americans were not establishing over themselves any new government, but were substituting a government of their own, acting in their own interests, for the govern- ment of others conducted in an indifferent or hostile interest. Now, that was precisely what nationalising industry meant. The question was. Given the necessity of some %ort of regulation and direction of the indus- trial system, whether it would tend more to .Iberty for the people to leave that power to irresponsible persons with hostile interests, or to exercise it themselves through respon- sible agents ? Could there conceivably be but one answer to that question ? "And yet it seems that a noted philosopher of the period, in a tract which has come down to us, undertook to demonstrate that if the people perfected the democratic sys- tem by assuming control of industry in the public interest, they would presently fall into a state of slavery which would cause them to sigh for the days of Nero and Caligula. I wish we had that philosopher here, that we might ask him Bow, in accordance with any observed laws of human nature, slavery was going to come about as the result of a system aiming to establish and perpetuate a more perfect degree of equality, intellectual as well as material, than had ever been known. Did he fancy that the people would deliberately and maliciously impose a yoke upon themselves, or did E'e apprehend that some usurper would get hold of the social machinery and use it to reduce the people to servitude ? But what usurper from the be- ginning ever essayed a task so hopeless as the subversion of a state in which there were no classes or interests to set against one another, a state in which there was no aristocracy, and no populace, a state the stability of which represented the equal and entire stake in life of every human being in it ? Truly it would seem that people who conceived the subver- sion of such a republic possible ought to have lost no time in chaining down the Pyramids, lest they, too, defying ordinary laws of Nature, should incontinently turn upon their tops. 'But let us leave the dead to bury their dead, and consider how the nationalisation of industry actually did affect the bnaring of government upon the people. If the amount of governmental machinery — that is, the amount of regulating, controlling, assigning, and directing under the public management of industry — had continued to be just the same as it was under the private administra- tion of the capitalists, the fact that it was now the people's government, managing every- thing in the people's interest under responsi- bility to the people, instead of an irresponsi- ble tyranny seeking its own interest, would of course make an absolute difference in the whole character and effect of the system and make it vastly more tolerable. But not merely did the nationalisation of industry give a wholly new character and purpose to the economic administration, but it also greatly diminished the net amount of govern- ing necessary to carry it on. This resulted naturally from the unity of system with the consequent co-ordination and interworking of all the parts which took the place of the former thousand-headed management follow- ing as many different and conflicting lines of interest, each a law to itself. To the workers the difference was as if they had passed out from under the capricious personal domination of innumerable petty despots to a government of laws and principles so simple and sys- tematic that the sense of being subject to per- sonal authority was gone. But to realise fully how strongly this argu- ment of too much government directed against the system of nationalised industry partook of the boomerang quality of the previous objections, we must look on to the later effects which the social justice of the new order would naturally have to render super- fluous well-nigh the whole machinery of government as previously conducted. The m.ain, often almost sole, business of govern- ments in your day was the protection of property and person against criminals, a sys- tem involving a vast amount of interference with the innocent. This function of the State has now become almost obsolete. There are no more any disputes about property, any thefts of property, or any need of protecting property. Everybody has all he needs and as much as anybody else. In former ages a great number of crimes have resulted from the passions of love and jealousy. They were consequences of the idea derived from imme- morial barbarism that men and women ntight acquire sexual proprietorship in one another, to be maintained and asserted against the [■will of the person. Such crimes ceased to be known after the first generation had grown up under the absolute sexual autonomy and independence which followed from economic equality. There being no lower classes now which upper classes feel it their duty to bring up in the way they should go, in spite of themselves, all sorts of at- tempts to regulate personal behaviour in self- regarding matters bv sumptuary legislation -have long ago ceased. A government in tha EQUALITY 169 sense of a co-ordinating directory of our associated industries we shall always need, but that is practically all the government wo have now. It used to be a dream of philo- sophers that the world would some time enjoy such a reign of reason and justice that men would be able to live together without laws. That condition, so far as concerns punitive and coercive regulations, we have practically attained. As to compulsory laws, we might be said to live almost in a stat« of anarchy. "There is, as I explained to you in the Labour Exchange the other morning, no compulsion, in the end, even as to the per- formance of the universal duty of public service. We only insist that those who finally refuse to do their part toward main- taining the social welfare shall not be par- takers of it, but shall resort by themselves and provide for themselves. The Malthusian Objection. " And now we come to the last objection on my list. It is entirely different in charac- ter from any of the others. It does not deny that economic equality would be prac- ticable or desirable, or assert that the machinery would work badly. It admits that the system would prove a triumphant success in raising human welfare to an unprecedented point and making the world an incomparably vnore agreeable place to live in. It was indeed the conceded success of the plan which was made the basis of this objection to it." " That must be a curious sort of objection," I said. "Let us hear about it." " The objectors put it in this way : ' Let us suppose,' they said, ' that poverty and all the baneful influences upon life and health that follow in its train are abolished, and all live out their natural span of life. Every- body being assured of maintenance for self and children, no motive of prudence would be operative to restrict the number of offspring. Other things being equal, these conditions would mean a much faster increase of popula- tion than ever before known, and ultimately an overcrowding of the earth and a pressure on the food supply, unless indeed we suppose new and indefinite food sources to be found.' " " I do not see why it might not be reason- able to anticipate such a result," I observed, " other things being equal." "Other things being equal," replied the doctor, " such a result might be anticipated. But other things would not be equal, but so different that their influence could be de- pended on to prevent any such result." "What are the other things that would not be equal? " " Well, the first would be the diffusion of education, culture, and general refinement. Tell me, were the families of the well-to-do and cultured class in the America of your day, as a whole, large?" "Quite the contrary. They did not, as a rule, more than replace themselves. ' "Still, they were not prevented by any motive of prudence from increasing their numbers. They occupied in this respect as independent a position as families do under the present order of economic equality and guaranteed maintenance. Did it never occur to you why the families of the well-to do and cultured in your day were not larger?" "Doubtless," I said, "it v/as on account of the fact that in proportion as culture and refinement opened intellectual and aesthetic fields of interest, the impulses of crude animalism played less important parts in life. Then, too, in proportion as families were refined the woman ceased to be the mere sexual slave of the husband, and her v.ishes as to such matters were considered." " Quite so. The reflection you have sug- gested is enough to indicate the fallacy of the whole Malthusian theory of the increase of population on which this objection to better social conditions was founded. Malthus, as you know, held that population tended to increase faster than means of subsistence, and therefore that poverty and the tremendous wastes of life it stood for were absolutely necessary in order to prevent the world from starving to death by overcrowding. Of course, this doctrine v.'as enormously popular with the rich and learned class, who were responsible for the world's misery. They naturally were delighted to be assured that their indifference to the woes of the poor, and even their positive agency in multiplying those woes, were providentially overruled for good, so as to be really rather praiseworthy than otherwise. The Malthus doctrine also was very convenient as a means of turning the tables on reformers who proposed to abolish poverty, by proving that, instead of benefiting mankind, their reforms would only make matters worse in the end by over- crowding the earth and starving everybody. By means of the Malthus doctrine, the meanest man who ever ground the face of the poor had no difficulty in showing that he was really a slightly disguised benefactor of the race, while the philanthropist was an injurious fellow. "This prodigious convenience of Mal- thusianism as an excuse for things as they were, furnishes the explanation for the other- wise incomprehensible vogue of so absurd a theory. That absurdity consists in the fact that, while laying such stress on the direct effects of poverty and all the ills it stands for to destroy life, it utterly failed to allow for the far greater influence which the bru- talising circumstances of poverty exerted to promote the reckless multiplication of the species. Poverty, with all its deadly conse- quences, slew its millions, but only after having, by means of its brutalising condi- tions, promoted the reckless reproduction of tens of millions— that is to say, the Malthus 170 EQUALITY doctrine recognised only the secondary effects of misery and degradation in reducing popula- tion, and wholly overlooked their far more important primary effect in multiplying it. That was its fatal fallacy. " It was a fallacy the more inexcusable because Malthus and all his followers were surrounded by a society the conditions of which absolutely refuted their theory. They had only to open^ their eyes to see that wherever the poverty and squalor chiefly abounded, which they vaunted as such valu- able checks to population, humankind multi- plied like rabbits, while in proportion as the economic level of a class was raised its prolific quality declined. What corollary from this fact of universal observation could be more obvious than that the way to prevent reckless overpopulation was to raise, not to depress, the economip status of the mass, with all the general improvement in well-being which that implied ? How long do you sup- pose such an absurdly fundamental fallacy as underlay the Malthus theory would have remained unexposed if Malthus had been a revolutionist instead of a champion and defender of capitalism? " But let Malthus go. While the low birth- rate among the cultured classes — whose con- dition waB the prototype of the general con- dition under economic equality — was refuta- tion enough of the overpopulation objection, yet there is another and far more conclusive answer, the full force of which remains to be brought out. You said a few moments ago that one reason why the birth-rate was so moderate among the cultured classes was the fact that in that class the wishes of women were more considered than in the lower classes. The necessary effect of economic equality between the sexes would mean, how- ever, that, instead of being more or less considered, the wishes of women in all matters touching the subject we are discuss- ing would be final and absolute. Previous to the establishment of economic equality by the great Revolution the non-child-bearing sex was the sex which determined the ques- tion of child-bearing, and the natural con- sequence was the possibility of a Malthus and his doctrine. Nature has provided in the distress and inconvenience of the maternal function a sufficient check upon its abuse, just as she has in regard to all the other natural functions. But, in order that Nature's check should be properly operative, it is necessary that the worsen through whose wills it must operate, if at all, should be absolutely free agents in the disposition of themselves, and the necessary condition of that free agency is economic independence. That secured, while we may be sure that the maternal instinct will for ever prevent the race from dying out, the world will be equally little in danger of being recklessly over- crowded." R. CLAY AND SONS. LTD., BREAD ST. HILL, V..r., AND BUNOAT, StTFFOLK. -ARTHUR ALLBDfl-^ .*, ;,l?sr' PIANO IF you are thinking of buying a Piano you cannot afford to ignore the claims of the ARTHUR ALLISON. It is the musician's ideal Piano, rich in those qualities which make for tonal beauty and great durability. 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