Equality Read online

  CHAPTER XXXIII.

  SEVERAL IMPORTANT MATTERS OVERLOOKED.

  After dinner the doctor said that he had an excursion to suggest for theafternoon.

  "It has often occurred to me," he went on, "that when you shall go outinto the world and become familiar with its features by your ownobservation, you will, in looking back on these preparatory lessons Ihave tried to give you, form a very poor impression of my talent as apedagogue. I am very much dissatisfied myself with the method in which Ihave developed the subject, which, instead of having been philosophicallyconceived as a plan of instruction, has been merely a series of randomtalks, guided rather by your own curiosity than any scheme on my part."

  "I am very thankful, my dear friend and teacher," I replied, "that youhave spared me the philosophical method. Without boasting that I haveacquired so soon a complete understanding of your modern system, I amvery 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 ofmy curiosity instead of tying me to the tailboard of a method."

  "I should certainly like to believe," said the doctor, "that our talkshave been as instructive to you as they have been delightful to me, andif I have made mistakes it should be remembered that perhaps noinstructor ever had or is likely to have a task quite so large as mine,or one so unexpectedly thrust upon him, or, finally, one which, being solarge, the natural curiosity of his pupil compelled him to cover in soshort a time."

  "But you were speaking of an excursion for this afternoon."

  "Yes," said the doctor. "It is a suggestion in the line of an attempt toremedy some few of my too probable omissions of important things intrying to acquaint you with how we live now. What do you say tochartering an air car this afternoon for the purpose of taking abird's-eye view of the city and environs, and seeing what its variousaspects may suggest in the way of features of present-day civilizationwhich we have not touched upon?"

  The idea struck me as admirable, and we at once proceeded to put it inexecution.

  * * * * *

  In these brief and fragmentary reminiscences of my first experiences inthe modern world it is, of course, impossible that I should refer to onein a hundred of the startling things which happened to me. Still, evenwith that limitation, it may seem strange to my readers that I have nothad more to say of the wonder excited in my mind by the number andcharacter of the great mechanical inventions and applications unknown inmy day, which contribute to the material fabric and actuate the mechanismof your civilization. For example, although this was very far from beingmy first air trip, I do not think that I have before referred to a sortof experience which, to a representative of the last century, mustnaturally have been nothing less than astounding. I can only say, by wayof explanation of this seeming indifference to the mechanical wonders ofthis age, that had they been ten times more marvelous, they would stillhave impressed me with infinitely less astonishment than the moralrevolution illustrated by your new social order.

  This, I am sure, is what would be the experience of any man of my timeunder my circumstances. The march of scientific discovery and mechanicalinvention during the last half of the nineteenth century had already beenso great and was proceeding so rapidly that we were prepared to expectalmost any amount of development in the same lines in the future. Yoursubmarine shipping we had distinctly anticipated and even partiallyrealized. The discovery of the electrical powers had made almost anymechanical conception seem possible. As to navigation of the air, wefully expected that would be somehow successfully solved by ourgrandchildren if not by our children. If, indeed, I had not found mensailing the air I should have been distinctly disappointed.

  But while we were prepared to expect well-nigh anything of man'sintellectual development and the perfecting of his mastery over thematerial world, we were utterly skeptical as to the possibility of anylarge moral improvement on his part. As a moral being, we believed thathe had got his growth, as the saying was, and would never in this worldat least attain to a nobler stature. As a philosophical proposition, werecognized as fully as you do that the golden rule would afford the basisof a social life in which every one would be infinitely happier thananybody was in our world, and that the true interest of all would befurthered by establishing such a social order; but we held at the sametime that the moral baseness and self-blinding selfishness of man wouldforever prevent him from realizing such an ideal. In vain, had he beenendowed with a godlike intellect; it would not avail him for any of thehigher uses of life, for an ineradicable moral perverseness would alwayshinder him from doing as well as he knew and hold him in hopelesssubjection to the basest and most suicidal impulses of his nature.

  "Impossible; it is against human nature!" was the cry which met and forthe most part overbore and silenced every prophet or teacher who soughtto rouse the world to discontent with the reign of chaos and awaken faithin the possibility of a kingdom of God on earth.

  Is it any wonder, then, that one like me, bred in that atmosphere ofmoral despair, should pass over with comparatively little attention themiraculous material achievements of this age, to study with ever-growingawe 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 thegreatest infidelity to God and man which the human race ever fell into,but, alas! it was not the infidelity which the churches condemned, butrather a sort which their teachings of man's hopeless depravity werecalculated to implant and confirm.

  This very matter of air navigation of which I was speaking suggests astriking illustration of the strange combination on the part of mycontemporaries of unlimited faith in man's material progress with totalunbelief in his moral possibilities. As I have said, we fully expectedthat posterity would achieve air navigation, but the application of theart most discussed was its use in war to drop dynamite bombs in the midstof crowded cities. Try to realize that if you can. Even Tennyson, in hisvision of the future, saw nothing more. You remember how he

  Heard the heavens fill with shouting, And there rained a ghastly dew From the nations airy navies, Grappling in the central blue.

  HOW THE PEOPLE HOLD THE REINS.

  "And now," said the doctor, as he checked the rise of our car at analtitude of about one thousand feet, "let us attend to our lesson. Whatdo you see down there to suggest a question?"

  "Well, to begin with," I said, as the dome of the Statehouse caught myeye, "what on earth have you stuck up there? It looks for all the worldlike one of those self-steering windmills the farmers in my day used topump up water with. Surely that is an odd sort of ornament for a publicbuilding."

  "It is not intended as an ornament, but a symbol," replied the doctor."It represents the modern ideal of a proper system of government. Themill stands for the machinery of administration, the wind that drives itsymbolizes the public will, and the rudder that always keeps the vane ofthe mill before the wind, however suddenly or completely the wind maychange, stands for the method by which the administration is kept at alltimes responsive and obedient to every mandate of the people, though itbe but a breath.

  "I have talked to you so much on that subject that I need enlarge nofurther on the impossibility of having any popular government worthy ofthe name which is not based upon the economic equality of the citizenswith its implications and consequences. No constitutional devices orcleverness of parliamentary machinery could have possibly made populargovernment anything but a farce, so long as the private economic interestof the citizen was distinct from and opposed to the public interest, andthe so-called sovereign people ate their bread from the hand ofcapitalists. Given, on the other hand, economic unity of privateinterests with public interest, the complete independence of everyindividual on every other, and universal culture to cap all, and noimperfection of administrative machinery could prevent the governmentfrom being a good one. Nevertheless, we have improved the machinery asmuch as we have the motive force. You used to vote o
nce a year, or in twoyears, or in six years, as the case might be, for those who were to ruleover you till the next election, and those rulers, from the moment oftheir election to the term of their offices, were as irresponsible asczars. They were far more so, indeed, for the czar at least had a suprememotive to leave his inheritance unimpaired to his son, while theseelected tyrants had no interest except in making the most they could outof their power while they held it.

  "It appears to us that it is an axiom of democratic government that powershould never be delegated irrevocably for an hour, but should always besubject to recall by the delegating power. Public officials are nowadayschosen for a term as a matter of convenience, but it is not a termpositive. They are liable to have their powers revoked at any moment bythe vote of their principals; neither is any measure of more than merelyroutine character ever passed by a representative body without referenceback to the people. The vote of no delegate upon any important measurecan stand until his principals--or constituents, as you used to callthem--have had the opportunity to cancel it. An elected agent of thepeople who offended the sentiment of the electors would be displaced, andhis act repudiated the next day. You may infer that under this system theagent is solicitous to keep in contact with his principals. Not only dothese precautions exist against irresponsible legislation, but theoriginal proposition of measures comes from the people more often thanfrom their representatives.

  "So complete through our telephone system has the most complicated sortof voting become, that the entire nation is organized so as to be able toproceed almost like one parliament if needful. Our representative bodies,corresponding to your former Congresses, Legislatures, and Parliaments,are under this system reduced to the exercise of the functions of whatyou used to call congressional committees. The people not only nominallybut actually govern. We have a democracy in fact.

  "We take pains to exercise this direct and constant supervision of ouraffairs not because we suspect or fear our elected agents. Under oursystem of indefeasible, unchangeable, economic equality there is nomotive or opportunity for venality. There is no motive for doing evilthat could be for a moment set against the overwhelming motive ofdeserving the public esteem, which is indeed the only possible objectthat nowadays could induce any one to accept office. All our vitalinterests are secured beyond disturbance by the very framework ofsociety. We could safely turn over to a selected body of citizens themanagement of the public affairs for their lifetime. The reason we do notis that we enjoy the exhilaration of conducting the government of affairsdirectly. You might compare us to a wealthy man of your day who, thoughhaving in his service any number of expert coachmen, preferred to handlethe reins himself for the pleasure of it. You used to vote perhaps once ayear, taking five minutes for it, and grudging the time at that as lostfrom your private business, the pursuit of which you called, I believe,'the main chance.' Our private business is the public business, and wehave no other of importance. Our 'main chance' is the public welfare, andwe have no other chance. We vote a hundred times perhaps in a year, onall manner of questions, from the temperature of the public baths or theplan to be selected for a public building, to the greatest questions ofthe world union, and find the exercise at once as exhilarating as it isin the highest sense educational.

  "And now, Julian, look down again and see if you do not find some otherfeature of the scene to hang a question on."

  THE LITTLE WARS AND THE GREAT WAR.

  "I observe," I said, "that the harbor forts are still there. I supposeyou retain them, like the specimen tenement houses, as historicalevidences of the barbarism of your ancestors, my contemporaries."

  "You must not be offended," said the doctor, "if I say that we reallyhave to keep a full assortment of such exhibits, for fear the childrenshould flatly refuse to believe the accounts the books give of theunaccountable antics of their great-grandfathers."

  "The guarantee of international peace which the world union hasbrought," I said, "must surely be regarded by your people as one of themost signal achievements of the new order, and yet it strikes me I haveheard you say very little about it."

  "Of course," said the doctor, "it is a great thing in itself, but soincomparably less important than the abolition of the economic warbetween man and man that we regard it as merely incidental to the latter.Nothing is much more astonishing about the mental operations of yourcontemporaries than the fuss they made about the cruelty of youroccasional international wars while seemingly oblivious to the horrors ofthe battle for existence in which you all were perpetually involved. Fromour point of view, your wars, while of course very foolish, werecomparatively humane and altogether petty exhibitions as contrastedwith the fratricidal economic struggle. In the wars only men tookpart--strong, selected men, comprising but a very small part of the totalpopulation. There were no women, no children, no old people, no cripplesallowed to go to war. The wounded were carefully looked after, whether byfriends or foes, and nursed back to health. The rules of war forbadeunnecessary cruelty, and at any time an honorable surrender, with goodtreatment, was open to the beaten. The battles generally took place onthe frontiers, out of sight and sound of the masses. Wars were also veryrare, often not one in a generation. Finally, the sentiments appealedto in international conflicts were, as a rule, those of courage andself-devotion. Often, indeed generally, the causes of the wars wereunworthy of the sentiments of self-devotion which the fighting calledout, but the sentiments themselves belonged to the noblest order.

  "Compare with warfare of this character the conditions of the economicstruggle for existence. That was a war in which not merely small selectedbodies of combatants took part, but one in which the entire population ofevery country, excepting the inconsiderable groups of the rich, wereforcibly enlisted and compelled to serve. Not only did women, children,the aged and crippled have to participate in it, but the weaker thecombatants the harder the conditions under which they must contend. Itwas a war in which there was no help for the wounded, no quarter for thevanquished. It was a war not on far frontiers, but in every city, everystreet, and every house, and its wounded, broken, and dying victims layunderfoot everywhere and shocked the eye in every direction that it mightglance with some new form of misery. The ear could not escape thelamentations of the stricken and their vain cries for pity. And this warcame not once or twice in a century, lasting for a few red weeks ormonths or years, and giving way again to peace, as did the battles of thesoldiers, but was perennial and perpetual, truceless, lifelong. Finally,it was a war which neither appealed to nor developed any noble, anygenerous, any honorable sentiment, but, on the contrary, set a constantpremium on the meanest, falsest, and most cruel propensities of humannature.

  "As we look back upon your era, the sort of fighting those old forts downthere stood for seems almost noble and barely tragical at all, ascompared with the awful spectacle of the struggle for existence.

  "We even are able to sympathize with the declaration of some of theprofessional soldiers of your age that occasional wars, with theirappeals, however false, to the generous and self-devoting passions, wereabsolutely necessary to prevent your society, otherwise so utterly sordidand selfish in its ideals, from dissolving into absolute putrescence."

  "It is to be feared," I was moved to observe, "that posterity has notbuilt so high a monument to the promoters of the universal peacesocieties of my day as they expected."

  "They were well meaning enough so far as they saw, no doubt," said thedoctor, "but seem to have been a dreadfully short-sighted and purblindset of people. Their efforts to stop wars between nations, whiletranquilly ignoring the world-wide economic struggle for existence whichcost more lives and suffering in any one month than did the internationalwars of a generation, was a most striking case of straining at a gnat andswallowing a camel.

  "As to the gain to humanity which has come from the abolition of all waror possibility of war between nations of to-day, it seems to us toconsist not so much in the mere prevention of actual bloodshed as in thedying out of th
e old jealousies and rancors which used to embitterpeoples against one another almost as much in peace as in war, and thegrowth in their stead of a fraternal sympathy and mutual good will,unconscious of any barrier of race or country."

  THE OLD PATRIOTISM AND THE NEW.

  As the doctor was speaking, the waving folds of a flag floating far belowcaught my eye. It was the Star-Spangled Banner. My heart leaped at thesight and my eyes grew moist.

  "Ah!" I exclaimed, "it is Old Glory!" for so it had been a custom to callthe flag in the days of the civil war and after.

  "Yes," replied my companion, as his eyes followed my gaze, "but it wearsa new glory now, because nowhere in the land it floats over is therefound a human being oppressed or suffering any want that human aid canrelieve.

  "The Americans of your day," he continued, "were extremely patrioticafter their fashion, but the difference between the old and the newpatriotism is so great that it scarcely seems like the same sentiment. Inyour day and ever before, the emotions and associations of the flag werechiefly of the martial sort. Self-devotion to the nation in war withother nations was the idea most commonly conveyed by the word'patriotism' and its derivatives. Of course, that must be so in ages whenthe nations had constantly to stand ready to fight one another for theirexistence. But the result was that the sentiment of national solidaritywas arrayed against the sentiment of human solidarity. A lesser socialenthusiasm was set in opposition to a greater, and the result wasnecessarily full of moral contradictions. Too often what was called loveof country might better have been described as hate and jealousy of othercountries, for no better reason than that there were other, and bigotedprejudices against foreign ideas and institutions--often far better thandomestic ones--for no other reason than that they were foreign. This sortof patriotism was a most potent hindrance for countless ages to theprogress of civilization, opposing to the spread of new ideas barriershigher than mountains, broader than rivers, deeper than seas.

  "The new patriotism is the natural outcome of the new social andinternational conditions which date from the great Revolution. Wars,which were already growing infrequent in your day, were made impossibleby the rise of the world union, and for generations have now beenunknown. The old blood-stained frontiers of the nations have becomescarcely more than delimitations of territory for administrativeconvenience, like the State lines in the American Union. Under thesecircumstances international jealousies, suspicions, animosities, andapprehensions have died a natural death. The anniversaries of battles andtriumphs over other nations, by which the antique patriotism was keptburning, have been long ago forgotten. In a word, patriotism is no longera martial sentiment and is quite without warlike associations. As theflag has lost its former significance as an emblem of outward defiance,it has gained a new meaning as the supreme symbol of internal concord andmutuality; it has become the visible sign of the social solidarity inwhich the welfare of all is equally and impregnably secured. TheAmerican, as he now lifts his eyes to the ensign of the nation, is notreminded of its military prowess as compared with other nations, of itspast triumphs in battle and possible future victories. To him the wavingfolds convey no such suggestions. They recall rather the compact ofbrotherhood in which he stands pledged with all his countrymen mutuallyto safeguard the equal dignity and welfare of each by the might of all.

  "The idea of the old-time patriots was that foreigners were the onlypeople at whose hands the flag could suffer dishonor, and the report ofany lack of etiquette toward it on their part used to excite the peopleto a patriotic frenzy. That sort of feeling would be simplyincomprehensible now. As we look at it, foreigners have no power toinsult the flag, for they have nothing to do with it, nor with what itstands for. Its honor or dishonor must depend upon the people whoseplighted faith one to another it represents, to maintain the socialcontract. To the old-time patriot there was nothing incongruous in thespectacle of the symbol of the national unity floating over citiesreeking with foulest oppressions, full of prostitution, beggary, and densof nameless misery. According to the modern view, the existence of asingle instance in any corner of the land where a citizen had beendeprived of the full enjoyment of equality would turn the flag into aflaunting lie, and the people would demand with indignation that itshould be hauled down and not raised again till the wrong was remedied."

  "Truly," I said, "the new glory which Old Glory wears is a greater thanthe old glory."

  MORE FOREIGN TRAVEL BUT LESS FOREIGN TRADE.

  As we had talked, the doctor had allowed our car to drift before thewesterly breeze till now we were over the harbor, and I was moved toexclaim at the scanty array of shipping it contained.

  "It does not seem to me," I said, "that there are more vessels here thanin my day, much less the great fleets one might expect to see after acentury's development in population and resources."

  "In point of fact," said the doctor, "the new order has tended todecrease the volume of foreign trade, though on the other hand there is athousandfold more foreign travel for instruction and pleasure."

  "In just what way," I asked, "did the new order tend to decreaseexchanges with foreign countries?"

  "In two ways," replied the doctor. "In the first place, as you know, theprofit idea is now abolished in foreign trade as well as in domesticdistribution. The International Council supervises all exchanges betweennations, and the price of any product exported by one nation to anothermust not be more than that at which the exporting nation provides its ownpeople with the same. Consequently there is no reason why a nation shouldcare to produce goods for export unless and in so far as it needs foractual consumption products of another country which it can not itself sowell produce.

  "Another yet more potent effect of the new order in limiting foreignexchange is the general equalization of all nations which has long agocome about as to intelligence and the knowledge and practice of sciencesand arts. A nation of to-day would be humiliated to have to import anycommodity which insuperable natural conditions did not prevent theproduction of at home. It is consequently to such productions thatcommerce is now limited, and the list of them grows ever shorter as withthe progress of invention man's conquest of Nature proceeds. As to theold advantage of coal-producing countries in manufacturing, thatdisappeared nearly a century ago with the great discoveries which madethe unlimited development of electrical power practically costless.

  "But you should understand that it is not merely on economic grounds orfor self-esteem's sake that the various peoples desire to do everythingpossible for themselves rather than depend on people at a distance. It isquite as much for the education and mind-awakening influence of adiversified industrial system within a small space. It is our policy, sofar as it can be economically carried out in the grouping of industries,not only to make the system of each nation complete, but so to group thevarious industries within each particular country that every considerabledistrict shall present within its own limits a sort of microcosm of theindustrial world. We were speaking of that, you may remember, the othermorning, in the Labor Exchange."

  THE MODERN DOCTOR'S EASY TASK.

  The doctor had some time before reversed our course, and we were nowmoving westward over the city.

  "What is that building which we are just passing over that has so muchglass about it?" I asked.

  "That is one of the sanitariums," replied the doctor, "which people go towho are in bad health and do not wish to change their climate, as wethink persons in serious chronic ill health ought to do and as all cannow do if they desire. In these buildings everything is as absolutelyadapted to the condition of the patient as if he were for the time beingin a world in which his disease were the normal type."

  "Doubtless there have been great improvements in all matters relating toyour profession--medicine, hygiene, surgery, and the rest--since my day."

  "Yes," replied the doctor, "there have been great improvements in twoways--negative and positive--and the more important of the two is perhapsthe negative way, consisting in the disappearanc
e of conditions inimicalto health, which physicians formerly had to combat with little chance ofsuccess in many cases. For example, it is now two full generations sincethe guarantee of equal maintenance for all placed women in a position ofeconomic independence and consequent complete control of their relationsto men. You will readily understand how, as one result of this, the taintof syphilis has been long since eliminated from the blood of the race.The universal prevalence now for three generations of the most cleanlyand refined conditions of housing, clothing, heating, and livinggenerally, with the best treatment available for all in case of sickness,have practically--indeed I may say completely--put an end to the zymoticand other contagious diseases. To complete the story, add to theseimprovements in the hygienic conditions of the people the systematic anduniversal physical culture which is a part of the training of youth, andthen as a crowning consideration think of the effect of the physicalrehabilitation--you might almost call it the second creation of woman ina bodily sense--which has purified and energized the stream of life atits source."

  "Really, doctor, I should say that, without going further, you havefairly reasoned your profession out of its occupation."

  "You may well say so," replied the doctor. "The progress of invention andimprovement since your day has several times over improved the doctorsout of their former occupations, just as it has every other sort ofworkers, but only to open new and higher fields of finer work.

  "Perhaps," my companion resumed, "a more important negative factor in theimprovement in medical and hygienic conditions than any I have mentionedis the fact that people are no longer in the state of ignorance as totheir own bodies that they seem formerly to have been. The progress ofknowledge in that respect has kept pace with the march of universalculture. It is evident from what we read that even the cultured classesin your day thought it no shame to be wholly uninformed as to physiologyand the ordinary conditions of health and disease. They appear to haveleft their physical interests to the doctors, with much the same spiritof cynical resignation with which they turned over their souls to thecare of the clergy. Nowadays a system of education would be thoughtfarcical which did not impart a sufficient knowledge of the generalprinciples of physiology, hygiene, and medicine to enable a person totreat any ordinary physical disturbance without recourse to a physician.It is perhaps not too much to say that everybody nowadays knows as muchabout the treatment of disease as a large proportion of the members ofthe medical profession did in your time. As you may readily suppose, thisis a situation which, even apart from the general improvement in health,would enable the people to get on with one physician where a scoreformerly found business. We doctors are merely specialists and experts onsubjects that everybody is supposed to be well grounded in. When we arecalled in, it is really only in consultation, to use a phrase of theprofession in your day, the other parties being the patient and hisfriends.

  "But of all the factors in the advance of medical science, one of themost important has been the disappearance of sectarianism, resultinglargely from the same causes, moral and economic, which banished it fromreligion. You will scarcely need to be reminded that in your daymedicine, next to theology, suffered most of all branches of knowledgefrom the benumbing influence of dogmatic schools. There seems to havebeen well-nigh as much bigotry as to the science of curing the body asthe soul, and its influence to discourage original thought and retardprogress was much the same in one field as the other.

  "There are really no conditions to limit the course of physicians. Themedical education is the fullest possible, but the methods of practiceare left to the doctor and patient. It is assumed that people as culturedas ours are as competent to elect the treatment for their bodies as tochoose that for their souls. The progress in medical science which hasresulted from this complete independence and freedom of initiative on thepart of the physician, stimulated by the criticism and applause of apeople well able to judge of results, has been unprecedented. Not only inthe specific application of the preserving and healing arts haveinnumerable achievements been made and radically new principlesdiscovered, but we have made advances toward a knowledge of the centralmystery of life which in your day it would have been deemed almostsacrilegious to dream of. As to pain, we permit it only for itssymptomatic indications, and so far only as we need its guidance indiagnosis."

  "I take it, however, that you have not abolished death."

  "I assure you," laughed the doctor, "that if perchance any one shouldfind out the secret of that, the people would mob him and burn up hisformula. Do you suppose we want to be shut up here forever?"

  "HOW COULD WE INDEED?"

  Applying myself again to the study of the moving panorama below us, Ipresently remarked to the doctor that we must be pretty nearly over whatwas formerly called Brighton, a suburb of the city at which the livestock for the food supply of the city had mainly been delivered.

  "I see the old cattle-sheds are gone," I said. "Doubtless you have muchbetter arrangements. By the way, now that everybody is well-to-do, andcan afford the best cuts of beef, I imagine the problem of providing abig 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 thepoorest sort."

  The doctor looked over the side of the car for some moments beforeanswering.

  "I take it," he said, "that you have not spoken to any one before on thispoint."

  "Why, I think not. It has not before occurred to me."

  "It is just as well," said the doctor. "You see, Julian, in thetransformation in customs and habits of thought and standards of fitnesssince your day, it could scarcely have happened but that in some casesthe changes should have been attended with a decided revulsion insentiment against the former practices. I hardly know how to expressmyself, but I am rather glad that you first spoke of this matter to me."

  A light dawned on me, and suddenly brought out the significance ofnumerous half-digested observations which I had previously made.

  "Ah!" I exclaimed, "you mean you don't eat the flesh of animals anymore."

  "Is it possible you have not guessed that? Had you not noticed that youwere offered no such food?"

  "The fact is," I replied, "the cooking is so different in all respectsfrom that of my day that I have given up all attempt to identifyanything. But I have certainly missed no flavor to which I have beenaccustomed, though I have been delighted by a great many novel ones."

  "Yes," said the doctor, "instead of the one or two rude processesinherited from primitive men by which you used to prepare food and elicitits qualities, we have a great number and variety. I doubt if there wasany flavor you had which we do not reproduce, besides the great number ofnew 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 conviction that health would be favoredby avoiding flesh?"

  "It does not seem to have been that motive which chiefly led to thechange. Undoubtedly the abandonment of the custom of eating animals, bywhich we inherited all their diseases, has had something to do with thegreat physical improvement of the race, but people did not apparentlygive up eating animals mainly for health's sake any more than cannibalsin more ancient times abandoned eating their fellow-men on that account.It was, of course, a very long time ago, and there was perhaps nopractice of the former order of which the people, immediately aftergiving it up, seem to have become so much ashamed. This is doubtless whywe find such meager information in the histories of the period as to thecircumstances of the change. There appears, however, to be no doubt thatthe abandonment of the custom was chiefly an effect of the great wave ofhumane feeling, the passion of pity and compunction for all suffering--ina word, the impulse of tender-heartedness--which was really the greatmoral power behind the Revolution. As might be expected, this outburstdid not affect merely the relations of men with men, but likewise theirrelations with the whole sentient world. The sentiment of
brotherhood,the feeling of solidarity, asserted itself not merely toward men andwomen, but likewise toward the humbler companions of our life on earthand sharers of its fortunes, the animals. The new and vivid light thrownon the rights and duties of men to one another brought also into view andrecognition the rights of the lower orders of being. A sentiment againstcruelty to animals of every kind had long been growing in civilizedlands, and formed a distinct feature of the general softening of mannerswhich led up to the Revolution. This sentiment now became an enthusiasm.The new conception of our relation to the animals appealed to the heartand captivated the imagination of mankind. Instead of sacrificing theweaker 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 greatfamily of Nature, be, so far as possible, guardians and helpers to theweaker orders whose fate is in our hands and to which we are as gods. Doyou not see, Julian, how the prevalence of this new view might soon haveled people to regard the eating of their fellow-animals as a revoltingpractice, almost akin to cannibalism?"

  "That is, of course, very easily understood. Indeed, doctor, you must notsuppose that my contemporaries were wholly without feeling on thissubject. Long before the Revolution was dreamed of there were a greatmany persons of my acquaintance who owned to serious qualms overflesh-eating, and perhaps the greater part of refined persons were notwithout pangs of conscience at various times over the practice. Thetrouble was, there really seemed nothing else to do. It was just like oureconomic system. Humane persons generally admitted that it was very badand brutal, and yet very few could distinctly see what the world wasgoing to replace it with. You people seem to have succeeded in perfectinga _cuisine_ without using flesh, and I admit it is every way moresatisfactory than ours was, but you can not imagine how absolutelyimpossible the idea of getting on without the use of animal food lookedin my day, when as yet nothing definite had been suggested to take itsplace 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 extent. It was, as you say, likethat which so long hindered the change of economic systems. People couldnot clearly realize what was to take its place. While one's mouth is fullof one flavor it is difficult to imagine another. That lack ofconstructive imagination on the part of the mass is the obstacle that hasstood in the way of removing every ancient evil, and made necessary awave of revolutionary force to do the work. Such a wave of feeling as Ihave described was needful in this case to do away with the immemorialhabit of flesh-eating. As soon as the new attitude of men's minds tookaway their taste for flesh, and there was a demand that had to besatisfied for some other and adequate sort of food, it seems to have beenvery promptly met."

  "From what source?"

  "Of course," replied the doctor, "chiefly from the vegetable world,though by no means wholly. There had never been any serious attemptbefore to ascertain what its provisions for food actually were, stillless what might be made of them by scientific treatment. Nor, as long asthere was no objection to killing some animal and appropriating withouttrouble the benefit of its experiments, was there likely to be. The richlived chiefly on flesh. As for the working masses, which had always drawntheir vigor mainly from vegetables, nobody of the influential classescared to make their lot more agreeable. Now, however, all with oneconsent set about inquiring what sort of a table Nature might provide formen who had forsworn murder.

  "Just as the crude and simple method of slavery, first chattel slaveryand afterward wage slavery, had, so long as it prevailed, prevented menfrom seeking to replace its crude convenience by a scientific industrialsystem, so in like manner the coarse convenience of flesh for food hadhitherto prevented men from making a serious perquisition of Nature'sedible resources. The delay in this respect is further accounted for bythe fact that the preparation of food, on account of the manner of itsconduct as an industry, had been the least progressive of all the arts oflife."

  "What is that?" I said. "The least progressive 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 werethe most conservative and habit-bound class in the communities. The rulesof the art of cookery had been handed down little changed in essentialssince the wife of the Aryan cowherd dressed her husband's food for him.

  "Now, it must remain very doubtful how immediately successful the revoltagainst animal food would have proved if the average family cook, whetherwife or hireling, had been left each for herself in her private kitchento grapple with the problem of providing for the table a satisfactorysubstitute for flesh. But, thanks to the many-sided character of thegreat Revolution, the juncture of time at which the growth of humanefeeling created a revolt against animal food coincided with the completebreakdown of domestic service and the demand of women for a wider life,facts which compelled the placing of the business of providing andpreparing food on a co-operative basis, and the making of it a branch ofthe public service. So it was that as soon as men, losing appetite fortheir fellow-creatures, began to ask earnestly what else could be eaten,there was already being organized a great governmental departmentcommanding all the scientific talent of the nation, and backed by theresources of the country, for the purpose of solving the question. And itis easy to believe that none of the new departments was stimulated in itsefforts by a keener public interest than this which had in charge thepreparation of the new national bill of fare. These were the conditionsfor which alimentation had waited from the beginnings of the race tobecome a science.

  "In the first place, the food materials and methods of preparing themactually extant, and used in the different nations, were, for the firsttime in history, collected and collated. In presence of the cosmopolitanvariety and extent of the international _menu_ thus presented, everynational _cuisine_ was 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 inmatters of food and cooking. It was discovered, as observing travelershad always been aware, that every nation and country, often everyprovince, had half a dozen gastronomic secrets that had never crossed theborder, or at best on very brief excursions.

  "It is well enough to mention, in passing, that the collation of thisinternational bill of fare was only one illustration of the innumerableways in which the nations, as soon as the new order put an end to the oldprejudices, began right and left to borrow and adopt the best of oneanother's ideas and institutions, to the great general enrichment.

  "But the organization of a scientific system of alimentation did notcease with utilizing the materials and methods already existing. Thebotanist and the chemist next set about finding new food materials andnew methods of preparing them. At once it was discovered that of thenatural products capable of being used as food by man, but a pettyproportion had ever been utilized; only those, and a small part even ofthat class, which readily lent themselves to the single primitive processwhereby the race hitherto had attempted to prepare food--namely, theapplication of dry or wet heat. To this, manifold other processessuggested by chemistry were now added, with effects that our ancestorsfound as delightful as novel. It had hitherto been with the science ofcooking as with metallurgy when simple fire remained its only method.

  "It is written that the children of Israel, when practicing an enforcedvegetarian diet in the wilderness, yearned after the flesh-pots of Egypt,and probably with good reason. The experience of our ancestors appears tohave been in this respect quite different. It would seem that thesentiments with which, after a very short period had elapsed, they lookedback upon the flesh-pots they had left behind were charged with a feelingquite the reverse of regret. There is an amusing cartoon of the period,which suggests how brief a time it took for them to discover what a goodthing they had done for themselves in resolving to spare the animals. Thecartoon, as I remember it, is in two parts. The first shows Humani
ty,typified by a feminine figure regarding a group of animals consisting ofthe ox, the sheep, and the hog. Her face expresses the deepestcompunction, while she tearfully exclaims, 'Poor things! How could weever bring ourselves to eat you?' The second part reproduces the samegroup, with the heading 'Five Years After.' But here the countenanceof Humanity as she regards the animals expresses not contrition orself-reproach, but disgust and loathing, while she exclaims in nearlyidentical terms, but very different emphasis, 'How could we, indeed?'"

  WHAT BECAME OF THE GREAT CITIES.

  Continuing to move westward toward the interior, we had now graduallyleft behind the more thickly settled portions of the city, if indeed anyportion of these modern cities, in which every home stands in its owninclosure, can be called thickly settled. The groves and meadows andlarger woods had become numerous, and villages occurred at frequentintervals. We were out in the country.

  "Doctor," said I, "it has so happened, you will remember, that what Ihave seen of twentieth-century life has been mainly its city side. Ifcountry life has changed since my day as much as city life, it will bevery interesting to make its acquaintance again. Tell me something aboutit."

  "There are few respects, I suppose," replied the doctor, "in which theeffect of the nationalization of production and distribution on the basisof economic equality has worked a greater transformation than in therelations of city and country, and it is odd we should not have chancedto speak of this before now."

  "When I was last in the world of living people," I said, "the city wasfast devouring the country. Has that process gone on, or has it possiblybeen reversed?"

  "Decidedly the latter," replied the doctor, "as indeed you will at oncesee must have been the case when you consider that the enormous growth ofthe great cities of the past was entirely an economic consequence of thesystem of private capitalism, with its necessary dependence uponindividual initiative, 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," repliedthe doctor. "Under private capitalism, you see, there was no public orgovernmental system for organizing productive effort and distributing itsresults. There was no general and unfailing machinery for bringingproducers and consumers together. Everybody had to seek his ownoccupation and maintenance on his own account, and success depended onhis finding an opportunity to exchange his labor or possessions for thepossessions or labor of others. For this purpose the best place, ofcourse, was where there were many people who likewise wanted to buy orsell their labor or goods. Consequently, when, owing either to accidentor calculation, a mass of people were drawn together, others flocked tothem, for every such aggregation made a market place where, owing simplyto the number of persons desiring to buy and sell, better opportunitiesfor exchange were to be found than where fewer people were, and thegreater the number of people the larger and better the facilities forexchange. The city having thus taken a start, the larger it became, thefaster it was likely to grow by the same logic that accounted for itsfirst rise. The laborer went there to find the largest and steadiestmarket for his muscle, and the capitalist--who, being a conductor ofproduction, desired the largest and steadiest labor market--went therealso. The capitalist trader went there to find the greatest group ofconsumers of his goods within least space.

  "Although at first the cities rose and grew, mainly because of thefacilities for exchange among their own citizens, yet presently theresult of the superior organization of exchange facilities made themcenters of exchange for the produce of the surrounding country. In thisway those who lived in the cities had not only great opportunities togrow rich by supplying the needs of the dense resident population, butwere able also to levy a tribute upon the products of the people in thecountry round about by compelling those products to pass through theirhands on the way to the consumers, even though the consumers, like theproducers, lived in the country, and might be next door neighbors.

  "In due course," pursued the doctor, "this concentration of materialwealth in the cities led to a concentration there of all the superior,the refined, the pleasant, and the luxurious ministrations of life. Notonly did the manual laborers flock to the cities as the market where theycould best exchange their labor for the money of the capitalists, but theprofessional and learned class resorted thither for the same purpose. Thelawyers, the pedagogues, the doctors, the rhetoricians, and men ofspecial skill in every branch, went there as the best place to find therichest and most numerous employers of their talents, and to make theircareers.

  "And in like manner all who had pleasure to sell--the artists, theplayers, the singers, yes, and the courtesans also--flocked to the citiesfor the same reasons. And those who desired pleasure and had wealth tobuy it, those who wished to enjoy life, either as to its coarse orrefined gratifications, followed the pleasure-givers. And, finally, thethieves and robbers, and those pre-eminent in the wicked arts of livingon their fellow-men, followed the throng to the cities, as offering themalso the best field for their talents. And so the cities became greatwhirlpools, which drew to themselves all that was richest and best, andalso everything that was vilest, in the whole land.

  "Such, Julian, was the law of the genesis and growth of the cities, andit was by necessary consequence the law of the shrinkage, decay, anddeath of the country and country life. It was only necessary that the eraof private capitalism in America should last long enough for the ruraldistricts to have been reduced to what they were in the days of the RomanEmpire, and of every empire which achieved full development--namely,regions whence all who could escape had gone to seek their fortune in thecities, leaving only a population of serfs and overseers.

  "To do your contemporaries justice, they seemed themselves to realizethat the swallowing up of the country by the city boded no good tocivilization, 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 ofprivate capitalism, it could only be remedied by abolishing that."

  "Just how," said I, "did the abolition of private capitalism and thesubstitution of a nationalized economic system operate to stop the growthof the cities?"

  "By abolishing the need of markets for the exchange of labor andcommodities," replied the doctor. "The facilities of exchange organizedin the cities under the private capitalists were rendered whollysuperfluous and impertinent by the national organization of productionand distribution. The produce of the country was no longer handled by ordistributed through the cities, except so far as produced or consumedthere. The quality of goods furnished in all localities, and the measureof industrial service required of all, was the same. Economic equalityhaving done away with rich and poor, the city ceased to be a place wheregreater luxury could be enjoyed or displayed than the country. Theprovision of employment and of maintenance on equal terms to all tookaway the advantages of locality as helps to livelihood. In a word, therewas no longer any motive to lead a person to prefer city to country life,who did not like crowds for the sake of being crowded. Under thesecircumstances you will not find it strange that the growth of the citiesceased, and their depopulation began from the moment the effects of theRevolution became apparent."

  "But you have cities yet!" I exclaimed.

  "Certainly--that is, we have localities where population still remainsdenser than in other places. None of the great cities of your day havebecome extinct, but their populations are but small fractions of whatthey 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 theirpredecessors and infinitely fitter for human habitation, but in order tomake them so it was necessary to get rid of their surplus population.There are in Boston to-day perhaps a quarter as many people as lived inthe same limits in the Boston of your day, and that is simply becausethere were four times as many people within those limits as could behoused and furnished with environments consistent with the modern idea ofhealthful and ag
reeable living. New York, having been far worse crowdedthan Boston, has lost a still larger proportion of its former population.Were you to visit Manhattan Island I fancy your first impression would bethat the Central Park of your day had been extended all the way from theBattery to Harlem River, though in fact the place is rather thickly builtup according to modern notions, some two hundred and fifty thousandpeople living there among the groves and fountains."

  "And you say this amazing depopulation took place at once after theRevolution?"

  "It began then. The only way in which the vast populations of the oldcities could be crowded into spaces so small was by packing them likesardines in tenement houses. As soon as it was settled that everybodymust be provided with really and equally good habitations, it followedthat the cities must lose the greater part of their population. These hadto be provided with dwellings in the country. Of course, so vast a workcould not be accomplished instantly, but it proceeded with all possiblespeed. In addition to the exodus of people from the cities because therewas no room for them to live decently, there was also a great outflow ofothers who, now there had ceased to be any economic advantages in citylife, were attracted by the natural charms of the country; so that youmay easily see that it was one of the great tasks of the first decadeafter the Revolution to provide homes elsewhere for those who desired toleave the cities. The tendency countryward continued until the citieshaving been emptied of their excess of people, it was possible to makeradical changes in their arrangements. A large proportion of the oldbuildings and all the unsightly, lofty, and inartistic ones were clearedaway and replaced with structures of the low, broad, roomy style adaptedto the new ways of living. Parks, gardens, and roomy spaces weremultiplied on every hand and the system of transit so modified as to getrid of the noise and dust, and finally, in a word, the city of your daywas changed into the modern city. Having thus been made as pleasantplaces to live in as was the country itself, the outflow of populationfrom the cities ceased and an equilibrium became established."

  "It strikes me," I observed, "that under any circumstances cities muststill, on account of their greater concentration of people, have certainbetter public services than small villages, for naturally suchconveniences are least expensive where a dense population is to besupplied."

  "As to that," replied the doctor, "if a person desires to live in someremote spot far away from neighbors he will have to put up with someinconveniences. He will have to bring his supplies from the nearestpublic store and dispense with various public services enjoyed by thosewho live nearer together; but in order to be really out of reach of theseservices he must go a good way off. You must remember that nowadays theproblems of communication and transportation both by public and privatemeans have been so entirely solved that conditions of space which wereprohibitive in your day are unimportant now. Villages five and ten milesapart are as near together for purposes of social intercourse andeconomic administration as the adjoining wards of your cities. Either ontheir own account or by group combinations with other communitiesdwellers in the smallest villages enjoy installations of all sorts ofpublic services as complete as exist in the cities. All have publicstores and kitchens with telephone and delivery systems, public baths,libraries, and institutions of the highest education. As to the qualityof the services and commodities provided, they are of absolutely equalexcellence wherever furnished. Finally, by telephone and electroscope thedwellers in any part of the country, however deeply secluded among theforests or the mountains, may enjoy the theater, the concert, and theorator quite as advantageously as the residents of the largest cities."

  THE REFORESTING.

  Still we swept on mile after mile, league after league, toward theinterior, and still the surface below presented the same parklike aspectthat had marked the immediate environs of the city. Every natural featureappeared to have been idealized and all its latent meaning brought out bythe loving skill of some consummate landscape artist, the works of manblending with the face of Nature in perfect harmony. Such arrangements ofscenery had not been uncommon in my day, when great cities preparedcostly pleasure grounds, but I had never imagined anything on a scalelike this.

  "How far does this park extend?" I demanded at last. "There seems no endto it."

  "It extends to the Pacific Ocean," said the doctor.

  "Do you mean that the whole United States is laid out in this way?"

  "Not precisely in this way by any means, but in a hundred different waysaccording to the natural suggestions of the face of the country and themost effective way of co-operating with them. In this region, forinstance, where there are few bold natural features, the best effect tobe obtained was that of a smiling, peaceful landscape with as muchdiversification in detail as possible. In the mountainous regions, on thecontrary, where Nature has furnished effects which man's art could notstrengthen, the method has been to leave everything absolutely as Natureleft it, only providing the utmost facilities for travel and observation.When you visit the White Mountains or the Berkshire Hills you will find,I fancy, their slopes shaggier, the torrents wilder, the forests loftierand more gloomy than they were a hundred years ago. The only evidences ofman's handiwork to be found there are the roadways which traverse everygorge and top every summit, carrying the traveler within reach of all thewild, rugged, or beautiful bits of Nature."

  "As far as forests go, it will not be necessary for me to visit themountains in order to perceive that the trees are not only a great dealloftier 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 thatdifference in the landscape. There are said to be five or ten treesnowadays where there was one in your day, and a good part of those yousee down there are from seventy-five to a hundred years old, dating fromthe reforesting."

  "What was the reforesting?" I asked.

  "It was the restoration of the forests after the Revolution. Underprivate capitalism the greed or need of individuals had led to so generala wasting of the woods that the streams were greatly reduced and the landwas constantly plagued with droughts. It was found after the Revolutionthat one of the things most urgent to be done was to reforest thecountry. Of course, it has taken a long time for the new plantings tocome to maturity, but I believe it is now some twenty-five years sincethe forest plan reached its full development and the last vestiges of theformer ravages disappeared."

  "Do you know," I said presently, "that one feature which is missing fromthe landscape impresses me quite as much as any that it presents?"

  "What is it that is missing?"

  "The hayfield."

  "Ah! yes, no wonder you miss it," said the doctor. "I understand that inyour day hay was the main crop of New England?"

  "Altogether so," I replied, "and now I suppose you have no use for hay atall. Dear me, in what a multitude of important ways the passing of theanimals out of use both for food and work must have affected humanoccupations and interests!"

  "Yes, indeed," said the doctor, "and always to the notable improvement ofthe social condition, though it may sound ungrateful to say so. Take thecase of the horse, for example. With the passing of that long-sufferingservant of man to his well earned reward, smooth, permanent, and cleanroadways first became possible; dust, dirt, danger, and discomfort ceasedto be necessary incidents of travel.

  "Thanks to the passing of the horse, it was possible to reduce thebreadth of roadways by half or a third, to construct them of smoothconcrete from grass to grass, leaving no soil to be disturbed by wind orwater, and such ways once built, last like Roman roads, and can never beovergrown by vegetation. These paths, penetrating every nook and cornerof the land, have, together with the electric motors, made travel such aluxury that as a rule we make all short journeys, and when time does notpress even very long ones, by private conveyance. Had land travelremained in the condition it was in when it depended on the horse, theinvention of the air-car would have strongly tempted humanity to treatthe earth as the birds do--merely as
a place to alight on betweenflights. As it is, we consider the question an even one whether it ispleasanter to swim through the air or to glide over the ground, themotion being well-nigh as swift, noiseless, and easy in one case as inthe other."

  "Even before 1887," I said, "the bicycle was coming into such favor andthe possibilities of electricity were beginning so to loom up thatprophetic people began to talk about the day of the horse as almost over.But it was believed that, although dispensed with for road purposes, hemust always remain a necessity for the multifarious purposes of farmwork, 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 Iwill give you a practical answer."

  After we had dropped from an altitude of perhaps a thousand feet to acouple of hundred, the doctor said:

  "Look down there to the right."

  I did so, and saw a large field from which the crops had been cut. Overits surface was moving a row of great machines, behind which the earthsurged up in brown and rigid billows. On each machine stood or sat ineasy attitude a young man or woman with quite the air of persons on apleasure excursion.

  "Evidently," I said, "these are plows, but what drives them?"

  "They are electric plows," replied the doctor. "Do you see that snakelikecord trailing away over the broken ground behind each machine? That isthe cable by which the force is supplied. Observe those posts at regularintervals about the field. It is only necessary to attach one of thosecables to a post to have a power which, connected with any sort ofagricultural machine, furnishes energy graduated from a man's strength tothat of a hundred horses, and requiring for its guidance no other forcethan the fingers of a child can supply."

  And not only this, but it was further explained to me that by this systemof flexible cables of all sizes the electric power was applied not onlyto all the heavy tasks formerly done by animals, but also to the handinstruments--the spade, the shovel, and the fork--which the farmer in mytime must bend his own back to, however well supplied he might be withhorse power. There was, indeed, no tool, however small, the doctorexplained, whether used in agriculture or any other art, to which thismotor was not applicable, leaving to the worker only the adjustment andguiding of the instrument.

  "With one of our shovels," said the doctor, "an intelligent boy canexcavate a trench or dig a mile of potatoes quicker than a gang of men inyour day, and with no more effort than he would use in wheeling abarrow."

  I had been told several times that at the present day farm work wasconsidered quite as desirable as any other occupation, but, with myimpressions as to the peculiar arduousness of the earth worker's task, Ihad not been able to realize how this could really be so. It began toseem possible.

  The doctor suggested that perhaps I would like to land and inspect someof the arrangements of a modern farm, and I gladly assented. But first hetook advantage of our elevated position to point out the network ofrailways by which all the farm transportation was done and whereby thecrops when gathered could, if desirable, be shipped directly, withoutfurther handling, to any point in the country. Having alighted from ourcar, we crossed the field toward the nearest of the great plows, therider of which was a dark-haired young woman daintily costumed, such afigure certainly as no nineteenth-century farm field ever saw. As she satgracefully upon the back of the shining metal monster which, as itadvanced, tore up the earth with terrible horns, I could but be remindedof Europa on her bull. If her prototype was as charming as this youngwoman, Jupiter certainly was excusable for running away with her.

  As we approached, she stopped the plow and pleasantly returned ourgreeting. It was evident that she recognized me at the first glance, as,thanks doubtless to the diffusion of my portrait, everybody seemed to do.The interest with which she regarded me would have been more flatteringhad I not been aware that I owed it entirely to my character as a freakof Nature and not at all to my personality.

  When I asked her what sort of a crop they were expecting to plant at thisseason, she replied that this was merely one of the many annual plowingsgiven to all soil to keep it in condition.

  "We use, of course, abundant fertilizers," she said, "but consider thesoil its own best fertilizer if kept moving."

  "Doubtless," said I, "labor is the best fertilizer of the soil. So old anauthority as Aesop taught us that in his fable of 'The Buried Treasure,'but it was a terribly expensive sort of fertilizer in my day when it hadto come out of the muscles of men and beasts. One plowing a year was allour farmers could manage, and that nearly broke their backs."

  "Yes," she said, "I have read of those poor men. Now you see it isdifferent. So long as the tides rise and fall twice a day, let alone thewinds and waterfalls, there is no reason why we should not plow every dayif it were desirable. I believe it is estimated that about ten times theamount of power is nowadays given to the working of every acre of landthat it was possible to apply in former times."

  We spent some time inspecting the farm. The doctor explained the drainageand pumping systems by which both excess and deficiency of rain areguarded against, and gave me opportunity to examine in detail some of thewonderful tools he had described, which make practically no requisitionon the muscle of the worker, only needing a mind behind them.

  Connected with the farm was one of the systems of great greenhouseestablishments upon which the people depend for fresh vegetables in thewinter, and this, too, we visited. The wonders of intensive culture whichI saw in that great structure would of course astonish none of myreaders, but to me the revelation of what could be done with plants whenall the conditions of light, heat, moisture, and soil ingredients wereabsolutely to be commanded, was a never-to-be-forgotten experience. Itseemed 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 ofthe earth and the viewless air into forms of life. I had never seenplants actually grow before and had deemed the Indian juggler's trick animposture. But here I saw them lifting their heads, putting forth theirbuds, and opening their flowers by movements which the eye could follow.I confess that I fairly listened to hear them whisper.

  "In my day, greenhouse culture of vegetables out of season had beencarried on only to an extent to meet the demands of a small class of veryrich. The idea of providing such supplies at moderate prices for theentire community, according to the modern practice, was of course quiteundreamed of."

  When we left the greenhouse the afternoon had worn away and the sun wassetting. Rising swiftly to a height where its rays still warmed us, weset out homeward.

  Strongest of all the impressions of that to me so wonderful afternoonthere lingered most firmly fixed in my mind the latest--namely, theobject lesson I had received of the transformation in the conditions ofagriculture, the great staple human occupation from the beginning, andthe basis of every industrial system. Presently I said:

  "Since you have so successfully done away with the first of the two maindrawbacks of the agricultural occupation as known in my day--namely, itsexcessive laboriousness--you have no doubt also known how to eliminatethe other, which was the isolation, the loneliness, the lack of socialintercourse and opportunity of social culture which were incident to thefarmer's life."

  "Nobody would certainly do farm work," replied the doctor, "if it hadcontinued to be either more lonesome or more laborious than other sortsof work. As regards the social surroundings of the agriculturist, he isin no way differently situated from the artisan or any other class ofworkers. He, like the others, lives where he pleases, and is carried toand fro just as they are between the place of his residence andoccupation by the lines of swift transit with which the country isthreaded. Work on a farm no longer implies life on a farm, unless forthose who like it."

  "One of the conditions of the farmer's life, owing to the variations ofthe season," I said, "has always been the alternation of slack work andperiods of special exigency, such as planting and harvesting, when the
sudden need of a multiplied labor force has necessitated the severeststrain of effort for a time. This alternation of too little with too muchwork, I should suppose, would still continue to distinguish agriculturefrom other occupations."

  "No doubt," replied the doctor, "but this alternation, far from involvingeither a wasteful relaxation of effort or an excessive strain on theworker, furnishes occasions of recreation which add a special attractionto the agricultural occupation. The seasons of planting and harvestingare of course slightly or largely different in the several districts of acountry so extensive as this. The fact makes it possible successively toconcentrate in each district as large an extra contingent of workersdrawn from other districts as is needed. It is not uncommon on a fewdays' notice to throw a hundred thousand extra workers into a regionwhere there is a special temporary demand for labor. The inspiration ofthese great mass movements is remarkable, and must be something like thatwhich attended in your day the mobilizing 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 transformationsince your day has been so complete, and none surely has affected sogreat a proportion of the people, as that which has come overagriculture. The poets from Virgil up and down have recognized in ruralpursuits and the cultivation of the earth the conditions most favorableto a serene and happy life. Their fancies in this respect have, however,until the present time, been mocked by the actual conditions ofagriculture, which have combined to make the lot of the farmer, thesustainer of all the world, the saddest, most difficult, and mosthopeless endured by any class of men. From the beginning of the worlduntil the last century the tiller of the soil has been the most patheticfigure in history. In the ages of slavery his was the lowest class ofslaves. After slavery disappeared his remained the most anxious, arduous,and despairing of occupations. He endured more than the poverty of thewage-earner without his freedom from care, and all the anxiety of thecapitalist without his hope of compensating profits. On the one side hewas dependent for his product, as was no other class, upon the capricesof Nature, while on the other in disposing of it he was more completelyat the mercy of the middleman than any other producer. Well might hewonder whether man or Nature were the more heartless. If the cropsfailed, the farmer perished; if they prospered, the middleman took theprofit. Standing as a buffer between the elemental forces and humansociety, he was smitten by the one only to be thrust back by the other.Bound to the soil, he fell into a commercial serfdom to the citieswell-nigh as complete as the feudal bondage had been. By reason of hisisolated and unsocial life he was uncouth, unlettered, out of touch withculture, without opportunities for self-improvement, even if his bittertoil had left him energy or time for it. For this reason the dwellers inthe towns looked down upon him as one belonging to an inferior race. Inall lands, in all ages, the countryman has been considered a proper buttby the most loutish townsman. The starving proletarian of the citypavement scoffed at the farmer as a boor. Voiceless, there was none tospeak for him, and his rude, inarticulate complaints were met with jeers.Baalam was not more astonished when the ass he was riding rebuked himthan the ruling classes of America seem to have been when the farmers,toward the close of the last century, undertook to have something to sayabout the government of the country.

  "From time to time in the progress of history the condition of the farmerhas for brief periods been tolerable. The yeoman of England was once fora little while one who looked nobles in the face. Again, the Americanfarmer, up to the middle of the nineteenth century, enjoyed the goldenage of agriculture. Then for a space, producing chiefly for use and notfor sale to middlemen, he was the most independent of men and enjoyed arude abundance. But before the nineteenth century had reached its lastthird, American agriculture had passed through its brief idyllic period,and, by the inevitable operation of private capitalism, the farmer beganto go down hill toward the condition of serfdom, which in all ages beforehad been his normal state, and must be for evermore, so long as theeconomic exploitation of men by men should continue. While in one senseeconomic equality brought an equal blessing to all, two classes hadespecial reason to hail it as bringing to them a greater elevation from adeeper degradation than to any others. One of these classes was thewomen, the other the farmers."