When we arrived home, Dr. Leete had not yet returned, and Mrs. Leete
was not visible. "Are you fond of music, Mr. West?" Edith asked.
I assured her that it was half of life, according to my notion.
"I ought to apologize for inquiring," she said. "It is not a question
that we ask one another nowadays; but I have read that in your day,
even among the cultured class, there were some who did not care for
music."
"You must remember, in excuse," I said, "that we had some rather absurd
kinds of music."
"Yes," she said, "I know that; I am afraid I should not have fancied it
all myself. Would you like to hear some of ours now, Mr. West?"
"Nothing would delight me so much as to listen to you," I said.
"To me!" she exclaimed, laughing. "Did you think I was going to play or
sing to you?"
"I hoped so, certainly," I replied.
Seeing that I was a little abashed, she subdued her merriment and
explained. "Of course, we all sing nowadays as a matter of course in
the training of the voice, and some learn to play instruments for their
private amusement; but the professional music is so much grander and
more perfect than any performance of ours, and so easily commanded when
we wish to hear it, that we don't think of calling our singing or
playing music at all. All the really fine singers and players are in
the musical service, and the rest of us hold our peace for the main
part. But would you really like to hear some music?"
I assured her once more that I would.
"Come, then, into the music room," she said, and I followed her into an
apartment finished, without hangings, in wood, with a floor of polished
wood. I was prepared for new devices in musical instruments, but I saw
nothing in the room which by any stretch of imagination could be
conceived as such. It was evident that my puzzled appearance was
affording intense amusement to Edith.
"Please look at to-day's music," she said, handing me a card, "and tell
me what you would prefer. It is now five o'clock, you will remember."
The card bore the date "September 12, 2000," and contained the longest
programme of music I had ever seen. It was as various as it was long,
including a most extraordinary range of vocal and instrumental solos,
duets, quartettes, and various orchestral combinations. I remained
bewildered by the prodigious list until Edith's pink finger tip
indicated a particular section of it, where several selections were
bracketed, with the words "5 P.M." against them; then I observed that
this prodigious programme was an all-day one, divided into twenty-four
sections answering to the hours. There were but a few pieces of music
in the "5 P.M." section, and I indicated an organ piece as my
preference.
"I am so glad you like the organ," said she. "I think there is scarcely
any music that suits my mood oftener."
She made me sit down comfortably, and, crossing the room, so far as I
could see, merely touched one or two screws, and at once the room was
filled with the music of a grand organ anthem; filled, not flooded,
for, by some means, the volume of melody had been perfectly graduated
to the size of the apartment. I listened, scarcely breathing, to the
close. Such music, so perfectly rendered, I had never expected to hear.
"Grand!" I cried, as the last great wave of sound broke and ebbed away
into silence. "Bach must be at the keys of that organ; but where is the
organ?"
"Wait a moment, please," said Edith; "I want to have you listen to this
waltz before you ask any questions. I think it is perfectly charming";
and as she spoke the sound of violins filled the room with the witchery
of a summer night. When this had also ceased, she said: "There is
nothing in the least mysterious about the music, as you seem to
imagine. It is not made by fairies or genii, but by good, honest, and
exceedingly clever human hands. We have simply carried the idea of
labor saving by cooperation into our musical service as into everything
else. There are a number of music rooms in the city, perfectly adapted
acoustically to the different sorts of music. These halls are connected
by telephone with all the houses of the city whose people care to pay
the small fee, and there are none, you may be sure, who do not. The
corps of musicians attached to each hall is so large that, although no
individual performer, or group of performers, has more than a brief
part, each day's programme lasts through the twenty-four hours. There
are on that card for to-day, as you will see if you observe closely,
distinct programmes of four of these concerts, each of a different
order of music from the others, being now simultaneously performed, and
any one of the four pieces now going on that you prefer, you can hear
by merely pressing the button which will connect your house-wire with
the hall where it is being rendered. The programmes are so coordinated
that the pieces at any one time simultaneously proceeding in the
different halls usually offer a choice, not only between instrumental
and vocal, and between different sorts of instruments; but also between
different motives from grave to gay, so that all tastes and moods can
be suited."
"It appears to me, Miss Leete," I said, "that if we could have devised
an arrangement for providing everybody with music in their homes,
perfect in quality, unlimited in quantity, suited to every mood, and
beginning and ceasing at will, we should have considered the limit of
human felicity already attained, and ceased to strive for further
improvements."
"I am sure I never could imagine how those among you who depended at
all on music managed to endure the old-fashioned system for providing
it," replied Edith. "Music really worth hearing must have been, I
suppose, wholly out of the reach of the masses, and attainable by the
most favored only occasionally, at great trouble, prodigious expense,
and then for brief periods, arbitrarily fixed by somebody else, and in
connection with all sorts of undesirable circumstances. Your concerts,
for instance, and operas! How perfectly exasperating it must have been,
for the sake of a piece or two of music that suited you, to have to sit
for hours listening to what you did not care for! Now, at a dinner one
can skip the courses one does not care for. Who would ever dine,
however hungry, if required to eat everything brought on the table? and
I am sure one's hearing is quite as sensitive as one's taste. I suppose
it was these difficulties in the way of commanding really good music
which made you endure so much playing and singing in your homes by
people who had only the rudiments of the art."
"Yes," I replied, "it was that sort of music or none for most of us.
"Ah, well," Edith sighed, "when one really considers, it is not so
strange that people in those days so often did not care for music. I
dare say I should have detested it, too."
"Did I understand you rightly," I inquired, "that this musical
programme covers the entire twenty-four hours? It seems to on this
card, certainly; but who is there to listen to music between say
midnight and morning?"
"Oh, many," Edith replied. "Our people keep all hours; but if the music
were provided from midnight to morning for no others, it still would be
for the sleepless, the sick, and the dying. All our bedchambers have a
telephone attachment at the head of the bed by which any person who may
be sleepless can command music at pleasure, of the sort suited to the
mood."
"Is there such an arrangement in the room assigned to me?"
"Why, certainly; and how stupid, how very stupid, of me not to think to
tell you of that last night! Father will show you about the adjustment
before you go to bed to-night, however; and with the receiver at your
ear, I am quite sure you will be able to snap your fingers at all sorts
of uncanny feelings if they trouble you again."
That evening Dr. Leete asked us about our visit to the store, and in
the course of the desultory comparison of the ways of the nineteenth
century and the twentieth, which followed, something raised the
question of inheritance. "I suppose," I said, "the inheritance of
property is not now allowed."
"On the contrary," replied Dr. Leete, "there is no interference with
it. In fact, you will find, Mr. West, as you come to know us, that
there is far less interference of any sort with personal liberty
nowadays than you were accustomed to. We require, indeed, by law that
every man shall serve the nation for a fixed period, instead of leaving
him his choice, as you did, between working, stealing, or starving.
With the exception of this fundamental law, which is, indeed, merely a
codification of the law of nature--the edict of Eden--by which it is
made equal in its pressure on men, our system depends in no particular
upon legislation, but is entirely voluntary, the logical outcome of the
operation of human nature under rational conditions. This question of
inheritance illustrates just that point. The fact that the nation is
the sole capitalist and land-owner of course restricts the individual's
possessions to his annual credit, and what personal and household
belongings he may have procured with it. His credit, like an annuity in
your day, ceases on his death, with the allowance of a fixed sum for
funeral expenses. His other possessions he leaves as he pleases."
"What is to prevent, in course of time, such accumulations of valuable
goods and chattels in the hands of individuals as might seriously
interfere with equality in the circumstances of citizens?" I asked.
"That matter arranges itself very simply," was the reply. "Under the
present organization of society, accumulations of personal property are
merely burdensome the moment they exceed what adds to the real comfort.
In your day, if a man had a house crammed full with gold and silver
plate, rare china, expensive furniture, and such things, he was
considered rich, for these things represented money, and could at any
time be turned into it. Nowadays a man whom the legacies of a hundred
relatives, simultaneously dying, should place in a similar position,
would be considered very unlucky. The articles, not being salable,
would be of no value to him except for their actual use or the
enjoyment of their beauty. On the other hand, his income remaining the
same, he would have to deplete his credit to hire houses to store the
goods in, and still further to pay for the service of those who took
care of them. You may be very sure that such a man would lose no time
in scattering among his friends possessions which only made him the
poorer, and that none of those friends would accept more of them than
they could easily spare room for and time to attend to. You see, then,
that to prohibit the inheritance of personal property with a view to
prevent great accumulations would be a superfluous precaution for the
nation. The individual citizen can be trusted to see that he is not
overburdened. So careful is he in this respect, that the relatives
usually waive claim to most of the effects of deceased friends,
reserving only particular objects. The nation takes charge of the
resigned chattels, and turns such as are of value into the common stock
once more."
"You spoke of paying for service to take care of your houses," said I;
"that suggests a question I have several times been on the point of
asking. How have you disposed of the problem of domestic service? Who
are willing to be domestic servants in a community where all are social
equals? Our ladies found it hard enough to find such even when there
was little pretense of social equality."
"It is precisely because we are all social equals whose equality
nothing can compromise, and because service is honorable, in a society
whose fundamental principle is that all in turn shall serve the rest,
that we could easily provide a corps of domestic servants such as you
never dreamed of, if we needed them," replied Dr. Leete. "But we do not
need them."
"Who does your house-work, then?" I asked.
"There is none to do," said Mrs. Leete, to whom I had addressed this
question. "Our washing is all done at public laundries at excessively
cheap rates, and our cooking at public kitchens. The making and
repairing of all we wear are done outside in public shops. Electricity,
of course, takes the place of all fires and lighting. We choose houses
no larger than we need, and furnish them so as to involve the minimum
of trouble to keep them in order. We have no use for domestic servants."
"The fact," said Dr. Leete, "that you had in the poorer classes a
boundless supply of serfs on whom you could impose all sorts of painful
and disagreeable tasks, made you indifferent to devices to avoid the
necessity for them. But now that we all have to do in turn whatever
work is done for society, every individual in the nation has the same
interest, and a personal one, in devices for lightening the burden.
This fact has given a prodigious impulse to labor-saving inventions in
all sorts of industry, of which the combination of the maximum of
comfort and minimum of trouble in household arrangements was one of the
earliest results.
"In case of special emergencies in the household," pursued Dr. Leete,
"such as extensive cleaning or renovation, or sickness in the family,
we can always secure assistance from the industrial force."
"But how do you recompense these assistants, since you have no money?"
"We do not pay them, of course, but the nation for them. Their services
can be obtained by application at the proper bureau, and their value is
pricked off the credit card of the applicant."
"What a paradise for womankind the world must be now!" I exclaimed. "In
my day, even wealth and unlimited servants did not enfranchise their
possessors from household cares, while the women of the merely
well-to-do and poorer classes lived and died martyrs to them."
"Yes," said Mrs. Leete, "I have read something of that; enough to
convince me that, badly off as the men, too, were in your day, they
were more fortunate than their mothers and wives."
"The broad shoulders of the nation," said Dr. Leete, "bear now like a
feather the burden that broke the backs of the women of your day. Their
misery came, with all your other miseries, from that incapacity for
cooperation which followed from the individualism on which your social
system was founded, from your inability to perceive that you could make
ten times more profit out of your fellow men by uniting with them than
by contending with them. The wonder is, not that you did not live more
comfortably, but that you were able to live together at all, who were
all confessedly bent on making one another your servants, and securing
possession of one another's goods.
"There, there, father, if you are so vehement, Mr. West will think you
are scolding him," laughingly interposed Edith.
"When you want a doctor," I asked, "do you simply apply to the proper
bureau and take any one that may be sent?"
"That rule would not work well in the case of physicians," replied Dr.
Leete. "The good a physician can do a patient depends largely on his
acquaintance with his constitutional tendencies and condition. The
patient must be able, therefore, to call in a particular doctor, and he
does so just as patients did in your day. The only difference is that,
instead of collecting his fee for himself, the doctor collects it for
the nation by pricking off the amount, according to a regular scale for
medical attendance, from the patient's credit card."
"I can imagine," I said, "that if the fee is always the same, and a
doctor may not turn away patients, as I suppose he may not, the good
doctors are called constantly and the poor doctors left in idleness."
"In the first place, if you will overlook the apparent conceit of the
remark from a retired physician," replied Dr. Leete, with a smile, "we
have no poor doctors. Anybody who pleases to get a little smattering of
medical terms is not now at liberty to practice on the bodies of
citizens, as in your day. None but students who have passed the severe
tests of the schools, and clearly proved their vocation, are permitted
to practice. Then, too, you will observe that there is nowadays no
attempt of doctors to build up their practice at the expense of other
doctors. There would be no motive for that. For the rest, the doctor
has to render regular reports of his work to the medical bureau, and if
he is not reasonably well employed, work is found for him."