In the evening when we retired, it was still raining, but the next
morning greeted us with a bright, pleasant sunshine. All nature seemed
to be clothed in her best garment. The faces at Uwins’ appeared to be
as pleasing to the sight after a refreshing night’s rest as the verdant
foliage, refreshed by the warm rain and delightful sunshine.
After dinner, when we were all seated in the parlor, Mr. Uwins asked
Mr. Midith about the family-home as it existed on Mars.
“We have no home and no family as you know a home and a family,”
replied Mr. Midith. “We have no home and no family in which one man and
one woman live together with their children as you do here. Our ancient
history tells us that long, long ago, we had homes and families just
like you have them here now.
“It may, at first sight and in your mundane age, seem strange to you
to have no family-home like yours; but it is nevertheless a fact. You
see society on Mars, as I have told you elsewhere, has had longer time
to evolve than it has had on earth. We must expect to find a more
advanced state of society and industry there, or we are no believers in
evolution, in progress.”
“If you have no home and no family like ours on Mars, in what manner
_do_ you live there then?” asked Mrs. Uwins, full of interest.
[Illustration: Diagram 1.
A diagram of a big-house, ground plan.]
“I will tell you, ladies and gentlemen,” began Mr. Midith. “Our
smallest dwellings accommodate about a thousand men, women and
children. These dwellings or Marsian homes are grand, magnificent
structures about eight stories high, the main building 150 × 600
feet, with three wings on each side 60 × 300 feet. (See diagram p.
52.) There is an electric engine in every dwelling, which heats every
apartment; it lights them with soft brilliant electric lights; it
does all the culinary work--cooking, baking, etc.; it pumps the water
to all parts of the building; it does all the laundry work--washing,
drying and ironing, warms the water for the bath-rooms and for all
other apartments; it runs the elevators, heats the conservatories and
green-houses; it runs the sewing-machines, dish-washers and all other
machinery in the building which I can not mention at present. In the
summer it cools departments by creating currents of air.
“See how vastly we economize both in wealth and in labor, by
co-operating just in this one direction. One thousand, more or less, of
us live together in one magnificent building, instead of one husband
and one wife and their children, living in a frail, ill-constructed,
inconvenient cottage. We have one electric engine do the heating for a
thousand or more, instead of having one or more stoves in each little
cottage. Instead of every home like here, having one or more lamps to
fill and clean, our engine lights every apartment as light as day with
an electric light. Instead of each small family having a cook-stove
and washing machine, we run all our work with one engine. We need no
heating-stoves, no hand washing-machine; the bath-rooms are comfortable
and convenient. We do all this and much more with one engine for the
accommodation of a thousand or more members of our large Marsian family.
“The interior of the building is elegantly finished and richly
furnished; each individual, young and old, has a private apartment.
(See page 55.) Then we have public apartments--grand public parlors of
all sizes; a public dining-room; a public hall for games, exercises
and amusements of all kinds; a large, fine library; nurseries with
plenty of toys for children of all ages; public and private baths, an
elegant barber shop, a large, well-filled store, a grand restaurant, a
large, clean, well-ventilated kitchen with plenty of good, handsome,
tidy cooks and helpers--both men and women; public reading and writing
rooms, a scientific department for philosophical apparatus and a
well-filled laboratory including drugs, a tailor and milliner shop, a
vehicle department, etc. The dwellings, notwithstanding their size, are
so well ventilated and cooled in summer, and so uniformly warmed in
winter that an inmate can scarcely tell whether it is winter or summer.
“Let us now leave the interior of the ‘Big-House’ for a few moments and
give a brief description of the surroundings. I shall hereafter call
the Marsian dwelling a ‘_big-house_’ so as to distinguish it from your
family home here. Let me say right here that there are a few general
facts of which I would like to inform you, before I attempt a more
detailed description of the exterior surroundings of our ‘big-house.’
[Illustration: Diagram 2.
One of the wings of the “big-house” with private apartments.]
“You want to bear in mind that we have a family; but that the family
consists of a thousand or more men, women and children, instead of
consisting like your family of from one to six or more. That we
have no cities and towns, and no country; that our day’s manual
labor consists in an average of less than two hours; this you will
readily see as soon as you clearly understand how vastly we economize
both wealth and labor in all directions by voluntary co-operative
individualism. Years ago we had cities and towns, and a country similar
to yours of the present time; but experience gradually taught us
that it is not healthful to live in a crowded, smoky city and town,
and also that we have no particular use for cities and towns, that
they are detrimental to an orderly, well-regulated society. We also
found that a family of husband and wife and their children, living
alone in a country home, are largely wasting their lives socially and
economically.”
“You said, Mr. Midith, that you have no cities and towns and no country
either. I should like to know where you live then?” asked Rev. Dudley.
“All the houses here on earth are either in cities and towns, or they
are in the country. I can see no other place for them. You do not live
on rafts and boats, do you? You seem to have so many strange notions on
Mars that a person can not tell what you might do until you have told
us.”
Mr. Midith laughed as he continued: “Our ‘big houses’ are built about
a half a mile apart all around rectangular fields twenty-four miles
long and six miles wide, containing according to your measurement four
geographical townships, or 92,160 acres each.” (See pp. 57 and 58.)
[Illustration: Fig. 3.
The rectangles represent Communities 6 × 24 miles and are numbered
as above; the black lines represent motor-lines; the dotted lines,
railroads which are about 100 miles apart.]
[Illustration: Fig. 4.
The circles represent “big-houses” about a half-mile apart. The
squares represent warehouses, factories, mills and work-shops about
four miles apart. All the Communities are surrounded by double-tracked
motor-lines.]
“There are double-tracked, electric-motor lines running all around
these large divisions of land, so that every ‘big-house’ is situated on
a motor-line. These large divisions of land, together with the houses
and people that live on them, we call communities. A community, then,
has an area of four townships, more or less, and a perimeter of
sixty miles, on which a big-house, containing about a thousand inmates
is situated at intervals of about half a mile. (See p. 58.) This gives
a community a population of about 120,000 persons. These motor-lines
connect with railroads at intervals of about a hundred miles or more,
as the case may be. Our railroads are nearly all straight and almost
level, with heavy steel composition rails, laid on a solid roadbed, and
the time of many trains exceeds a speed of a hundred miles an hour.”
On page 60, figure 5, I have given a diagram, as described by Mr.
Midith, of a cross section of the land along the motor-lines, extending
from the motor-line to the main field or body of land in the community.
“A represents a hundred-foot wide motor-line. B represents a strip of
park land one-fourth mile wide, on which the ‘big-houses’ are located.
D represents a hundred-foot wide boulevard. C C represents walks on
each side of the main boulevard. E represents a conservatory and
green-house five hundred feet wide. F represents a walk between the
conservatory and the garden G, which is one thousand feet wide. I is
an orchard one thousand feet wide. H is a walk between the garden and
orchard. J represents the edge of the field, etc., which extends clear
across the community.
“These parks, boulevards, walks, conservatories, etc., run parallel
with the entire length of all the motor-lines wherever the lay of the
land will permit it.”
“O, how beautifully you have all this arranged!” exclaimed Viola.
“I suppose you have a great many fine, fast horses on your broad
boulevards. I am sure you have plenty of time to train them if you work
less than two hours a day.”
[Illustration: Fig. 5.
A Motor line 100 feet wide.
B Park on which big-houses are built. One-fourth mile.
C Walks
D Boulevard 100 feet wide
C Walks
E Conservatory & G-H 500 feet wide
F Walk
G Garden 1000 feet wide
H Walks
I Orchard 1000 feet wide
J Field about 5 miles wide]
“We have no oxen and horses, no draught animals of any kind, except a
few the same as you keep elk,” said Mr. Midith. “As I have said, it
seems very cruel to me to use animals the way you do. To beat them; to
hitch them up so unnaturally, and to work and run them so cruelly.”
“How, then, do you farm, Mr. Midith?” asked Roland. “Do you spade the
land like our ancestors used to do?”
“The farming is all done with electric power. A locomotive, which
builds and takes up its own track, does all the plowing, sowing,
harvesting, etc. Instead of fencing each little patch of land, and
turning our weak, tired teams before all those fences, destroying, in
the act of turning, the very crops you endeavor to raise, like you do
here, we hitch up a powerful land locomotive to a set of gang plows and
plow a furrow which is from three to twenty-four miles long, as the
case may be. Our fifty-foot header, propelled by an electric engine,
cuts the heads from the grain and elevates them into a large wagon
rack. This wagon, when full, is taken with an engine to the warehouses,
represented on p. 58, community No. 2; here the cut ears are dumped
into a large hopper. Each header has enough wagons for hauling grain
to keep it cutting all the time. From the hoppers at the warehouses,
elevators take the cut grain, or ears, to drying rooms. In these drying
rooms currents of hot air pass through the grain, and in a few days
it is perfectly dry. Here it is elevated into the thresher, and from
the thresher it passes into drying bins, where it is dried for keeping
or for grinding. Thus you see that in sowing, reaping, threshing and
grinding, not a human hand has touched a straw nor a grain. With our
method of artificial curing, not a grain is damaged by moisture, not a
grain is lost on the land or road. By the aid of electricity we can, if
need be, cut day and night, rain and shine.
“From the foregoing, you see that our system of agriculture, especially
harvesting, has many points of advantage over yours; a few of which I
shall name. You first cut the grain with a little reaper or self-binder
which throws the grain on the ground; here a portion of the grain is
lost by being scattered on the ground; then you shock it, by which
another portion is lost; then you dry it in the sun; by this process
a large portion is lost, and a still larger portion is more or less
damaged by wind and rain in the field. After this you stack it; here in
the stack some more is lost; a portion is lost and damaged by heating
and some by rain. Your little, ill-adjusted thresher, hauled around
over the fields, run a portion of it into the straw-pile; part of it
is trampled into the ground and another part is damaged by rain during
the process of threshing. Next, in your crowded, ill-ventilated bins, a
portion of it is totally spoiled, and a large portion of it is more or
less damaged. Another portion is lost and damaged on the road when the
farmer brings it to market. Then your little country mills only half
grind it. Again, during a rainy season, you can cut only during the
daytime when the grain is dry.
“After all these and countless other losses and damages, you need not
be surprised that so many of your poor people are starving for bread,
or are only too glad to get the bread made of damaged grain. By our
method all our grain is saved and none of it is damaged. We do not
depend for our curing on the immediate sunshine, as you have seen.
“To be sure we, the same as you, must adapt our farming to suit the
land and climate, which are as diversified and varied on Mars as they
are on earth; but the foregoing system is adopted where the land and
other conditions are suited for it. Thus we see that as long as the
changeableness and uncertainty of climatic conditions are not under
scientific control, that system of harvesting, which depends for its
drying and curing on the immediate sunshine of the harvest-time must,
in an average, always be attended with a large portion of loss and
damage.
“You notice that there is nothing new in our system of harvesting.
By extensive, voluntary co-operation you can do the same. You have
headers, engines, elevators, electricity, currents of hot air for
drying, and you can build large warehouses for drying and storing
grain as well as we can. Your main trouble is that you work too single
handed. I may say right here that I am acquainted with an inventor
who resides near Grand Junction, Iowa. This man has a tract-building
locomotive that can pull a heavy load over softer ground than a team is
able to walk on. Of course, this is only a rude beginning, but it shows
the way you are tending.
“On Mars transportation is rapid, cheap and convenient. Manufacturing
is principally done in those localities where it requires the least
amount of labor. Crops best adapted to the locality are raised there
and then transported where consumed. Our freight trains carry 3,000
tons from 40 to 100 miles an hour.
“Here are a few facts that will enable you to understand how vastly
we economize both wealth and labor by our extensive co-operative
individualism, and how easily we can produce with abundance the
necessaries and luxuries of life, so that we are obliged to work but
a few hours daily. Each community is, so to speak, a large family, in
which each member has a personal interest in the community’s wealth.
For this reason every member of the community is keenly interested
in the productive industries of the community. Mars has, therefore,
no wage-workers. Experience convinced us that a wage-worker, having
no direct interest in his productions, is, as a rule, not highly
interested in the quantity and quality of his labor; such uninterested
labor is also toilsome and fatiguing. I have given you this brief
outline of our social and industrial system now, so that you may
mentally assimilate the fundamental plan of it; and on some future
occasion, I will give you a more detailed description of each part of
it. Too much at one time will cause a mental confusion.
“You see there is only one difficult point in the solution of the
social and industrial problem, and that point I shall now endeavor
to make you understand, if you do not already understand it, so that
hereafter you may always bear that point in mind in connection with
social and industrial progress. The difficult point is this: To devise
or outline a social and industrial system in which a large number of
individuals co-operate harmoniously, and yet have every individual free
to do what he believes to be right, provided he infringes not upon the
equal rights of any other person. No man here on earth thus far has
been able to outline such a system.”
“Do you not have many quarrels in your large families?” asked Rev.
Dudley. “I am quite certain that if our family were increased to a
thousand, we would have many quarrels and fights and even murders.’”
“We have neither quarrels, fights nor murders,” replied Mr. Midith.
“You see we have nothing to quarrel about. Whenever the individual
has arrived at such a stage of intellectual culture that he concedes
the right to all of his companions to do as they individually believe
to be right, or conduce most to their happiness, provided they invade
no rights of any other person, there can be no quarrels, fights and
murders. This is the only point we need learn to bring about perfect
social harmony. Quarrels, fights and murders are the results of
ignorance and an ill-adjusted society. When I first got acquainted with
your small family, huddled together in one or a few little rooms, I was
not surprised to find that people here, as a rule, are so cruel and
quarrelsome. The old, the middle-aged, and the young are all crowded
in one little apartment. Their natural inclination, on account of
age, temperament, etc., is very unlike. Yet they are compelled to be
together. With us every man, woman and child has a splendid private
apartment, to which they can retire at any moment. No one intrudes on
them there. Any one can leave any or all his social companions whenever
he pleases.
“With you it is vastly different. How many matured children, when
living in the same house and in the same apartment, make your homes a
dungeon--a battle-field on which the better sentiments of both parents
and children are slain? How many old parents are supported by their
sons and daughters when each other’s presence is no more agreeable? How
many husbands and wives are compelled, by your social and industrial
system, to live together after they do not love each other? How many
circumstances are there not that compel your so-called masters and
servants to remain together after they dislike each other? These and
many other unnatural, disagreeable, social conditions produce your
quarrels, fights and murders.
“Formerly we believed, like you now believe, that a family could not
exist successfully without a ‘boss.’ But experience proved to us
that we were mistaken. We now know that a family ‘boss’ is nothing
but a curse and a creature of discord only. Just in proportion as
we eliminate the vicious social conditions, the ‘boss,’ quarreling,
fighting and murdering disappear.
“I think we have a good proof of that right here in this home. As far
as I can ascertain there is no ‘boss’ in Mr. Uwins’ family. All the
members of the family, as far as I can see, are free to do what each
believes to be right. The kind training, the equal privileges, and the
unrestricted freedom have stamped a pleasant, prepossessing appearance
upon the countenance of parent and child. When the conditions are
right, a thousand can live just as peaceably together under one roof as
two can, and even more so, for the very act of living in small families
like you do, is a sign that the _conditions_ are not right; and as long
as the social and industrial conditions are wrong, there can be no
right society.
“That a certain advanced social state seems unattainable or even
dangerous may not be a sign that it is so. It may be only a sign that
those who think it injurious are not ripe for it at present--that their
intellectual culture is not in tune with such a life. But it may just
suit some who are more advanced than those are who claim that it is
unattainable; or they, in time, may grow ripe for it themselves.
“Perhaps our primitive ancestors both here and on Mars were cannibals,
and they no doubt believed that the desire for eating human flesh
would never be eliminated, and if it were eliminated the world would
then not be worth living in. But we have no desire to eat human flesh.
It would be very repugnant to us. The contemporaries of your ‘Holy
Inquisition’ no doubt believed that society would crumble without the
so-called protection of that ‘Holy Institution.’ But we know from a
retrospective view that it was a very cruel enemy of society. Again,
your civil courts that convicted, imprisoned, tortured and burned
thousand upon thousand of innocent people as witches during the witch
mania, undoubtedly thought that a person’s life and property were not
safe without the protection or intervention of these civil tribunals;
but we now know that the more witches you killed the more rapidly they
increased, and that when you ceased killing them they all soon die of
their own accord. _We_ know that there never was a witch; that this
belief was only a mental illusion, like thousands of your present
beliefs are; and we also know that the human family, with the advance
of intelligence, will gradually adjust itself in the line of the
completest life and greatest happiness.”