After tea, about five o’clock, we were once more seated together on Mr.
Uwins’ beautiful green, shady lawn to listen to Mr. Midith’s pleasing
description of the Marsian “big-house.”
“Do you recollect, Mr. Midith, telling us at noon that you would give
us a more detailed description of the interior of the ‘big-house?’”
asked Mrs. Uwins. “We shall now be pleased to give you our attention on
that subject.”
“Yes; we will all listen to you, Mr. Midith,” said little Celestine,
sitting very near him.
“There is so much to be told that I scarcely know where to begin,” said
Mr. Midith; “and when I draw a clear, vivid picture of those grand,
colossal structures in my imagination, it seems almost as though I once
more enjoyed my native world, my native home, and my native society,
for which, perhaps, in every stage of intellectual development, a
person’s heart, who has been deprived of them, will yearn.
“I have already told you at noon that a ‘big-house’ is about eight
stories high; that it accommodates about a thousand inmates--men, women
and children; that the ‘big-houses’ are located about half-mile apart
on the motor-lines all around, the rectangular communities twenty-four
miles long and usually six miles wide (see p. 115). This arrangement
gives us two tiers of ‘big-houses’ with a motor-line between them. As
these ‘big-houses’ are built opposite each other, two and two, each
of these motor stopping places furnishes a population of about two
thousand. At every ‘big-house’ is a motor-line side-track, which holds
a train of motor cars for unloading. The freight cars are elevated and
lowered with electric power to those stories of the building where
the freight is to be unloaded. All goods used and consumed in the
‘big-houses’ are unloaded here with very little muscular power. Here,
then, we economize a vast amount of human labor, and so in all other
directions. By the time I shall have told you all about our social and
industrial system, you will no longer be astonished that we have such
an abundance of grand things, all with less than two hours of labor a
day.”
“Does not the smoke of your engines sometimes annoy you?” asked Mr.
Uwins. “In our cities it is often very annoying.”
“That is very true, Mr. Uwins,” replied Mr. Midith, “but you see we
have no cities; we have no use for them. We also have no _steam_
engines to create smoke; even the latest steam engines we used burned
their own smoke, and that is nothing new even to your modern mechanics.
Your latest engines do that too. It is a grand step in advance, but
we are now long beyond that point. The Marsites now use electric and
compressed air engines. The power is furnished by the wind. Our present
engines, then, require no fuel and produce no smoke. Hereafter I shall
tell you much more about our engines and other motive power. Our engine
and engine-room, as well as all other departments, are kept as neat
and clean as any parlor. We have learned that it pays to be clean and
orderly. Each particular work is done by a particular man, woman, or
child, who pride themselves in doing it promptly, orderly and well.
“The main edifice of the ‘big-house,’ as I have said, is about eight
stories high, and sometimes higher. There are electric elevators in
different parts of the building. Some of them run vertically from the
bottom to the top, and some of them run horizontally from end to end of
the building. The kitchen is a large, clean, well-ventilated apartment
with plenty of first-class cooks and bakers. The cooking and baking is
all done by electric heat, generated by the engine. The cooks can put
on as much or as little heat as they desire. We can boil potatoes in
closed vessels in less than five minutes of time.”
“Is not your kitchen work of handling those large kettles that hold
sufficient to feed a thousand persons or more, too laborious for a
feeble, sickly woman?” asked Viola.
Mr. Midith laughed and said: “Viola, you must understand in the first
place, that we have no feeble, sickly women in our world. Feebleness
and disease are the consequences of antecedent causes, and as soon as
the causes are removed, feebleness will turn into strength and disease
will disappear. We have long ago eliminated those social and industrial
evils that enfeeble and that fade the pallid cheeks of your women, and
especially of your mothers. And in the second place, the kettles and
all other cooking utensils are lifted and adjusted by machinery, which
is so convenient that a child can easily operate it in most cases.
Helping to prepare one meal in such a pleasant, convenient kitchen
constitutes a day’s work for a cook, whether man or woman. Other sets
of cooks likewise prepare the other meals of the day.
“Each division of the kitchen, as well as all other departments of
labor, has a foreman, who holds his position by the common consent of
his co-laborers in the same division, and by virtue of his superior
fitness in his own work and in directing the labor of all in the most
productive, harmonious and delightful channel. The foreman labors just
the same as any one else. He receives no higher pay. He is only foreman
in so far as his co-laborers are willing to acknowledge him or her as
such.
“Here, again, you see how we economize material wealth and labor by our
voluntary co-operation, and you further see that our work is little
more than sportive exercise. Instead of being laborious as you thought,
a cook with us, whether man or woman, does nearly all her work by
machinery, run by electric power. This she can generally do by sitting
in an easy chair in her elegant kitchen, which is kept scrupulously
clean by a set of dusters and wipers who have chosen that as their
favorite occupation. She has no black, sooty kettles to handle, because
the heat she uses to cook with does neither blacken her kitchen nor her
kettles. She is always neatly dressed, can even wear delicate gloves
most the time if she so desires, and has all the pleasant companions,
both male and female, whose company she can enjoy as she is doing her
short day’s work. With men cooks it is, of course, the same.
“Compare this short, easy, pleasant day’s work of our cooks with the
long, toilsome, unpleasant drudgery of your women, who must prepare
_all_ the meals, often out of the very poorest material; who, besides
preparing meals, must bear and nurse all the offspring, and work at
other drudgery, generally from ten to sixteen hours a day. And this
is very often not all. Many mothers, besides doing all this physical
drudgery in a little penned-up house, in which an invigorating breath
of wholesome air seldom enters, are called upon to please and satisfy
an overworked, cranky ‘boss’ of a husband, and sometimes ignorant,
uncultivated sons and daughters. This overwork is _one_ of the many
causes that enfeeble your women, and that spread the robe of pallor and
disease over their countenance. I say this is only _one_ of the many
causes that produce feebleness and disease, but besides this one there
are countless others. To some of the most conspicuous ones I shall call
your attention as we proceed with our explanation. Now, I do not mean
to say here that your _men_, as a rule, are not overworked, for they
are very much so; but not so much so as the masses of mothers who are
raising families.”
“Now, Mr. Midith, will you give us a description of your dining-room?”
asked Celestine.
“Oh, yes. Our dining apartment is spacious, richly finished and
elegantly furnished. It is large enough to seat at once all the
members of the family and a considerable number of visitors besides.
Each table accommodates from two to eight persons, and the tables
are tastefully arranged in tiers alongside of horizontal elevators,
that carry the victuals from the kitchen all along the row of tables
to the further end of the dining-hall, where they are served by the
waiters. On the center of each table is a tiny fountain, playing its
cool liquid treasure on an exquisite assortment of gorgeous bouquets.
This chemically pure, fresh, cool fountain also supplies the drink for
the table. The tableware is of the finest pattern, and everything is
kept scrupulously clean and in good order by those in charge of the
dining-hall.
“We are purely vegetarians, eating no flesh meat of any kind. Of course
our primitive ancestors, like yours, were cannibals; then meat-eaters
like you are now, but this habit of killing and eating flesh meat has
long since become antiquated, and eating flesh meat or a dead carcass
is perhaps as repugnant to us now as eating a corpse would be to you.
We also use no coffee, tea, tobacco, nor any kind of intoxicating
liquor as a beverage. Experience has taught us that no benefit is
derived from the use of them; but often a great deal of evil.
“Our cooking is all of first-class order; none but expert cooks of the
community make cooking their profession. The tables are loaded, winter
and summer, with the finest soups, vegetables, fruits both cooked and
raw, and all kinds of nuts. Some of the eatables are shipped in from
tropical countries and some are raised during the winter months in
our large conservatories and green-houses, of which I shall tell you
hereafter. Our baking is of endless variety, and of the finest quality
the genius of man can produce.
“All meals are served promptly on time, and no provisions are made for
any one who is not on time for his meals. Every one is supposed to eat
at whatever big-house he happens to be during meal-time, for he can buy
a meal as cheap in any big-house where he may be, as he can at his own
table.
“The victuals at each table are served in common dishes, which are
passed, and each helps himself the same as you generally do in your
family home. We have no hotels, because we have no use for any. A
traveler, while he is traveling, eats in the dining car; and when he
gets off he stops at a ‘big-house,’ for they are the only stopping
places we have, and when there he can either eat a regular meal in
the dining-hall, or he can at any time order anything he wants in the
restaurant.
“Every single meal is paid for, and each one pays for his own meal,
whether he be a man, woman or child, whether a visitor or a member
of the same family. After every meal, each individual deposits the
price of the meal into his pay-dish--a little dish which is kept at
each plate for that special purpose. After meal-time, the waiters,
who, like the cooks, do nothing else but waiting on the tables, take
charge of the pay which is deposited in the pay-dishes. The pay-dishes
automatically register every meal deposited, and at the close of the
year, or at any other time, we can tell by the common register just how
many meals have been eaten in the dining-hall during the year.”
“You said, Mr. Midith, that every man, woman and child pays for his
own meal. But how can a little child that has no money pay for its own
meals?” asked Roland.
“That is very easily done when you understand how it is worked. You see
our financial world is altogether different from yours, which I will
explain to you when we get to our system of money or medium of exchange.
“Let us, in a few words, compare our dining-hall with yours. With our
system there is no food wasted by leaving it on side-dishes, for we
do not use them in the same manner as you do. We object to them on the
ground that the eater--the only person who knows what he likes and
what he wants--does not do the dishing up, when side-dishes filled by
the cooks are used. In your so-called first-class hotels, there is
perhaps as much, if not more, good food left in the side-dishes on the
tables as is eaten. Your bill of fare system is also very wasteful.
When it is used, cooks must prepare a great variety of articles, for
some of which, perhaps, no one calls; for others there are more calls,
but there is a tendency of great waste. In our system of eating there
is also very little waste of food from cooking too much at a meal.
The cooks know about how much is needed at each meal for the family,
and that is about all the family cooks for, unless a considerable
number of visitors have ordered meals there. Visitors, as I have said,
always pay the same price for a meal as a member of the family does.
Every able-bodied man, woman and youth believes in, and practices
independence and self-maintenance. We all detest assistance and
protection from others.
“Much of the food cooked in your hotels is also not eaten because the
expected number of guests did not eat there at that meal. There is no
way for a hotel-cook to know how much to cook. The eating at hotels
is all uncertainty and irregularity. There may be many or there may
be none for dinner. We have no rich idlers who live upon the labor of
others, and who waste more food than they eat; and we have no starving
poor who would be glad to get the leavings. With us all able-bodied
persons must earn their meals by productive labor. No amount of
speculation and scheming in our world will ever secure a meal for any
one.
“In our system of eating and cooking, as compared with yours, there
is also an immense saving of labor and food on account of our being
purely vegetarians; for the production of flesh meat requires in an
average much more land and labor than the production of the same amount
of nutrition in vegetation. You waste annually more than a thousand
million dollars worth of labor, even as low as your wages are now, in
the production of tobacco and intoxicating liquor, which, according
to your own most distinguished physiologists, is far more injurious
than beneficial to the human system. Right here, I believe, is another
of the great causes which is instrumental in the production of your
crimes, cruelty and disease.
“Our manner of eating is considerably different from yours, which I
will explain to you when we get to our system of education. We endeavor
to build all our habits and customs on the so-called laws of life,
health and happiness. Every act that conduces to the fullness of them
we consider right, and every act that detracts from the fullness of
them we consider wrong.
“Every ‘big-house’ contains a large, magnificent restaurant, which is
artistically embellished by the hand of art, and splendidly furnished
with elaborate counters, fine tables, easy chairs, grand mirrors and
all other furniture that conduces to the ease and comforts of man. It
is lit up, when dark, with brilliant electric lights, which almost
rival the brilliancy of a cloudless noon-day sun. In this gorgeous
apartment all kinds of eatables, from the daintiest to the coarser that
our world produces, can be bought there at cost by all individuals
who may wish them, during any hour of the day and evening. Our regular
meals, as I said before, are served promptly on time; but, by the
aid of this restaurant, no one need go hungry for a single minute.
In our world no one pays for meals that he does not eat, except to
the helpless, and no one gets anything for nothing, unless it is
voluntarily given to him. As our day’s labor is only about two hours,
so the cooks and waiters change off about that often.
“After meals the dishes of both the dining-hall and restaurant are put
into a dishwashing machine, through which a powerful current of steam
and hot water containing chemicals pass for a few moments; then a
current of hot air passes through it, which dries the dishes in a few
minutes. Our ladies never put their hands in water to wash dishes. Our
_large_ families can have such conveniences, but your _small_ families
can not afford to have such dishwashers.”