SEVERAL IMPORTANT MATTERS OVERLOOKED.
After dinner the doctor said that he had an excursion to suggest for the
afternoon.
"It has often occurred to me," he went on, "that when you shall go out
into the world and become familiar with its features by your own
observation, you will, in looking back on these preparatory lessons I
have tried to give you, form a very poor impression of my talent as a
pedagogue. I am very much dissatisfied myself with the method in which I
have developed the subject, which, instead of having been philosophically
conceived as a plan of instruction, has been merely a series of random
talks, guided rather by your own curiosity than any scheme on my part."
"I am very thankful, my dear friend and teacher," I replied, "that you
have spared me the philosophical method. Without boasting that I have
acquired so soon a complete understanding of your modern system, I am
very sure that I know a good deal more about it than I otherwise should,
for the very reason that you have so good-naturedly followed the lead of
my curiosity instead of tying me to the tailboard of a method."
"I should certainly like to believe," said the doctor, "that our talks
have been as instructive to you as they have been delightful to me, and
if I have made mistakes it should be remembered that perhaps no
instructor 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 so
large, the natural curiosity of his pupil compelled him to cover in so
short a time."
"But you were speaking of an excursion for this afternoon."
"Yes," said the doctor. "It is a suggestion in the line of an attempt to
remedy some few of my too probable omissions of important things in
trying to acquaint you with how we live now. What do you say to
chartering an air car this afternoon for the purpose of taking a
bird's-eye view of the city and environs, and seeing what its various
aspects may suggest in the way of features of present-day civilization
which we have not touched upon?"
The idea struck me as admirable, and we at once proceeded to put it in
execution.
* * * * *
In these brief and fragmentary reminiscences of my first experiences in
the modern world it is, of course, impossible that I should refer to one
in a hundred of the startling things which happened to me. Still, even
with that limitation, it may seem strange to my readers that I have not
had more to say of the wonder excited in my mind by the number and
character of the great mechanical inventions and applications unknown in
my day, which contribute to the material fabric and actuate the mechanism
of your civilization. For example, although this was very far from being
my first air trip, I do not think that I have before referred to a sort
of experience which, to a representative of the last century, must
naturally have been nothing less than astounding. I can only say, by way
of explanation of this seeming indifference to the mechanical wonders of
this age, that had they been ten times more marvelous, they would still
have impressed me with infinitely less astonishment than the moral
revolution illustrated by your new social order.
This, I am sure, is what would be the experience of any man of my time
under my circumstances. The march of scientific discovery and mechanical
invention during the last half of the nineteenth century had already been
so great and was proceeding so rapidly that we were prepared to expect
almost any amount of development in the same lines in the future. Your
submarine shipping we had distinctly anticipated and even partially
realized. The discovery of the electrical powers had made almost any
mechanical conception seem possible. As to navigation of the air, we
fully expected that would be somehow successfully solved by our
grandchildren if not by our children. If, indeed, I had not found men
sailing the air I should have been distinctly disappointed.
But while we were prepared to expect well-nigh anything of man's
intellectual development and the perfecting of his mastery over the
material world, we were utterly skeptical as to the possibility of any
large moral improvement on his part. As a moral being, we believed that
he had got his growth, as the saying was, and would never in this world
at least attain to a nobler stature. As a philosophical proposition, we
recognized as fully as you do that the golden rule would afford the basis
of a social life in which every one would be infinitely happier than
anybody was in our world, and that the true interest of all would be
furthered by establishing such a social order; but we held at the same
time that the moral baseness and self-blinding selfishness of man would
forever prevent him from realizing such an ideal. In vain, had he been
endowed with a godlike intellect; it would not avail him for any of the
higher uses of life, for an ineradicable moral perverseness would always
hinder him from doing as well as he knew and hold him in hopeless
subjection to the basest and most suicidal impulses of his nature.
"Impossible; it is against human nature!" was the cry which met and for
the most part overbore and silenced every prophet or teacher who sought
to rouse the world to discontent with the reign of chaos and awaken faith
in the possibility of a kingdom of God on earth.
Is it any wonder, then, that one like me, bred in that atmosphere of
moral despair, should pass over with comparatively little attention the
miraculous material achievements of this age, to study with ever-growing
awe and wonder the secret of your just and joyous living?
As I look back I see now how truly this base view of human nature was the
greatest infidelity to God and man which the human race ever fell into,
but, alas! it was not the infidelity which the churches condemned, but
rather a sort which their teachings of man's hopeless depravity were
calculated to implant and confirm.
This very matter of air navigation of which I was speaking suggests a
striking illustration of the strange combination on the part of my
contemporaries of unlimited faith in man's material progress with total
unbelief in his moral possibilities. As I have said, we fully expected
that posterity would achieve air navigation, but the application of the
art most discussed was its use in war to drop dynamite bombs in the midst
of crowded cities. Try to realize that if you can. Even Tennyson, in his
vision 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 an
altitude of about one thousand feet, "let us attend to our lesson. What
do you see down there to suggest a question?"
"Well, to begin with," I said, as the dome of the Statehouse caught my
eye, "what on earth have you stuck up there? It looks for all the world
like one of those self-steering windmills the farmers in my day used to
pump up water with. Surely that is an odd sort of ornament for a public
building."
"It is not intended as an ornament, but a symbol," replied the doctor.
"It represents the modern ideal of a proper system of government. The
mill stands for the machinery of administration, the wind that drives it
symbolizes the public will, and the rudder that always keeps the vane of
the mill before the wind, however suddenly or completely the wind may
change, stands for the method by which the administration is kept at all
times responsive and obedient to every mandate of the people, though it
be but a breath.
"I have talked to you so much on that subject that I need enlarge no
further on the impossibility of having any popular government worthy of
the name which is not based upon the economic equality of the citizens
with its implications and consequences. No constitutional devices or
cleverness of parliamentary machinery could have possibly made popular
government anything but a farce, so long as the private economic interest
of the citizen was distinct from and opposed to the public interest, and
the so-called sovereign people ate their bread from the hand of
capitalists. Given, on the other hand, economic unity of private
interests with public interest, the complete independence of every
individual on every other, and universal culture to cap all, and no
imperfection of administrative machinery could prevent the government
from being a good one. Nevertheless, we have improved the machinery as
much as we have the motive force. You used to vote once a year, or in two
years, or in six years, as the case might be, for those who were to rule
over you till the next election, and those rulers, from the moment of
their election to the term of their offices, were as irresponsible as
czars. They were far more so, indeed, for the czar at least had a supreme
motive to leave his inheritance unimpaired to his son, while these
elected tyrants had no interest except in making the most they could out
of their power while they held it.
"It appears to us that it is an axiom of democratic government that power
should never be delegated irrevocably for an hour, but should always be
subject to recall by the delegating power. Public officials are nowadays
chosen for a term as a matter of convenience, but it is not a term
positive. They are liable to have their powers revoked at any moment by
the vote of their principals; neither is any measure of more than merely
routine character ever passed by a representative body without reference
back to the people. The vote of no delegate upon any important measure
can stand until his principals--or constituents, as you used to call
them--have had the opportunity to cancel it. An elected agent of the
people who offended the sentiment of the electors would be displaced, and
his act repudiated the next day. You may infer that under this system the
agent is solicitous to keep in contact with his principals. Not only do
these precautions exist against irresponsible legislation, but the
original proposition of measures comes from the people more often than
from their representatives.
"So complete through our telephone system has the most complicated sort
of voting become, that the entire nation is organized so as to be able to
proceed 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 what
you used to call congressional committees. The people not only nominally
but actually govern. We have a democracy in fact.
"We take pains to exercise this direct and constant supervision of our
affairs not because we suspect or fear our elected agents. Under our
system of indefeasible, unchangeable, economic equality there is no
motive or opportunity for venality. There is no motive for doing evil
that could be for a moment set against the overwhelming motive of
deserving the public esteem, which is indeed the only possible object
that nowadays could induce any one to accept office. All our vital
interests are secured beyond disturbance by the very framework of
society. We could safely turn over to a selected body of citizens the
management of the public affairs for their lifetime. The reason we do not
is that we enjoy the exhilaration of conducting the government of affairs
directly. You might compare us to a wealthy man of your day who, though
having in his service any number of expert coachmen, preferred to handle
the reins himself for the pleasure of it. You used to vote perhaps once a
year, taking five minutes for it, and grudging the time at that as lost
from your private business, the pursuit of which you called, I believe,
'the main chance.' Our private business is the public business, and we
have no other of importance. Our 'main chance' is the public welfare, and
we have no other chance. We vote a hundred times perhaps in a year, on
all manner of questions, from the temperature of the public baths or the
plan to be selected for a public building, to the greatest questions of
the world union, and find the exercise at once as exhilarating as it is
in the highest sense educational.
"And now, Julian, look down again and see if you do not find some other
feature of the scene to hang a question on."
THE LITTLE WARS AND THE GREAT WAR.
"I observe," I said, "that the harbor forts are still there. I suppose
you retain them, like the specimen tenement houses, as historical
evidences of the barbarism of your ancestors, my contemporaries."
"You must not be offended," said the doctor, "if I say that we really
have to keep a full assortment of such exhibits, for fear the children
should flatly refuse to believe the accounts the books give of the
unaccountable antics of their great-grandfathers."
"The guarantee of international peace which the world union has
brought," I said, "must surely be regarded by your people as one of the
most signal achievements of the new order, and yet it strikes me I have
heard you say very little about it."
"Of course," said the doctor, "it is a great thing in itself, but so
incomparably less important than the abolition of the economic war
between man and man that we regard it as merely incidental to the latter.
Nothing is much more astonishing about the mental operations of your
contemporaries than the fuss they made about the cruelty of your
occasional international wars while seemingly oblivious to the horrors of
the battle for existence in which you all were perpetually involved. From
our point of view, your wars, while of course very foolish, were
comparatively humane and altogether petty exhibitions as contrasted
with the fratricidal economic struggle. In the wars only men took
part--strong, selected men, comprising but a very small part of the total
population. There were no women, no children, no old people, no cripples
allowed to go to war. The wounded were carefully looked after, whether by
friends or foes, and nursed back to health. The rules of war forbade
unnecessary cruelty, and at any time an honorable surrender, with good
treatment, was open to the beaten. The battles generally took place on
the frontiers, out of sight and sound of the masses. Wars were also very
rare, often not one in a generation. Finally, the sentiments appealed
to in international conflicts were, as a rule, those of courage and
self-devotion. Often, indeed generally, the causes of the wars were
unworthy of the sentiments of self-devotion which the fighting called
out, but the sentiments themselves belonged to the noblest order.
"Compare with warfare of this character the conditions of the economic
struggle for existence. That was a war in which not merely small selected
bodies of combatants took part, but one in which the entire population of
every country, excepting the inconsiderable groups of the rich, were
forcibly enlisted and compelled to serve. Not only did women, children,
the aged and crippled have to participate in it, but the weaker the
combatants the harder the conditions under which they must contend. It
was a war in which there was no help for the wounded, no quarter for the
vanquished. It was a war not on far frontiers, but in every city, every
street, and every house, and its wounded, broken, and dying victims lay
underfoot everywhere and shocked the eye in every direction that it might
glance with some new form of misery. The ear could not escape the
lamentations of the stricken and their vain cries for pity. And this war
came not once or twice in a century, lasting for a few red weeks or
months or years, and giving way again to peace, as did the battles of the
soldiers, but was perennial and perpetual, truceless, lifelong. Finally,
it was a war which neither appealed to nor developed any noble, any
generous, any honorable sentiment, but, on the contrary, set a constant
premium on the meanest, falsest, and most cruel propensities of human
nature.
"As we look back upon your era, the sort of fighting those old forts down
there stood for seems almost noble and barely tragical at all, as
compared with the awful spectacle of the struggle for existence.
"We even are able to sympathize with the declaration of some of the
professional soldiers of your age that occasional wars, with their
appeals, however false, to the generous and self-devoting passions, were
absolutely necessary to prevent your society, otherwise so utterly sordid
and selfish in its ideals, from dissolving into absolute putrescence."
"It is to be feared," I was moved to observe, "that posterity has not
built so high a monument to the promoters of the universal peace
societies of my day as they expected."
"They were well meaning enough so far as they saw, no doubt," said the
doctor, "but seem to have been a dreadfully short-sighted and purblind
set of people. Their efforts to stop wars between nations, while
tranquilly ignoring the world-wide economic struggle for existence which
cost more lives and suffering in any one month than did the international
wars of a generation, was a most striking case of straining at a gnat and
swallowing a camel.
"As to the gain to humanity which has come from the abolition of all war
or possibility of war between nations of to-day, it seems to us to
consist not so much in the mere prevention of actual bloodshed as in the
dying out of the old jealousies and rancors which used to embitter
peoples against one another almost as much in peace as in war, and the
growth in their stead of a fraternal sympathy and mutual good will,
unconscious of any barrier of race or country."
THE OLD PATRIOTISM AND THE NEW.
As the doctor was speaking, the waving folds of a flag floating far below
caught my eye. It was the Star-Spangled Banner. My heart leaped at the
sight and my eyes grew moist.
"Ah!" I exclaimed, "it is Old Glory!" for so it had been a custom to call
the flag in the days of the civil war and after.
"Yes," replied my companion, as his eyes followed my gaze, "but it wears
a new glory now, because nowhere in the land it floats over is there
found a human being oppressed or suffering any want that human aid can
relieve.
"The Americans of your day," he continued, "were extremely patriotic
after their fashion, but the difference between the old and the new
patriotism is so great that it scarcely seems like the same sentiment. In
your day and ever before, the emotions and associations of the flag were
chiefly of the martial sort. Self-devotion to the nation in war with
other nations was the idea most commonly conveyed by the word
'patriotism' and its derivatives. Of course, that must be so in ages when
the nations had constantly to stand ready to fight one another for their
existence. But the result was that the sentiment of national solidarity
was arrayed against the sentiment of human solidarity. A lesser social
enthusiasm was set in opposition to a greater, and the result was
necessarily full of moral contradictions. Too often what was called love
of country might better have been described as hate and jealousy of other
countries, for no better reason than that there were other, and bigoted
prejudices against foreign ideas and institutions--often far better than
domestic ones--for no other reason than that they were foreign. This sort
of patriotism was a most potent hindrance for countless ages to the
progress of civilization, opposing to the spread of new ideas barriers
higher than mountains, broader than rivers, deeper than seas.
"The new patriotism is the natural outcome of the new social and
international conditions which date from the great Revolution. Wars,
which were already growing infrequent in your day, were made impossible
by the rise of the world union, and for generations have now been
unknown. The old blood-stained frontiers of the nations have become
scarcely more than delimitations of territory for administrative
convenience, like the State lines in the American Union. Under these
circumstances international jealousies, suspicions, animosities, and
apprehensions have died a natural death. The anniversaries of battles and
triumphs over other nations, by which the antique patriotism was kept
burning, have been long ago forgotten. In a word, patriotism is no longer
a martial sentiment and is quite without warlike associations. As the
flag has lost its former significance as an emblem of outward defiance,
it has gained a new meaning as the supreme symbol of internal concord and
mutuality; it has become the visible sign of the social solidarity in
which the welfare of all is equally and impregnably secured. The
American, as he now lifts his eyes to the ensign of the nation, is not
reminded of its military prowess as compared with other nations, of its
past triumphs in battle and possible future victories. To him the waving
folds convey no such suggestions. They recall rather the compact of
brotherhood in which he stands pledged with all his countrymen mutually
to 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 only
people at whose hands the flag could suffer dishonor, and the report of
any lack of etiquette toward it on their part used to excite the people
to a patriotic frenzy. That sort of feeling would be simply
incomprehensible now. As we look at it, foreigners have no power to
insult the flag, for they have nothing to do with it, nor with what it
stands for. Its honor or dishonor must depend upon the people whose
plighted faith one to another it represents, to maintain the social
contract. To the old-time patriot there was nothing incongruous in the
spectacle of the symbol of the national unity floating over cities
reeking with foulest oppressions, full of prostitution, beggary, and dens
of nameless misery. According to the modern view, the existence of a
single instance in any corner of the land where a citizen had been
deprived of the full enjoyment of equality would turn the flag into a
flaunting lie, and the people would demand with indignation that it
should be hauled down and not raised again till the wrong was remedied."
"Truly," I said, "the new glory which Old Glory wears is a greater than
the old glory."
MORE FOREIGN TRAVEL BUT LESS FOREIGN TRADE.
As we had talked, the doctor had allowed our car to drift before the
westerly breeze till now we were over the harbor, and I was moved to
exclaim at the scanty array of shipping it contained.
"It does not seem to me," I said, "that there are more vessels here than
in my day, much less the great fleets one might expect to see after a
century's development in population and resources."
"In point of fact," said the doctor, "the new order has tended to
decrease the volume of foreign trade, though on the other hand there is a
thousandfold more foreign travel for instruction and pleasure."
"In just what way," I asked, "did the new order tend to decrease
exchanges with foreign countries?"
"In two ways," replied the doctor. "In the first place, as you know, the
profit idea is now abolished in foreign trade as well as in domestic
distribution. The International Council supervises all exchanges between
nations, and the price of any product exported by one nation to another
must not be more than that at which the exporting nation provides its own
people with the same. Consequently there is no reason why a nation should
care to produce goods for export unless and in so far as it needs for
actual consumption products of another country which it can not itself so
well produce.
"Another yet more potent effect of the new order in limiting foreign
exchange is the general equalization of all nations which has long ago
come about as to intelligence and the knowledge and practice of sciences
and arts. A nation of to-day would be humiliated to have to import any
commodity which insuperable natural conditions did not prevent the
production of at home. It is consequently to such productions that
commerce is now limited, and the list of them grows ever shorter as with
the progress of invention man's conquest of Nature proceeds. As to the
old advantage of coal-producing countries in manufacturing, that
disappeared nearly a century ago with the great discoveries which made
the unlimited development of electrical power practically costless.
"But you should understand that it is not merely on economic grounds or
for self-esteem's sake that the various peoples desire to do everything
possible for themselves rather than depend on people at a distance. It is
quite as much for the education and mind-awakening influence of a
diversified industrial system within a small space. It is our policy, so
far as it can be economically carried out in the grouping of industries,
not only to make the system of each nation complete, but so to group the
various industries within each particular country that every considerable
district shall present within its own limits a sort of microcosm of the
industrial world. We were speaking of that, you may remember, the other
morning, in the Labor Exchange."
THE MODERN DOCTOR'S EASY TASK.
The doctor had some time before reversed our course, and we were now
moving westward over the city.
"What is that building which we are just passing over that has so much
glass about it?" I asked.
"That is one of the sanitariums," replied the doctor, "which people go to
who are in bad health and do not wish to change their climate, as we
think persons in serious chronic ill health ought to do and as all can
now do if they desire. In these buildings everything is as absolutely
adapted to the condition of the patient as if he were for the time being
in a world in which his disease were the normal type."
"Doubtless there have been great improvements in all matters relating to
your profession--medicine, hygiene, surgery, and the rest--since my day."
"Yes," replied the doctor, "there have been great improvements in two
ways--negative and positive--and the more important of the two is perhaps
the negative way, consisting in the disappearance of conditions inimical
to health, which physicians formerly had to combat with little chance of
success in many cases. For example, it is now two full generations since
the guarantee of equal maintenance for all placed women in a position of
economic independence and consequent complete control of their relations
to men. You will readily understand how, as one result of this, the taint
of syphilis has been long since eliminated from the blood of the race.
The universal prevalence now for three generations of the most cleanly
and refined conditions of housing, clothing, heating, and living
generally, with the best treatment available for all in case of sickness,
have practically--indeed I may say completely--put an end to the zymotic
and other contagious diseases. To complete the story, add to these
improvements in the hygienic conditions of the people the systematic and
universal physical culture which is a part of the training of youth, and
then as a crowning consideration think of the effect of the physical
rehabilitation--you might almost call it the second creation of woman in
a bodily sense--which has purified and energized the stream of life at
its source."
"Really, doctor, I should say that, without going further, you have
fairly reasoned your profession out of its occupation."
"You may well say so," replied the doctor. "The progress of invention and
improvement since your day has several times over improved the doctors
out of their former occupations, just as it has every other sort of
workers, but only to open new and higher fields of finer work.
"Perhaps," my companion resumed, "a more important negative factor in the
improvement in medical and hygienic conditions than any I have mentioned
is the fact that people are no longer in the state of ignorance as to
their own bodies that they seem formerly to have been. The progress of
knowledge in that respect has kept pace with the march of universal
culture. It is evident from what we read that even the cultured classes
in your day thought it no shame to be wholly uninformed as to physiology
and the ordinary conditions of health and disease. They appear to have
left their physical interests to the doctors, with much the same spirit
of cynical resignation with which they turned over their souls to the
care of the clergy. Nowadays a system of education would be thought
farcical which did not impart a sufficient knowledge of the general
principles of physiology, hygiene, and medicine to enable a person to
treat any ordinary physical disturbance without recourse to a physician.
It is perhaps not too much to say that everybody nowadays knows as much
about the treatment of disease as a large proportion of the members of
the medical profession did in your time. As you may readily suppose, this
is a situation which, even apart from the general improvement in health,
would enable the people to get on with one physician where a score
formerly found business. We doctors are merely specialists and experts on
subjects that everybody is supposed to be well grounded in. When we are
called in, it is really only in consultation, to use a phrase of the
profession in your day, the other parties being the patient and his
friends.
"But of all the factors in the advance of medical science, one of the
most important has been the disappearance of sectarianism, resulting
largely from the same causes, moral and economic, which banished it from
religion. You will scarcely need to be reminded that in your day
medicine, next to theology, suffered most of all branches of knowledge
from the benumbing influence of dogmatic schools. There seems to have
been well-nigh as much bigotry as to the science of curing the body as
the soul, and its influence to discourage original thought and retard
progress was much the same in one field as the other.
"There are really no conditions to limit the course of physicians. The
medical education is the fullest possible, but the methods of practice
are left to the doctor and patient. It is assumed that people as cultured
as ours are as competent to elect the treatment for their bodies as to
choose that for their souls. The progress in medical science which has
resulted from this complete independence and freedom of initiative on the
part of the physician, stimulated by the criticism and applause of a
people well able to judge of results, has been unprecedented. Not only in
the specific application of the preserving and healing arts have
innumerable achievements been made and radically new principles
discovered, but we have made advances toward a knowledge of the central
mystery of life which in your day it would have been deemed almost
sacrilegious to dream of. As to pain, we permit it only for its
symptomatic indications, and so far only as we need its guidance in
diagnosis."
"I take it, however, that you have not abolished death."
"I assure you," laughed the doctor, "that if perchance any one should
find out the secret of that, the people would mob him and burn up his
formula. Do you suppose we want to be shut up here forever?"
"HOW COULD WE INDEED?"
Applying myself again to the study of the moving panorama below us, I
presently remarked to the doctor that we must be pretty nearly over what
was formerly called Brighton, a suburb of the city at which the live
stock for the food supply of the city had mainly been delivered.
"I see the old cattle-sheds are gone," I said. "Doubtless you have much
better arrangements. By the way, now that everybody is well-to-do, and
can afford the best cuts of beef, I imagine the problem of providing a
big city with fresh meats must be much more difficult than in my day,
when the poor were able to consume little flesh food, and that of the
poorest sort."
The doctor looked over the side of the car for some moments before
answering.
"I take it," he said, "that you have not spoken to any one before on this
point."
"Why, I think not. It has not before occurred to me."
"It is just as well," said the doctor. "You see, Julian, in the
transformation in customs and habits of thought and standards of fitness
since your day, it could scarcely have happened but that in some cases
the changes should have been attended with a decided revulsion in
sentiment against the former practices. I hardly know how to express
myself, but I am rather glad that you first spoke of this matter to me."
A light dawned on me, and suddenly brought out the significance of
numerous half-digested observations which I had previously made.
"Ah!" I exclaimed, "you mean you don't eat the flesh of animals any
more."
"Is it possible you have not guessed that? Had you not noticed that you
were offered no such food?"
"The fact is," I replied, "the cooking is so different in all respects
from that of my day that I have given up all attempt to identify
anything. But I have certainly missed no flavor to which I have been
accustomed, though I have been delighted by a great many novel ones."
"Yes," said the doctor, "instead of the one or two rude processes
inherited from primitive men by which you used to prepare food and elicit
its qualities, we have a great number and variety. I doubt if there was
any flavor you had which we do not reproduce, besides the great number of
new ones discovered since your time."
"But when was the use of animals for food discontinued?"
"Soon after the great Revolution."
"What caused the change? Was it a conviction that health would be favored
by avoiding flesh?"
"It does not seem to have been that motive which chiefly led to the
change. Undoubtedly the abandonment of the custom of eating animals, by
which we inherited all their diseases, has had something to do with the
great physical improvement of the race, but people did not apparently
give up eating animals mainly for health's sake any more than cannibals
in more ancient times abandoned eating their fellow-men on that account.
It was, of course, a very long time ago, and there was perhaps no
practice of the former order of which the people, immediately after
giving it up, seem to have become so much ashamed. This is doubtless why
we find such meager information in the histories of the period as to the
circumstances of the change. There appears, however, to be no doubt that
the abandonment of the custom was chiefly an effect of the great wave of
humane feeling, the passion of pity and compunction for all suffering--in
a word, the impulse of tender-heartedness--which was really the great
moral power behind the Revolution. As might be expected, this outburst
did not affect merely the relations of men with men, but likewise their
relations with the whole sentient world. The sentiment of brotherhood,
the feeling of solidarity, asserted itself not merely toward men and
women, but likewise toward the humbler companions of our life on earth
and sharers of its fortunes, the animals. The new and vivid light thrown
on the rights and duties of men to one another brought also into view and
recognition the rights of the lower orders of being. A sentiment against
cruelty to animals of every kind had long been growing in civilized
lands, and formed a distinct feature of the general softening of manners
which led up to the Revolution. This sentiment now became an enthusiasm.
The new conception of our relation to the animals appealed to the heart
and captivated the imagination of mankind. Instead of sacrificing the
weaker races to our use or pleasure, with no thought for their welfare,
it began to be seen that we should rather, as elder brothers in the great
family of Nature, be, so far as possible, guardians and helpers to the
weaker orders whose fate is in our hands and to which we are as gods. Do
you not see, Julian, how the prevalence of this new view might soon have
led people to regard the eating of their fellow-animals as a revolting
practice, almost akin to cannibalism?"
"That is, of course, very easily understood. Indeed, doctor, you must not
suppose that my contemporaries were wholly without feeling on this
subject. Long before the Revolution was dreamed of there were a great
many persons of my acquaintance who owned to serious qualms over
flesh-eating, and perhaps the greater part of refined persons were not
without pangs of conscience at various times over the practice. The
trouble was, there really seemed nothing else to do. It was just like our
economic system. Humane persons generally admitted that it was very bad
and brutal, and yet very few could distinctly see what the world was
going to replace it with. You people seem to have succeeded in perfecting
a _cuisine_ without using flesh, and I admit it is every way more
satisfactory than ours was, but you can not imagine how absolutely
impossible the idea of getting on without the use of animal food looked
in my day, when as yet nothing definite had been suggested to take its
place which offered any reasonable amount of gratification to the palate,
even if it provided the means of aliment."
"I can imagine the difficulty to some extent. It was, as you say, like
that which so long hindered the change of economic systems. People could
not clearly realize what was to take its place. While one's mouth is full
of one flavor it is difficult to imagine another. That lack of
constructive imagination on the part of the mass is the obstacle that has
stood in the way of removing every ancient evil, and made necessary a
wave of revolutionary force to do the work. Such a wave of feeling as I
have described was needful in this case to do away with the immemorial
habit of flesh-eating. As soon as the new attitude of men's minds took
away their taste for flesh, and there was a demand that had to be
satisfied for some other and adequate sort of food, it seems to have been
very promptly met."
"From what source?"
"Of course," replied the doctor, "chiefly from the vegetable world,
though by no means wholly. There had never been any serious attempt
before to ascertain what its provisions for food actually were, still
less what might be made of them by scientific treatment. Nor, as long as
there was no objection to killing some animal and appropriating without
trouble the benefit of its experiments, was there likely to be. The rich
lived chiefly on flesh. As for the working masses, which had always drawn
their vigor mainly from vegetables, nobody of the influential classes
cared to make their lot more agreeable. Now, however, all with one
consent set about inquiring what sort of a table Nature might provide for
men who had forsworn murder.
"Just as the crude and simple method of slavery, first chattel slavery
and afterward wage slavery, had, so long as it prevailed, prevented men
from seeking to replace its crude convenience by a scientific industrial
system, so in like manner the coarse convenience of flesh for food had
hitherto prevented men from making a serious perquisition of Nature's
edible resources. The delay in this respect is further accounted for by
the fact that the preparation of food, on account of the manner of its
conduct as an industry, had been the least progressive of all the arts of
life."
"What is that?" I said. "The least 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 were
the most conservative and habit-bound class in the communities. The rules
of the art of cookery had been handed down little changed in essentials
since the wife of the Aryan cowherd dressed her husband's food for him.
"Now, it must remain very doubtful how immediately successful the revolt
against animal food would have proved if the average family cook, whether
wife or hireling, had been left each for herself in her private kitchen
to grapple with the problem of providing for the table a satisfactory
substitute for flesh. But, thanks to the many-sided character of the
great Revolution, the juncture of time at which the growth of humane
feeling created a revolt against animal food coincided with the complete
breakdown of domestic service and the demand of women for a wider life,
facts which compelled the placing of the business of providing and
preparing food on a co-operative basis, and the making of it a branch of
the public service. So it was that as soon as men, losing appetite for
their fellow-creatures, began to ask earnestly what else could be eaten,
there was already being organized a great governmental department
commanding all the scientific talent of the nation, and backed by the
resources of the country, for the purpose of solving the question. And it
is easy to believe that none of the new departments was stimulated in its
efforts by a keener public interest than this which had in charge the
preparation of the new national bill of fare. These were the conditions
for which alimentation had waited from the beginnings of the race to
become a science.
"In the first place, the food materials and methods of preparing them
actually extant, and used in the different nations, were, for the first
time in history, collected and collated. In presence of the cosmopolitan
variety and extent of the international _menu_ thus presented, every
national _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 in
matters of food and cooking. It was discovered, as observing travelers
had always been aware, that every nation and country, often every
province, had half a dozen gastronomic secrets that had never crossed the
border, or at best on very brief excursions.
"It is well enough to mention, in passing, that the collation of this
international bill of fare was only one illustration of the innumerable
ways in which the nations, as soon as the new order put an end to the old
prejudices, began right and left to borrow and adopt the best of one
another's ideas and institutions, to the great general enrichment.
"But the organization of a scientific system of alimentation did not
cease with utilizing the materials and methods already existing. The
botanist and the chemist next set about finding new food materials and
new methods of preparing them. At once it was discovered that of the
natural products capable of being used as food by man, but a petty
proportion had ever been utilized; only those, and a small part even of
that class, which readily lent themselves to the single primitive process
whereby the race hitherto had attempted to prepare food--namely, the
application of dry or wet heat. To this, manifold other processes
suggested by chemistry were now added, with effects that our ancestors
found as delightful as novel. It had hitherto been with the science of
cooking as with metallurgy when simple fire remained its only method.
"It is written that the children of Israel, when practicing an enforced
vegetarian diet in the wilderness, yearned after the flesh-pots of Egypt,
and probably with good reason. The experience of our ancestors appears to
have been in this respect quite different. It would seem that the
sentiments with which, after a very short period had elapsed, they looked
back upon the flesh-pots they had left behind were charged with a feeling
quite the reverse of regret. There is an amusing cartoon of the period,
which suggests how brief a time it took for them to discover what a good
thing they had done for themselves in resolving to spare the animals. The
cartoon, as I remember it, is in two parts. The first shows Humanity,
typified by a feminine figure regarding a group of animals consisting of
the ox, the sheep, and the hog. Her face expresses the deepest
compunction, while she tearfully exclaims, 'Poor things! How could we
ever bring ourselves to eat you?' The second part reproduces the same
group, with the heading 'Five Years After.' But here the countenance
of Humanity as she regards the animals expresses not contrition or
self-reproach, but disgust and loathing, while she exclaims in nearly
identical 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 gradually
left behind the more thickly settled portions of the city, if indeed any
portion of these modern cities, in which every home stands in its own
inclosure, can be called thickly settled. The groves and meadows and
larger woods had become numerous, and villages occurred at frequent
intervals. We were out in the country.
"Doctor," said I, "it has so happened, you will remember, that what I
have seen of twentieth-century life has been mainly its city side. If
country life has changed since my day as much as city life, it will be
very interesting to make its acquaintance again. Tell me something about
it."
"There are few respects, I suppose," replied the doctor, "in which the
effect of the nationalization of production and distribution on the basis
of economic equality has worked a greater transformation than in the
relations of city and country, and it is odd we should not have chanced
to speak of this before now."
"When I was last in the world of living people," I said, "the city was
fast devouring the country. Has that process gone on, or has it possibly
been reversed?"
"Decidedly the latter," replied the doctor, "as indeed you will at once
see must have been the case when you consider that the enormous growth of
the great cities of the past was entirely an economic consequence of the
system of private capitalism, with its necessary dependence upon
individual 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," replied
the doctor. "Under private capitalism, you see, there was no public or
governmental system for organizing productive effort and distributing its
results. There was no general and unfailing machinery for bringing
producers and consumers together. Everybody had to seek his own
occupation and maintenance on his own account, and success depended on
his finding an opportunity to exchange his labor or possessions for the
possessions or labor of others. For this purpose the best place, of
course, was where there were many people who likewise wanted to buy or
sell their labor or goods. Consequently, when, owing either to accident
or calculation, a mass of people were drawn together, others flocked to
them, for every such aggregation made a market place where, owing simply
to the number of persons desiring to buy and sell, better opportunities
for exchange were to be found than where fewer people were, and the
greater the number of people the larger and better the facilities for
exchange. The city having thus taken a start, the larger it became, the
faster it was likely to grow by the same logic that accounted for its
first rise. The laborer went there to find the largest and steadiest
market for his muscle, and the capitalist--who, being a conductor of
production, desired the largest and steadiest labor market--went there
also. The capitalist trader went there to find the greatest group of
consumers of his goods within least space.
"Although at first the cities rose and grew, mainly because of the
facilities for exchange among their own citizens, yet presently the
result of the superior organization of exchange facilities made them
centers of exchange for the produce of the surrounding country. In this
way those who lived in the cities had not only great opportunities to
grow rich by supplying the needs of the dense resident population, but
were able also to levy a tribute upon the products of the people in the
country round about by compelling those products to pass through their
hands on the way to the consumers, even though the consumers, like the
producers, lived in the country, and might be next door neighbors.
"In due course," pursued the doctor, "this concentration of material
wealth in the cities led to a concentration there of all the superior,
the refined, the pleasant, and the luxurious ministrations of life. Not
only did the manual laborers flock to the cities as the market where they
could best exchange their labor for the money of the capitalists, but the
professional and learned class resorted thither for the same purpose. The
lawyers, the pedagogues, the doctors, the rhetoricians, and men of
special skill in every branch, went there as the best place to find the
richest and most numerous employers of their talents, and to make their
careers.
"And in like manner all who had pleasure to sell--the artists, the
players, the singers, yes, and the courtesans also--flocked to the cities
for the same reasons. And those who desired pleasure and had wealth to
buy it, those who wished to enjoy life, either as to its coarse or
refined gratifications, followed the pleasure-givers. And, finally, the
thieves and robbers, and those pre-eminent in the wicked arts of living
on their fellow-men, followed the throng to the cities, as offering them
also the best field for their talents. And so the cities became great
whirlpools, which drew to themselves all that was richest and best, and
also everything that was vilest, in the whole land.
"Such, Julian, was the law of the genesis and growth of the cities, and
it was by necessary consequence the law of the shrinkage, decay, and
death of the country and country life. It was only necessary that the era
of private capitalism in America should last long enough for the rural
districts to have been reduced to what they were in the days of the Roman
Empire, and of every empire which achieved full development--namely,
regions whence all who could escape had gone to seek their fortune in the
cities, leaving only a population of serfs and overseers.
"To do your contemporaries justice, they seemed themselves to realize
that the swallowing up of the country by the city boded no good to
civilization, and would apparently have been glad to find a cure for it,
but they failed entirely to observe that, as it was a necessary effect of
private capitalism, it could only be remedied by abolishing that."
"Just how," said I, "did the abolition of private capitalism and the
substitution of a nationalized economic system operate to stop the growth
of the cities?"
"By abolishing the need of markets for the exchange of labor and
commodities," replied the doctor. "The facilities of exchange organized
in the cities under the private capitalists were rendered wholly
superfluous and impertinent by the national organization of production
and distribution. The produce of the country was no longer handled by or
distributed through the cities, except so far as produced or consumed
there. The quality of goods furnished in all localities, and the measure
of industrial service required of all, was the same. Economic equality
having done away with rich and poor, the city ceased to be a place where
greater luxury could be enjoyed or displayed than the country. The
provision of employment and of maintenance on equal terms to all took
away the advantages of locality as helps to livelihood. In a word, there
was no longer any motive to lead a person to prefer city to country life,
who did not like crowds for the sake of being crowded. Under these
circumstances you will not find it strange that the growth of the cities
ceased, and their depopulation began from the moment the effects of the
Revolution became apparent."
"But you have cities yet!" I exclaimed.
"Certainly--that is, we have localities where population still remains
denser than in other places. None of the great cities of your day have
become extinct, but their populations are but small fractions of what
they were."
"But Boston is certainly a far finer-looking city than in my day."
"All the modern cities are far finer and fairer in every way than their
predecessors and infinitely fitter for human habitation, but in order to
make them so it was necessary to get rid of their surplus population.
There are in Boston to-day perhaps a quarter as many people as lived in
the same limits in the Boston of your day, and that is simply because
there were four times as many people within those limits as could be
housed and furnished with environments consistent with the modern idea of
healthful and agreeable living. New York, having been far worse crowded
than Boston, has lost a still larger proportion of its former population.
Were you to visit Manhattan Island I fancy your first impression would be
that the Central Park of your day had been extended all the way from the
Battery to Harlem River, though in fact the place is rather thickly built
up according to modern notions, some two hundred and fifty thousand
people living there among the groves and fountains."
"And you say this amazing depopulation took place at once after the
Revolution?"
"It began then. The only way in which the vast populations of the old
cities could be crowded into spaces so small was by packing them like
sardines in tenement houses. As soon as it was settled that everybody
must be provided with really and equally good habitations, it followed
that the cities must lose the greater part of their population. These had
to be provided with dwellings in the country. Of course, so vast a work
could not be accomplished instantly, but it proceeded with all possible
speed. In addition to the exodus of people from the cities because there
was no room for them to live decently, there was also a great outflow of
others who, now there had ceased to be any economic advantages in city
life, were attracted by the natural charms of the country; so that you
may easily see that it was one of the great tasks of the first decade
after the Revolution to provide homes elsewhere for those who desired to
leave the cities. The tendency countryward continued until the cities
having been emptied of their excess of people, it was possible to make
radical changes in their arrangements. A large proportion of the old
buildings and all the unsightly, lofty, and inartistic ones were cleared
away and replaced with structures of the low, broad, roomy style adapted
to the new ways of living. Parks, gardens, and roomy spaces were
multiplied on every hand and the system of transit so modified as to get
rid of the noise and dust, and finally, in a word, the city of your day
was changed into the modern city. Having thus been made as pleasant
places to live in as was the country itself, the outflow of population
from the cities ceased and an equilibrium became established."
"It strikes me," I observed, "that under any circumstances cities must
still, on account of their greater concentration of people, have certain
better public services than small villages, for naturally such
conveniences are least expensive where a dense population is to be
supplied."
"As to that," replied the doctor, "if a person desires to live in some
remote spot far away from neighbors he will have to put up with some
inconveniences. He will have to bring his supplies from the nearest
public store and dispense with various public services enjoyed by those
who live nearer together; but in order to be really out of reach of these
services he must go a good way off. You must remember that nowadays the
problems of communication and transportation both by public and private
means have been so entirely solved that conditions of space which were
prohibitive in your day are unimportant now. Villages five and ten miles
apart are as near together for purposes of social intercourse and
economic administration as the adjoining wards of your cities. Either on
their own account or by group combinations with other communities
dwellers in the smallest villages enjoy installations of all sorts of
public services as complete as exist in the cities. All have public
stores and kitchens with telephone and delivery systems, public baths,
libraries, and institutions of the highest education. As to the quality
of the services and commodities provided, they are of absolutely equal
excellence wherever furnished. Finally, by telephone and electroscope the
dwellers in any part of the country, however deeply secluded among the
forests or the mountains, may enjoy the theater, the concert, and the
orator quite as advantageously as the residents of the largest cities."
THE REFORESTING.
Still we swept on mile after mile, league after league, toward the
interior, and still the surface below presented the same parklike aspect
that had marked the immediate environs of the city. Every natural feature
appeared to have been idealized and all its latent meaning brought out by
the loving skill of some consummate landscape artist, the works of man
blending with the face of Nature in perfect harmony. Such arrangements of
scenery had not been uncommon in my day, when great cities prepared
costly pleasure grounds, but I had never imagined anything on a scale
like this.
"How far does this park extend?" I demanded at last. "There seems no end
to 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 ways
according to the natural suggestions of the face of the country and the
most effective way of co-operating with them. In this region, for
instance, where there are few bold natural features, the best effect to
be obtained was that of a smiling, peaceful landscape with as much
diversification in detail as possible. In the mountainous regions, on the
contrary, where Nature has furnished effects which man's art could not
strengthen, the method has been to leave everything absolutely as Nature
left it, only providing the utmost facilities for travel and observation.
When you visit the White Mountains or the Berkshire Hills you will find,
I fancy, their slopes shaggier, the torrents wilder, the forests loftier
and more gloomy than they were a hundred years ago. The only evidences of
man's handiwork to be found there are the roadways which traverse every
gorge and top every summit, carrying the traveler within reach of all the
wild, rugged, or beautiful bits of Nature."
"As far as forests go, it will not be necessary for me to visit the
mountains in order to perceive that the trees are not only a great deal
loftier as a rule, but that there are vastly more of them than formerly."
"Yes," said the doctor, "it would be odd if you did not notice that
difference in the landscape. There are said to be five or ten trees
nowadays where there was one in your day, and a good part of those you
see down there are from seventy-five to a hundred years old, dating from
the reforesting."
"What was the reforesting?" I asked.
"It was the restoration of the forests after the Revolution. Under
private capitalism the greed or need of individuals had led to so general
a wasting of the woods that the streams were greatly reduced and the land
was constantly plagued with droughts. It was found after the Revolution
that one of the things most urgent to be done was to reforest the
country. Of course, it has taken a long time for the new plantings to
come to maturity, but I believe it is now some twenty-five years since
the forest plan reached its full development and the last vestiges of the
former ravages disappeared."
"Do you know," I said presently, "that one feature which is missing from
the 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 in
your day hay was the main crop of New England?"
"Altogether so," I replied, "and now I suppose you have no use for hay at
all. Dear me, in what a multitude of important ways the passing of the
animals out of use both for food and work must have affected human
occupations and interests!"
"Yes, indeed," said the doctor, "and always to the notable improvement of
the social condition, though it may sound ungrateful to say so. Take the
case of the horse, for example. With the passing of that long-suffering
servant of man to his well earned reward, smooth, permanent, and clean
roadways first became possible; dust, dirt, danger, and discomfort ceased
to be necessary incidents of travel.
"Thanks to the passing of the horse, it was possible to reduce the
breadth of roadways by half or a third, to construct them of smooth
concrete from grass to grass, leaving no soil to be disturbed by wind or
water, and such ways once built, last like Roman roads, and can never be
overgrown by vegetation. These paths, penetrating every nook and corner
of the land, have, together with the electric motors, made travel such a
luxury that as a rule we make all short journeys, and when time does not
press even very long ones, by private conveyance. Had land travel
remained in the condition it was in when it depended on the horse, the
invention of the air-car would have strongly tempted humanity to treat
the earth as the birds do--merely as a place to alight on between
flights. As it is, we consider the question an even one whether it is
pleasanter to swim through the air or to glide over the ground, the
motion being well-nigh as swift, noiseless, and easy in one case as in
the other."
"Even before 1887," I said, "the bicycle was coming into such favor and
the possibilities of electricity were beginning so to loom up that
prophetic people began to talk about the day of the horse as almost over.
But it was believed that, although dispensed with for road purposes, he
must always remain a necessity for the multifarious purposes of farm
work, and so I should have supposed. How is it about that?"
TWENTIETH-CENTURY FARMING.
"Wait a moment," replied the doctor; "when we have descended a little I
will give you a practical answer."
After we had dropped from an altitude of perhaps a thousand feet to a
couple of 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. Over
its surface was moving a row of great machines, behind which the earth
surged up in brown and rigid billows. On each machine stood or sat in
easy attitude a young man or woman with quite the air of persons on a
pleasure excursion.
"Evidently," I said, "these are plows, but what drives them?"
"They are electric plows," replied the doctor. "Do you see that snakelike
cord trailing away over the broken ground behind each machine? That is
the cable by which the force is supplied. Observe those posts at regular
intervals about the field. It is only necessary to attach one of those
cables to a post to have a power which, connected with any sort of
agricultural machine, furnishes energy graduated from a man's strength to
that of a hundred horses, and requiring for its guidance no other force
than the fingers of a child can supply."
And not only this, but it was further explained to me that by this system
of flexible cables of all sizes the electric power was applied not only
to all the heavy tasks formerly done by animals, but also to the hand
instruments--the spade, the shovel, and the fork--which the farmer in my
time must bend his own back to, however well supplied he might be with
horse power. There was, indeed, no tool, however small, the doctor
explained, whether used in agriculture or any other art, to which this
motor was not applicable, leaving to the worker only the adjustment and
guiding of the instrument.
"With one of our shovels," said the doctor, "an intelligent boy can
excavate a trench or dig a mile of potatoes quicker than a gang of men in
your day, and with no more effort than he would use in wheeling a
barrow."
I had been told several times that at the present day farm work was
considered quite as desirable as any other occupation, but, with my
impressions as to the peculiar arduousness of the earth worker's task, I
had not been able to realize how this could really be so. It began to
seem possible.
The doctor suggested that perhaps I would like to land and inspect some
of the arrangements of a modern farm, and I gladly assented. But first he
took advantage of our elevated position to point out the network of
railways by which all the farm transportation was done and whereby the
crops when gathered could, if desirable, be shipped directly, without
further handling, to any point in the country. Having alighted from our
car, we crossed the field toward the nearest of the great plows, the
rider of which was a dark-haired young woman daintily costumed, such a
figure certainly as no nineteenth-century farm field ever saw. As she sat
gracefully upon the back of the shining metal monster which, as it
advanced, tore up the earth with terrible horns, I could but be reminded
of Europa on her bull. If her prototype was as charming as this young
woman, Jupiter certainly was excusable for running away with her.
As we approached, she stopped the plow and pleasantly returned our
greeting. 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 flattering
had I not been aware that I owed it entirely to my character as a freak
of Nature and not at all to my personality.
When I asked her what sort of a crop they were expecting to plant at this
season, she replied that this was merely one of the many annual plowings
given to all soil to keep it in condition.
"We use, of course, abundant fertilizers," she said, "but consider the
soil its own best fertilizer if kept moving."
"Doubtless," said I, "labor is the best fertilizer of the soil. So old an
authority 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 had
to come out of the muscles of men and beasts. One plowing a year was all
our farmers could manage, and that nearly broke their backs."
"Yes," she said, "I have read of those poor men. Now you see it is
different. So long as the tides rise and fall twice a day, let alone the
winds and waterfalls, there is no reason why we should not plow every day
if it were desirable. I believe it is estimated that about ten times the
amount of power is nowadays given to the working of every acre of land
that it was possible to apply in former times."
We spent some time inspecting the farm. The doctor explained the drainage
and pumping systems by which both excess and deficiency of rain are
guarded against, and gave me opportunity to examine in detail some of the
wonderful tools he had described, which make practically no requisition
on the muscle of the worker, only needing a mind behind them.
Connected with the farm was one of the systems of great greenhouse
establishments upon which the people depend for fresh vegetables in the
winter, and this, too, we visited. The wonders of intensive culture which
I saw in that great structure would of course astonish none of my
readers, but to me the revelation of what could be done with plants when
all the conditions of light, heat, moisture, and soil ingredients were
absolutely to be commanded, was a never-to-be-forgotten experience. It
seemed to me that I had stolen into the very laboratory of the Creator,
and found him at the task of fashioning with invisible hands the dust of
the earth and the viewless air into forms of life. I had never seen
plants actually grow before and had deemed the Indian juggler's trick an
imposture. But here I saw them lifting their heads, putting forth their
buds, and opening their flowers by movements which the eye could follow.
I confess that I fairly listened to hear them whisper.
"In my day, greenhouse culture of vegetables out of season had been
carried on only to an extent to meet the demands of a small class of very
rich. The idea of providing such supplies at moderate prices for the
entire community, according to the modern practice, was of course quite
undreamed of."
When we left the greenhouse the afternoon had worn away and the sun was
setting. Rising swiftly to a height where its rays still warmed us, we
set out homeward.
Strongest of all the impressions of that to me so wonderful afternoon
there lingered most firmly fixed in my mind the latest--namely, the
object lesson I had received of the transformation in the conditions of
agriculture, the great staple human occupation from the beginning, and
the basis of every industrial system. Presently I said:
"Since you have so successfully done away with the first of the two main
drawbacks of the agricultural occupation as known in my day--namely, its
excessive laboriousness--you have no doubt also known how to eliminate
the other, which was the isolation, the loneliness, the lack of social
intercourse and opportunity of social culture which were incident to the
farmer's life."
"Nobody would certainly do farm work," replied the doctor, "if it had
continued to be either more lonesome or more laborious than other sorts
of work. As regards the social surroundings of the agriculturist, he is
in no way differently situated from the artisan or any other class of
workers. He, like the others, lives where he pleases, and is carried to
and fro just as they are between the place of his residence and
occupation by the lines of swift transit with which the country is
threaded. Work on a farm no longer implies life on a farm, unless for
those who like it."
"One of the conditions of the farmer's life, owing to the variations of
the season," I said, "has always been the alternation of slack work and
periods of special exigency, such as planting and harvesting, when the
sudden need of a multiplied labor force has necessitated the severest
strain of effort for a time. This alternation of too little with too much
work, I should suppose, would still continue to distinguish agriculture
from other occupations."
"No doubt," replied the doctor, "but this alternation, far from involving
either a wasteful relaxation of effort or an excessive strain on the
worker, furnishes occasions of recreation which add a special attraction
to the agricultural occupation. The seasons of planting and harvesting
are of course slightly or largely different in the several districts of a
country so extensive as this. The fact makes it possible successively to
concentrate in each district as large an extra contingent of workers
drawn from other districts as is needed. It is not uncommon on a few
days' notice to throw a hundred thousand extra workers into a region
where there is a special temporary demand for labor. The inspiration of
these great mass movements is remarkable, and must be something like that
which 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 transformation
since your day has been so complete, and none surely has affected so
great a proportion of the people, as that which has come over
agriculture. The poets from Virgil up and down have recognized in rural
pursuits and the cultivation of the earth the conditions most favorable
to a serene and happy life. Their fancies in this respect have, however,
until the present time, been mocked by the actual conditions of
agriculture, which have combined to make the lot of the farmer, the
sustainer of all the world, the saddest, most difficult, and most
hopeless endured by any class of men. From the beginning of the world
until the last century the tiller of the soil has been the most pathetic
figure in history. In the ages of slavery his was the lowest class of
slaves. After slavery disappeared his remained the most anxious, arduous,
and despairing of occupations. He endured more than the poverty of the
wage-earner without his freedom from care, and all the anxiety of the
capitalist without his hope of compensating profits. On the one side he
was dependent for his product, as was no other class, upon the caprices
of Nature, while on the other in disposing of it he was more completely
at the mercy of the middleman than any other producer. Well might he
wonder whether man or Nature were the more heartless. If the crops
failed, the farmer perished; if they prospered, the middleman took the
profit. Standing as a buffer between the elemental forces and human
society, he was smitten by the one only to be thrust back by the other.
Bound to the soil, he fell into a commercial serfdom to the cities
well-nigh as complete as the feudal bondage had been. By reason of his
isolated and unsocial life he was uncouth, unlettered, out of touch with
culture, without opportunities for self-improvement, even if his bitter
toil had left him energy or time for it. For this reason the dwellers in
the towns looked down upon him as one belonging to an inferior race. In
all lands, in all ages, the countryman has been considered a proper butt
by the most loutish townsman. The starving proletarian of the city
pavement scoffed at the farmer as a boor. Voiceless, there was none to
speak for him, and his rude, inarticulate complaints were met with jeers.
Baalam was not more astonished when the ass he was riding rebuked him
than the ruling classes of America seem to have been when the farmers,
toward the close of the last century, undertook to have something to say
about the government of the country.
"From time to time in the progress of history the condition of the farmer
has for brief periods been tolerable. The yeoman of England was once for
a little while one who looked nobles in the face. Again, the American
farmer, up to the middle of the nineteenth century, enjoyed the golden
age of agriculture. Then for a space, producing chiefly for use and not
for sale to middlemen, he was the most independent of men and enjoyed a
rude abundance. But before the nineteenth century had reached its last
third, American agriculture had passed through its brief idyllic period,
and, by the inevitable operation of private capitalism, the farmer began
to go down hill toward the condition of serfdom, which in all ages before
had been his normal state, and must be for evermore, so long as the
economic exploitation of men by men should continue. While in one sense
economic equality brought an equal blessing to all, two classes had
especial reason to hail it as bringing to them a greater elevation from a
deeper degradation than to any others. One of these classes was the
women, the other the farmers."